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Vol. XXVI No. 10, September 1-16, 2016
Archives: Vol. XXVI No. 10, September 1-16, 2016
Does Marina really need a sailing academy?
(By The Editor)
It appears that the threats to our city’s beloved beach will never cease. The State Government recently made an announcement that a sailing academy at a cost of Rs 7 crore, will come up at the Marina Beach, ostensibly to help create an environment where “world-class facilities for water sports” can exist. The question is, given that the eastern face of our State is one long coastline, can this facility not be put up elsewhere?
Our beach grew to its present size thanks to the construction of the harbour in the 1880s. And it must be admitted that threats to it have also grown since then. In the early 1900s, there was a plan to build a railway on it. In the 1980s there was thought of having the MRTS cross it. A decade or two later there were plans to construct condominiums for the affluent on the waterfront and sometime later a Union Cabinet Minister announced that a commemorative tower would be built there. Fortunately, all these plans came to nought, but it appears that the flow of ideas has not yet ceased. Clearly, the sight of such a vast open space makes people in power come up with schemes aplenty.
The latest in the series is this idea of a sailing academy. The waterfront is already getting congested. Beach Road, which was at one time a vast and empty stretch, is getting increasingly clogged with vehicles. In the summer months, the Police are forced to declare as one-way various stretches of this thoroughfare in order to deal with the influx of visitors. There is a terrible service road that all vehicles bound for San Thome are forced to take, morning and evening. This is a thoroughfare that is most likely in violation of coastal regulation zone (CRZ) rules, for it runs close to the sea. The fishing hamlets that have been here for centuries have already complained several times about it but to no avail. Now the original residents of the area will have to put up with the sailing academy as well. Will it not add to the congestion already prevailing here?
Chennai already has two institutions dedicated to sailing. The Royal Madras Yacht Club is more than a century old and thriving. Younger, and doing well too, is the Tamil Nadu Sailing Association (TNSA). The latter has in fact petitioned the Central Government for better facilities in the harbour. Why cannot the State Government channel its funds through these organisations? Would it not be better to strengthen existing facilities rather than set up what could become a rival entity?
Lastly, has everybody forgotten the havoc wreaked by the tsunami just around 12 years ago? The beach was one of the worst affected in Chennai city and if casualties and loss of life were kept to a minimum it was only because there were no permanent structures in the vicinity.With a sailing academy coming up here, are we not throwing open possibilities of a disaster on a larger scale?
Do we deserve civic improvement?
(By a Special Correspondent)
Sadly, the answer is NO. We have for long blamed our city’s Corporation and other civic agencies for their ineptitude in keeping our city shipshape. We have rested content after complaining about the garbage, the poor roads and the lack of pavements. But, when the authorities begin improving some of the facilities, we respond by rampant vandalism. Does this in any way become the residents of what is said to be the cultural capital of India?
Take for instance the boards bearing street names. We have had this initiative being implemented for the past two years. All of a sudden, long forgotten streets began to come to life, neighbourhoods regained an identity, and finding locations became that much easier. The boards were mounted on elegant metal frames with the names pasted on them using adhesive sheets, thereby ensuring that when errors were pointed out, correction was swift. The sheets were luminescent and so visibility at night was also easy.
Madras – you are home
by Tulsi Badrinath
Some of the work displayed (above and below) at the splendid ChennaiWeekend Artists’ exhibition during Madras Week.
Madras Week Nostalgia
In Madras, or Chennai, we are simultaneously inhabitants of a neighbourhood with its shrines and local lore as we are to the larger idea of the city.
On August 22nd, 377 years ago, a local chieftain displaying customary hospitality to a guest granted a strip of sandy land to Francis Day of the East India Company.Day was looking for a place to set up a factory and source cheap cotton cloth.That land, comprising a few fishing villages on the east coast of India, secured by Fort St. George and named Madras, became the nucleus of a sprawling nine-million strong metropolis that keeps expanding. The gracious act by chieftain Venkatadri Nayak was the proverbial inch which the East India Company increased to a mile, five villages and then entire kingdoms spreading over the Indian subcontinent.
Wood Apples on Cathedral Road
by Jayanthi Gopal
More Madras Week Nostalgia
It was 1960. Amidst the chirping of birds and screeching of crows, Sister Thanga Mary was teaching multiplication tables to a restless and disinterested bunch of girls of Class 2 at St. Ebba’s School for Girls in Mylapore.
Riding the surf of Madras
‘Masoola boats’.
Excerpted from Madras, Mysore and the South of India: A personal narrative of ‘A Mission to those Countries’ by Elijah Hoole, published in London by Longman, Brown in 1829.
