Chennai

Original Source: https://www.jeyamohan.in/187478/
30-Aug-2023

Dear J,

Chennai's birthday being celebrated, I thought you would be writing your thoughts about Chennai city. I know that you have a long running relationship with Chennai. That's the origin of this request.

Muralidhar

 

*

 

Dear Muralidhar,

If one has a long running association with a city, he/she would have developed many a memories with it. We would be recalling those memories with nostalgia. It would seem that the place is in fact pleasant.

I am one with those feelings. But as far as possible, I would mandate myself to view it objectively. I view it likewise.

I came to Chennai in 1979 during my wanderer days - while in my college final year. Perambur was a place of publishers. I lived there. I have chronicled my experiences in my novel "Purappaadu" (புறப்பாடு). Many faces from those days rush to my thoughts.

I have come to Chennai after that for many reasons. The house of my friend Sendhooram Jagadish was my Chennai residence. Later, it was the mansion room of Rajamaarthaandan Annachchi in Triplicane. Then, it was the Royapettah house of Thamizhini Vasanthakumar. After that, as I entered Cinema, I started lodging in hotels frequently.

The hotels of the early days were Pratap Plaza and Vijay Park. Later it was Green Park. There are now several hotels which have become like my residence and in which I have stayed for more days than my home. I have even stayed in an hotel room for a month without ever coming out. 

Some of my dearest ones have adorned Chennai as its identity. For instance, Jayakanthan and Ashokamitran. They have both written about the the two worlds of Chennai respectively. My dearest magazine offices were in Chennai - Deepam office, Kanaiyaazhi office. The Bells road which housed the Kanaiyaazhi office was very near to the beach.

Several of my beloved friends are from Chennai. Eg: Anbu. Today, I have a friends group that is akin to an organization. We are conducting Literary events every year in Chennai. Whenever I visit Chennai, friends visit me at my hotel room and our conversations would resemble a literary event.

I have stayed put in the Chennai's museum and libraries for months together. I have roamed to the corners of Chennai to visit its historical identities. Attoor Ravi Varma is quite fond of Chennai's music festival. I have gone with him there. I have been visiting Chennai book fair since the days it was held in Chennai's Woodland Drive-in hotel.

Naanjil Naadan used to say that the literary event that me and my friend Sendhooram Jagadish organized in 1994 was the first such event for him. The book launch event for my "Rubber" novel and the Akhilan Memorial Prize distribution event in 1990 were the first literary event organized for me. The book launch event for the novel "Vishnupuram" was organized by Sendhooram Jagadish in 1997 at Devaneya Paavaanar auditorium. How many such events and festivals!!!

Memories keep streaming in one after another. All sweet memories. I do not have any bitter memory associated with Chennai. One unhappy thought is about the movie "Kasthurimaan". Its failure turned Lohithadas' life sorrowful. But that is also a part of this game. The days of making of that movie were quite delightful for me personally.

Aside from all these, how is my association with Chennai as a city? Today, I am not quite close to it. I have chosen a tiny section of that city, which I like. Its made up of the hotel rooms. I am not eager to venture out nor to visit anywhere.

The Chennai that I see today is the view of the city that is visible via my room's glass window. After alighting from train during the wee hours and taking a cab for my hotel room, I keep traveling in cars that too mostly to the nearby cinema offices. I do not travel anywhere else. Even in the cars, I try to catch up with the messages and reply to them. I do not see outside.

The truth is that I do not know about today's Chennai. Today's Chennai has a major portion that I haven't been to. I do not even have a mental map of Chennai. I cannot even say where am I in Chennai, nor do I know about the life in Chennai.

Because, Chennai is not at all a city. It is merely a gigantic co-living space. To be precise, it is a huge human dustbin. That is not what constitutes a city. A city is a kind of sculpture that is planned at least at a minimal level and a one where that plan is being maintained to an extent.

Our old books on city building refer to it as a sculpture. "Vaasthu" was primarily meant for temples and cities. Neither should one worship in a temple nor should one reside in a city that wasn't built as per Vaasthu. Individual houses should be built in synchronization with the city's overall Vaasthu and do not have a Vaasthu of their own. But we build temples sans any Vaasthu procedures, convert cities into dump yards, but keep analyzing on Vaasthu for our houses.

When you think about a city, you should be able to visualize its form and the form's uniqueness. No Indian city has that form or the uniqueness. Each one originated as self-made and developed uncontrollably. Certain sections of some cities are beautiful. In the past, the parks flanking the Jayanagar roads in Bangalore were beautiful. Delhi's Chanakyapuri is majestic. Certain coastal areas in Mumbai display qualities of small towns.

But in totality, if you have to call out a city within India as beautiful, then it is only Mysore. Even there, aside from the central Mysore, its suburban areas are turning out to be worse than Bengaluru. India's worst places are the tourist spots like Shimla, Darjeeling, Ooty etc. These are the places where hills have become buildings and have been filled with filth and garbage.

Cities in India do not have any care-takers. There is no organization to take care or maintain them. There aren't any administrative policies. To realize that the largest issue with Indian bureaucracy is Indians' lack of skills, one needs to look no further than our cities. There is absolutely no communication between any two departments. The construction done by one department will be demolished by another the very next day. 

I have seen the reason for this through my experience. You cannot get a reply from a department merely by writing a letter to it. A BSNL officer, who mailed the highways department enquiring about the next schedule for road laying so that BSNL can lay their cables before that, received a reply with more queries on top of his - after one and half years. BSNL dug up that road merely a week after it was laid and the water board burrowed it up further eight months later.

Therefore, Indian cities are always a pile of rubbish. As far as I know, Chennai has been resembling small Lebanon towns for more than 20 years now. Metro was being constructed and it hasn't yet been completed. Flyovers were erected, work is still going on. Real estate construction never ceases - as they are politicians' treasure troves and harvest grounds.  

Generally, any city anywhere will keep developing and expanding. But Indian cities are dug up with the rubbishes piled up for several years and reconstructed on top of that. Chennaiites do not have the good luck of residing in a completed city. It is another matter that soon as the construction is completed, so it becomes old. 

The flyovers themselves are quite elegant in foreign countries. Here, they fill our eyes as concrete monsters sans any finesse. In my view, Chennai doesn't have a single recent beautiful erection. Those buildings that were copied from abroad have been standing without any harmony. Most of the buildings do not have any spaces surrounding them. We cannot view them at all. 

Good cities have a policy on their external outlook. A city's imagery is formed with that policy only. Most of the European cities maintain that impeccably. Even in our neighborhood, Bhutan's Thimphu has such a sculpture-like harmony. Nothing like that exists in India. There is nothing like a common color or form in those. So, even if there is a new erection, we get to view only an overall color and form disorderliness. On top of that, we get to view rubbishes from buildings and mountains of garbage everywhere. 

Unregulated posters and hoardings turns the cityscape allergic to eyes. Every wall in Chennai makes for a view that is akin to skin disease. In every place, gigantic hoardings block our views. They are completely unregulated. If one has a basic sensitivity towards color and form, viewing Chennai would feel torturous. 

Still there are buildings that Chennai can be proud of like Egmore Museum, High Court and Egmore Railway Station. But most of them are in relentless use. They are being used even in a dilapidated condition and others are being torn down. One can see the destruction of Chennai's antiquity and history every single day.

A city becomes beautiful out of 3 basic necessities. First, Parks. Second, water bodies. Third, City squares. I have seen the greatest city squares around the world. Such a thing cannot exist in India. Thousands of street vendors would crowd the place, litter it and would turn it into a trader's center. Chennai doesn't have any such squares. There is the beach - but its a crowded market.

Chennai doesn't have any parks. The parks that are created in small streets merely have few plants and trees, but they too suffer from litter and crowd. All water bodies in Chennai have been turned bone-dry, whereas those in Bangalore and Coimbatore are sewage ponds. Comparatively, in Tamil Nadu, a city that has at least a semblance of cleanliness is Coimbatore. Madurai has degraded beyond imagination. Nagercoil? Nagercoil has not yet become a city. There is no concept of roads in major parts of the city. 

Chennaiites must come out of the sentimental loyalty mindset and must at least pray for Chennai to start developing an administrative framework for garbage collection, garbage destruction or garbage recycling. Today, the collected garbage are being dumped in water bodies and marsh lands.

* 

Any city in India is not amenable for a happy living. It is just that humans are forced to live there. But should we have to dislike Chennai or any such city?

We must first understand that we cannot live in hatred. We ought to like the city. We must try to find out avenues for liking the city. Chennai has many such avenues.

Primarily Chennai's opportunities. Chennai provides a great platform for any business. Multitudes are pouring into Chennai every single day. Chennai embraces everyone.

Secondly, Chennai's metropolitan nature. It is the only Indian city with trait. The religious-caste differences observed in cities like Coimbatore, Madurai and Trichy cannot happen in mega cities. The masses here are categorized merely as consumers and workers. Therefore, if one prepares to be broad-minded, he/she can attain amazing friendships.

Thirdly, in a city like Chennai, festivals abound. One just has to strive a bit to find them. Sculpture exhibitions, music shows and theaters keep happening. Various artistic worlds exists. One has to just attempt to live in that.

All these aside, the congregation of populace in cities like Chennai in itself is a higher experience. When being dispirited, there is nothing more encouraging than being in a gathering. 

* 

Of the cities that I have visited, I like several of them. The African city of Windhoek is a small, beautiful and a proper city. Singapore is immaculate but has a mechanical nature to it. Paris could've been beautiful, but its recent refugee influx is harming its security. There are thieves and beggars galore. Venice? It has a big brand, but in reality it is an assembly of buildings inside filth. London? Beautiful and nostalgic. Rome is a dream, Munich too.

But the one that I like, the one which gladdens me just on thinking about it - New York City. Yes. It has many poverty ridden bylanes that New Yorkers wouldn't have seen. African-American settlements, refugee dwellings are present. I have visited such places. Still New York is beautiful. It has exquisite planning and cleanliness. It also boasts of a clean and definite administration.

The most important aspect though is that it is a vibrant center combining all human races. A time-warp. It is a place where the belief, dreams and enthusiasm that drove humanity till today doesn't rest for even a single moment.

References:

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/20257601

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayakanthan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashokamitran

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attoor_Ravi_Varma

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjil_Nadan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_(novel)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9397242-vishnupuram?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_8

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._K._Lohithadas

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharat_Sanchar_Nigam_Limited

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_square

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windhoek