Zoom: The company that became a verb is trying to become a workplace

A drum started up somewhere outside the window and Velchamy Sankarlingam broke off mid-answer to ask whether it was rain.

It was a wedding band. Nobody who lives in Chennai has to think about that sound for even a second, and I told him a man from this city ought to know the difference. He left in 1988 and has lived in the US since, and though he comes back often enough, the place has stopped being one he can read. He had said as much a few minutes earlier. He used to know Chennai in and out, and now the flyovers and the construction have made it hard to recognise.

He was born in Virudhunagar and studied there till class 10. When the admissions came, he had BITS Pilani, REC Trichy and Guindy in hand, and he took the College of Engineering, Guindy, because the other two sat in small towns and he wanted a city. Coming back, he says, still feels like coming home.