When was your city last razed to the ground ?

While at Serbia, we one day invited Mirko (an engineer with our client) for lunch at an
Indian restaurant. After placing the order and while waiting for the food to be served,
we were making small talk, discussing about each other's countries.

At school, History was one of my favourite subjects. Mainly because I like to read and
history is all about interesting stories, and also because I like to write and what better
platform for waxing eloquent than a history examination ? :-)

There was no Serbia then (it was Yugoslavia) and President Tito was well known in India because of his being one of the founders of NAM (Non Aligned Movement) along with the
then Indian Prime Minister Nehru. Even today, most people to whom I mentioned that I
had been to Serbia, confuse it with Siberia (Russia). But the moment you say Yugoslavia,
they know.

We had a barrage of questions for Mirko, who cheerfully helped clear our doubts. He had
just one question for us though : "When was your city last razed to the ground ?"

We were like, Huh ?

I really don't know when Chennai was last razed to the ground. Infact I don't think it was
razed in recent times - atleast in the last 60 years or more. When we told him that such
a thing has not happened (fortunately) to our city in a long time, he was kind of surprised.

And as usual Google helped me clarify why Mirko had that doubt. As per Wikipedia, "the
city of Belgrade was battled over in 115 wars & razed to the ground 44 times since the
ancient period by countless armies of the East and West." No wonder Mirko felt it odd
and maybe even boring that no one razed Chennai to the ground.

Most days after work, the 3 of us would get together in my room and talk shop and to
enjoy some nice Serbian wine/brandy. That day, the topic was Mirko's 'strange' query
& I told my colleagues about how Belgrade has been razed to the ground some 44 times.

One of my colleagues promptly said that he knows the reason why all these armies
over-ran Belgrade so many times. Since the said colleague was not known to really
be a history-buff, I was curious how he knew why this city was the target of so many
armies and ask him the reason.

As per him it was pretty elementary and he was surprised that we did not know the
reason. On prompting, he says, "You guys are dumb. Given the beautiful women
here, is it surprising that this country was fought over in 115 wars or was razed to
the ground 44 times? All those armies came for the women, dude."

Can't argue with that logic, can ya ?