Filter coffee & Unfiltered Marghazi Raagam, Raucous Yellow auto & eco savvy Temple cars, teeming Ranganathan street & Sumptuous express avenue , Lungi clad roadside Romeos & Waist tapping laptop techies, Bharatanatiyam & Duppakuthu Vathiyam, Saravana Bhavan & Kaiendhi bhavan, Marina beach & Larger than life Rajnikanth’s reach, green medians & Kollywood comedians ,wall murals & roadside urinals , River Cooum & its queasiness aroma, white & white dark complexioned politicians, Satyam cinemas, Mount road and last but not the least Captain Dhoni’s super kings. Well, im talking about things that are synonyms of Chennai, my home town. Chennai is India’s fourth largest metro, third best city to live, 9th city in world’s top 10 investment destination and second most competitive city in India. These are facts that a Chief Minister or Mayor or bureaucrat can boast of. As a normal resident of this city, there are the things that I would really look forward for a change:
The Graffiti and poster menace: The cheapest and easiest form of advertising is here to stay despite the official ban. If your house is on a busy street or main road, you don’t need to paint your wall. Even if you do, it will eventually become the ruling party’s manifesto depicting their leaders face like lion, beer, buffalo etc. This craziness can be best appreciated when you see important signage or sign boards in city eaten up by these posters. The Adult movie posters on temples, funeral or death notice on the hospital compound walls are just a tip of the iceberg.
Dual identity: Chennai is a city which can even confuse a navigator or google earth or some of mankind’s best innovation in navigation space. All major roads carry an English name & a Tamil name. Instance, Mount road is also known as Anna salai. Mt Poonamalle road is also known as EVR Periyar Salai. There is more than one MGR road in the city. Similarly there are multiple roads named after Mahatma Gandhi. When Ms. Jayalalitha comes to power, Kalaignar nagar is abbreviated to ‘KK Nagar’. When Mr. Karunanidhi is in power, the original name (ie Kalaignar nagar) is restored.
Even houses have 2 door numbers. Each house has an old number and a new number. It’s easier to find a house using a landmark than finding it using the door number.
A true democracy: In a democratic country like India, everyone has right to live. Mosquitoes, Rats and Olive Ridley Turtles are inhabitants for ages ever since Chennai (then Madras) was formed. The Cooum river which is Asia’s biggest (perhaps World’s biggest) open drainage runs across the city and provides a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes and rats. Whenever the politicians feel the pinch of inflation, they start the Cooum river cleaning project to fill their wallets. As long as the sludge in our political system remains, river Cooum will never be clean and green.
The Olive Ridley Turtle is something unique to Chennai. Recently some of the activists and fishermen halted a beachside elevated road project as they claimed it would endanger Olive Ridley Turtles. Not sure whether their environmental impact report also considered the fuel wastage & pollution caused by the vehicles struck up in traffic. The fishermen, who kill fishes to make their living, acting as if they are fish’s natural predators, also opposed this elevated project which was finally shelved by the government.
The big social divide: While it is exciting to see huge commercial complexes and skyscrapers dotting the city’s landscape it is equally important that the growth is inclusive and takes into account the local community along the growth corridors as well. Else the roads like OMR, GST will see huge slums (like Mumbai’s Dharavi) in the years to come. A drunken man urinating before a IT company, men chasing buffalos under hot sun in the middle of IT corridor, an aged person picking up plastic covers from the garbage bins establishes these well known hard truth.
Chennai lack those lakes: When it rains, the city roads become more viable for water transportation. For a second, you would think you were in Alleppey. This rain water gets polluted and drained to sea. Using the desalination plant the sea water is converted back to drinking water. While the government made rain water harvesting mandatory for all buildings, the planners failed to notice the natural rain water harvesters, which are our lakes, being neglected & converted to housing units. The present day Nungambakkam and T.Nagar areas were once lakes. My office stands on a place which was once part of the Pallikaranai Marshland.
The Auto menace: One of my north Indian friends visited Chennai. Stepping out from the Central railway station he approached an auto and asked him ‘Can you please take me for a ride?’ He realized that the auto guy really took him for a ride when he demanded 200 rs for an 8 km ride. The auto guy’s tradition of fleecing the passengers’ dates back to Stone Age and they never change. If Chennai is called Gateway of South India, this looting starts right at the gate. Does this say ‘Get-away of South India?’
Planners day out: Chennai started growing only after British established the East India company here. The present “Beach to Tambaram” EMU rail line which is Chennai’s lifeline was planned and constructed by British. When it was inaugurated in 1931 it was considered too futuristic. The British determined how the city should grow and the city exactly grew along this corridor. Today, after 76 years when we are implementing the Metro, the city has already grown by leaps and bounds & this is being laid through the most congested localities of Chennai. Planning is always a thing of past in Chennai.
And, Chennaites: There are active and passive citizens of Chennai. The actives are ones who gets their hands dirty and raise themselves against these civic, social & environmental issues. Perhaps the reason they are called as Activists. The passive are ones who don’t bother to care for their city or restrict themselves to blogs. They can be called egotistic. Unfortunately 99% of Chennai’s population falls under the second category!!!
- Hari
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