chennai dateline

Stagnation of rain water, closure of subways, traffic diversions, stranded two wheelers and four wheelers, battered roads, uprooted trees, tree branches falling on parked cars, unannounced power cuts, clogging of storm water drains, sudden outbreak of rain-related diseases…..these situations repeat every time the clouds burst in Chennai.  Busy roads like the GN Chetty Road, and Mandavelli roads are submerged.
Check Out : Monsoon Choke: Rain battered Chennai
In several low lying areas, water enter, nay gush into houses and one can imagine how difficult life would be. .These are scenes that repeat during monsoon every year. I wonder if the authorities can’t think of taking permanent steps so that it would not be a nightmare during every November. There has been overall lack of planning a monsoon. I have a feeling that there is total bureaucratic apathy since it is the lower middle class and the less fortunate who suffer. I am unable to imagine the agony and misery of the platform dwellers.

God’s in his heaven: All’s right with the world.

All of us have some grievance or the other. The senior citizens of Chennai gave vent to the difficulties faced by them at a session organized by the City police the other day.

In Chennai, the population of senior citizens is over six lakh and thirty thousand. This approximates to nine per cent of the city’s total population.

Their main grouse is that the autorickshaw drivers literally take them for a ride. Though it is mandatory for autorikshaws to use electronic meters, no auto driver respects this law, they say. It costs them a fortune to go the Hospital or to the Bank. While this regulation is being enforced in cities like Bengaluru and Mumbai why notin Chennai, they ask.

Another of their demands was that they should be given preference in queues at the bill counters of the EB and Water Supplies offices.

An old lady said the postmen take a commission while handing over the old-age pension. A Besant Nagar resident had another problem. According to her, film shooting is almost a daily affair at the 4th Avenue and every time they say that they have the permission of the police. She insisted that only the residents have the right to grant or deny permission! She also mentioned that if one dials 100, the emergency number, a recorded message is heard and it is not manually operated. Haphazard parking of cars in the narrow streets was another problem mentioned at the meet.

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you have not committed.

The narrow bridge connecting Rajiv Gandhi Salai and Indira Nagar recently gave way, yes, literally so.

That was a very useful link between the two sides of the Buckingham Canal. To my knowledge, it was used only by pedestrians and two wheelers.  Iron poles were there at the entry point of the bridge and they preventedfour wheelers from using this thirty year old bridge. Obviously, the iron poles were removed recently and it was a huge lorry, laden with eight thousand bricks that caused the collapse of the bridge.

The hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn.

Who can ever forget the great M K Thyagaraja Bhagavathar, the great singer and stage and screen actor?

It was fifty years back – on November 1, 1959 – that he died at the age of fifty at the General Hospital in Chennai. He dominated the Tamil film world for over ten years. There was no concept of a ‘super star’ at that time. But he was a matinee idol.  Haridas ran for two full yearsin Chennai while Ambikapathy and Chintamani, for one year each.

His songs are timeless.

Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.

Food service retailer McDonald has opened an outlet in Ampa Skywalk mall in Chennai. This is McDonald's third in the city. It is spread across 3,000 sq ft and has a seating capacity of 150.  Skywalk Mall, Ampa Housing and Development Pvt Ltd has leased the property to McDonald's for 21 years.

Incidentally, McDonald plans to open 45 outlets in the Southern states over the next three years.  It has 25 outlets in the country.  With the launch of new outlets in the four southern states, it would have close to 70 outlets in the next three years.  In addition, the company was also planning to promote "Drive Through" concepts in some outlets enabling customers to have their food sitting inside their car.

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.
Work on the memorial for trinity of Tamil Music - Arunachalakavirayar, Marimuthapillai and Muthuthandavar at Sirkazhi would be completed within nine months.  The Government had procured 44 cents of land for constructing the memorial.


I am reminded of what Henry Vaughan wrote: ‘They are all gone into the world of light,/And I alone sit lingering here;/ Their very memory is fair and bright, /And my sad thoughts doth clear.

Recently read: "Dull November brings the blast,

Then the leaves are whirling fast."

-  Sara Coleridge      gourtesy;ramakrishnan