Saturday, December 22, 2012

Shook up

These arches, at the southern entrance to Chennai's first planned locality, came up almost twenty years after the locality itself did. Having re-named Nadukkarai as "Anna Nagar", in a bid to attract folks to the place, it was kind of odd that the locality did not have anything specific to remember CN Annadurai by. 

That was fixed in 1984-85. Annadurai was born in 1909, so 1984 was the celebration of his platinum jubilee year. The man himself had passed away in 1969; yet, there was a lot of fanfare around him. These arches were built as a part of the platinum jubilee celebrations. 

A couple of months ago, these were to be brought down - at least temporarily, so as to clear the space for construction of a flyover on Poonamallee High Road. Demolition began towards the end of August. However, a week went buy without much progress in bringing down the structure. And then, on September 5,  the demolition of of these arches was brought to a halt by the Chief Minister! 




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