Changing Chennai: Scars of Development
d.rajakumar@yahoo.com
I travelled by trains (still by MRTS, not yet in the Metro),
by buses and by share-autos. Trains are crowed in the mornings and evenings.
Buses mostly run dry, except for some buses plying to remote places which carry
village names (e.g. Chemmanchery).
I lived in Chennai from 1996 to 2007 and during this period
I lived at Triplicane, and Thiruvanmiyur and worked for IBIL Tech Ltd, Adyar (which
was earlier called Ignifluid Boilers India Limited, and the company ceased to
exist by the year 2000) and Computers International (now CI Global Solutions),
at Besant Nagar and SRP Tools, Taramani. Chennai went into the changing phase
(or metamorphosis?) by 2004. On 03-Jan-2019, I visited part of Adyar, the
Gandhinagar, First Main Road. I went looking for Odyssey, the book shop. Most
of my mornings and evenings were at Gandhinagar, First Main Road, which was a
very lively road, with parks (of course with large trees) on one side and shops
on the other side. The parks died to give way to development, the larger roads
and flyovers. Cars were frequenting and I could also see a few two-wheelers, but
I could find none other than me walking on the road.
We used to lunch frequently at Hotel Traffic Jam and I loved
the Fish Briyani (and I have not tasted a tasty Fish Briyani anywhere else),
while we worked for IBIL Tech Limited. This hotel now had disappeared. Odyssey
was another place I used to visit frequently, I love to be in the presence of
books long before the internet era (presently, Amazon.com is a good bargain to
buy books, though I hate foreign invasion into the Indian market). My good
friend Dr. Raveeinderan (a technologist at IBIL Energy Systems) used to say, that
he wished he could assimilate the knowledge from all the books by just inhaling
from inside a library and I wished the same every time I visit Odyssey. In
those days, I was excited to enter into Odyssey, for the smell of the books.
This time, the ambiance wasn’t enchanting, it was rather gloomy, I found a few
people at other sections, but I found none browsing a book.
I travelled from Adyar to Guindy by a share auto. (It seemed
that people presumed a charge of Rs.10 for the travel, I also expected the
same.) A lady who got down near Indranagar railway station gave Rs.10 and the
driver demanded Rs.15. At the same place two men got in and what the charge is,
the driver said Rs.20 per head. They got down immediately saying they will
travel by bus. Another person, at Madhyakailash came to get in, but upon the
cost he also preferred to travel by bus. At Anna University, two girls got in
without asking any question on the cost of travel. From economic point of view,
I thought the driver would have earned more if he had slashed down the cost by
50%, he actually lost 50% of his earning by maintaining his defined cost. Buses
ply in plenty between Adyar and Guindy and next time, I wouldn’t prefer a
share-auto.
I went to Dr.VSI Estate on 04-Jan-2019, to refresh my memory
about the place where I had worked for both CI.COM (P) LTD and Computers
International. I preferred a bus travel from Guindy Industrial Estate to SRP
Tools via Velachery. The road from Raj Bhavan to Velachery had changed (in fact
beyond reorganization) a lot by widening itself and packing in more traffic. I
was looking for Rane Madras, a company my friend VB Ravishankar (or shortly
called by my other friends Rane Ravi) worked before he changed his career to
software development and left to USA. Rane Madras remained as it was, but on
either side of it has housed gigantic buildings. On moving further,
Sutherland’s building was the only one I could recognize. The Velachery bus
stand had the same structures but was forced to be smaller by the construction
of a flyover. Venketeswara Boli Stall had changed its side, and the entire
place had gone unrecognizable. I could recall the names TANSI Nagar (where I
had two of my friends from IBIL lived; Sowmya isn’t anymore in the world, I
always will remember for her skills, talents and exposure; Lakshminarayanan was
another person who was in the Engineering Drawing section, he must be there
there), and Baby Nagar (where we used to have our lunch at a mess run by an
ex-IITian, most of the days while I was at CI before my marriage) on the way to
SRP Tools bus stop.
Once a prestigious and glamorous architecture, the American
School wore a sorrow appearance, and the environment around it was also gloomy.
Sooner I got down when the bus stopped at the signal (of SRP Tools). Rajiv
Gandhi Road (earlier Old Mahabalipuram Road or fondly called as OMR) gives a
beautiful appearance (way back in 2003, when I reached that place there was a
shabby bus-stop behind which there was the dying SRP Tools, now there is an
elegant building), a green corridor after removing large trees on the roadside to
widen the road.
I crossed the Velachery road to get an access to Dr. VSI
Estate (I don’t know if anybody would remember this name). Except for a new
bitumen road, and a few new buildings, Dr. VSI Estate looked the same when I
left the place in 2006, but I was not sure where to find CI Global Solutions
buildings (I guessed there must be two buildings). I entered the gate near the
SBI branch, and immediately after few steps, I saw a red brick coloured building,
which kindled my memory of having seen the 3D model in 2006, guessed it could
be the office I was searching for. Well, yes, it had a small name board
carrying the name of the company with the bold C and I in red colour and a globe inside C in blue colour. It seemed to be having a live fence over barbed
wire (actually my mind was filled with memory and hence I couldn’t observe), I
even imagined there were leaves over the board hindering the entire view of the
board. It had a large parking space with few bikes lined up. I was wondering
about what happened to the previous office that had been constructed in the
year 2003, which was in the other side of the road.
I then returned back by another bus to Guindy through roads
I have never been through earlier. There seemed to be more vehicles than people
on the road. The Velachery – Taramani road has many unguarded and unsecured
crossings, and the traffic was very slow. Most people were looking down at
their Smartphone screens and never bothered about anything happening outside
them because they seemed to believe that if anything that needs to be noticed,
that can be viewed in the Smartphone screen sooner through any of the social
media.
A few abstractions of my thoughts on this visit are
summarized below:
- Most Tamil women had exhausted faces, only youth had some energy, but everyone had some worry hidden behind the cheerful faces (or behind the beard of the youthful men folks).
- It seems that the locals (or Tamils) work in low profile jobs where as North Indians are in high profile jobs.
- Most families (of both employed husband and wife) prefer not to cook, I could see busy delivery boys of Uber Eats, Swiggy and Zomato contributing to increasing the traffic.
- Traffic police is on duty at most junctions of Velachery, but most people never cares the traffic rules (needs an appreciation instead, as they drive a little slowly and carefully, without caring the traffic rules).
- At places having flyovers (especially at Guindy), to cross a place of few steps, one has to travel few kilometers and of course invest more time. Development seems to be a costly affair.
- The government has heavily invested (or I can say dumped) money on the construction of the Metro. The construction would have benefited the construction companies and construction material manufactures (and of course life to a lot of North Indian low profile workers), in my opinion, its waste of money of a great order. The concrete structures wear a sorry look, the escalators give a grand look, and anyway it is not easy to use as MRTS.
As a one line summary, Madras changed to Chennai in mid
1990’s, and Chennai is trying to wear a modern face; the cosmetic surgery of
modernization has only left scars of development in the face of Chennai,
instead of beautifying it.
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