Drive by Chennai: 6

Spotted Great Indian Fruit Bat (Pteropus medius) colony on Madras Museum grounds. 

Drive by Chennai: 5

 Appropriately  sized, cleaner and prettier viewcutters on R. K Salai. These metallic viewcutters built around electrical transformers are part of Chennai beautification project meant to prevent dumping of garbage around transformers, pasting of unauthorized posters and camouflage ugly electrical infrastructure. As one can see, the metallic enclosures are tall enough to hide most of the transformers and the areas around them are clean. As for preventing pasting of unauthorized posters, see photo above.

Thanks for visiting. 

Drive by Chennai: 4

 Chennai Beautification Project: Viewcutters Part 1

Kilpauk (Poonamalle High Road)

Since last year, these viewcutters have sprouted around electrical transformers on Chennai roads. I find the designs and colors interesting even if they are not particularly effective as coverings. Whenever I am able, I take photos of them from the safety of the car. Here are a few

Spurtank Road, Chetput

Casa Major Road, Egmore

Hadley Road Kilpauk

Thanks for visiting.

Drive by Chennai: 3

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Despite being clean, uncluttered with a very helpful sign, this guy preferred the road. What can one say?

Drive by Chennai: 2

 

What is Thideer Nagar

 

Greams Road Thideer Nagar Today

As a recent transplant to Chennai, my curiosity has been aroused every time I passed this road sign 👆tucked into a little corner of Greams Road. Greams Road is a long road that begins at the intersection of Anderson bridge and College Road and ends at Anna Salai. A quarter of the road runs parellel to the Cooum River but a wall of blue screens completely block the view of the river from the road. For the rest, small businesses, eateries and banks dot both sides of the road. It even has an art gallery. (A google query “Greams Road Chennai” will bring up several videos of Greams Road at various points in time.)

Now coming to Thideer Nagar. Thideer means sudden and nagar means a town or a neighborhood or a human settlement. In the present day Greams Road Thideer Nagar one doesn’t see any sign of human settlement. Google search revealed that Chennai has a number of such thideer nagars—they are unplanned settlements formed when migrants from outside come into the city and settle on the banks of Cooum and Adyar rivers and other waterways. These are shanty towns consisting of several hundred families. Men and women worked locally and children went to neighborhood schools. Because Thideer Nagars are illegal settlements, they could be razed and families evicted without due process. That was the fate that fell upon Greams Road Thideer Nagar. Between 2015-2018, despite stiff resistance, all the families were evicted and resettled in a different location by the Greater Chennai Corporation as part of Cooum river restoration project. A number of thideer nagars by the Cooum river have suffered a similar fate. 

Eight years later, what remains of the old Thideer Nagar is a cluster of cars parked where there used to be auto mechanic shops. Based on newspaper reports, it seems that the municipal corporation has not been able to evict them because they had proper patta to their property. So, even if humans have been disappeared, Thideer Nagar still lives. 

As for Cooum river restoration, that project supposedly started sixty years ago. The river is still as dead as it had always been. Even the dead would not want to be dead there. 

Thanks for visiting. 

All photos by Indira Govindan. 

Drive by Chennai: 1

 

Quirky!!

Sights and Sounds of Chennai

I am presently visiting my sister in Chennai, Tamilnadu, India. Chennai in August is a lovely place to be. The weather is pleasant with moderate temperatures. It is the beginning of the monsoon season and the trees and the flowers show off their best colors. The birds feel happy and sing. Even the gaunt strays that dot the landscape look more hopeful and move around with more energy. Below is a sample of the sights and sounds of Chennai in August

Linked to Image-in-ing.

Enjoy.

Examples of Street Art

Do-Something-Everyday, August 8, 2016

An entire stretch of an exterior wall of a college compound was covered with an eclectic mix of art by the students of the college. Here are few examples of the street art to be found on Cathedral Road, Chennai.

Linked to Our Beautiful World theme on Outdoor Activities.

Linked to Image-in-ing

Linked to ABC Wednesday where this week's letter is E. I have chosen the word Example wherein I have provided many examples of street art.

Pongal Season, Chennai January 2015

January is absolutely the best month to be in Chennai. The weather is incredibly balmy, trees are leafy and green, the mosquitoes behave themselves and the entire city is colorful and in a celebratory mood for the Pongal festival.

It is the season for music festival, arts and crafts shows, textile exhibitions and weddings.

It is the celebration of nature's bounty, winter harvest and the beginning of Sun's northern ascension. In a country where still seventy-five percent of the population lives in villages, Pongal brings farmers and their livestock to the center stage in a grateful acknowledgment of their labor and toil in feeding the country's billion people. Pongal itself means an overflowing cooking pot and every Tamil kitchen at the appointed hour witnesses the milk and rice boiling over the cooking pot. Unsurprisingly, the three-day harvest festival  is also celebrated with varieties of food preparation based on rice and vegetables.

Just before the start of the festival, roadside are filled with carts and stalls of fresh winter vegetables, sugarcane, raw turmeric and fruits.

It is the time for families to do things together.

Even the birds get to partake in the feast!

If cultures reveal their heart and soul in what they celebrate,then Pongal festival is Tamil culture at its best.

Happy Pongal!