Which place

Now I wish I had paid more attention to where I was, or had at least made some note about this picture when I had taken it a few days ago. Was too excited about getting back to Chennai that I was clicking pictures at random through the aircraft window.

Most of those are without any indication of what it was that I was drawn to when I took those pictures. On this one, however, the river entering the sea seems to be the main reason. I don't think it is the Adayar Estuary, or the mouth of the Cooum. It does not seem to be the Pulicat lake, either.

Now that I've set you off on a track - red herring or otherwise - can you give me some idea of what we are seeing in this picture? I have no clue!

Unexpected boating

If you happen to talk about old Madras to someone who was around during the 1960s and 1970s, they would most probably have a story to tell about how they went boating in the Cooum in those days. Heck, I would spin a tale too, about how I used to see the boathouses along the river, with boats tied up, waiting for a good bunch of people to gather before being taken out for a spin. But somehow, I haven't had, or heard, of any boats on the Adyar river.

It has been a very long time since a boat has been seen on any of Chennai's waterways. Looking out from one of the office buildings in MRC Nagar, overlooking the northward curve of the Adyar river, I noticed what seemed to be a right regular ferry service. On the eastern bank, a spit of land almost fords the river. But it still leaves the river too broad (and likely too deep) to walk across, while also being too narrow to contemplate a kind of permanent connecting structure.

The ferry service - more like a skiff, with a couple of planks thrown together and supported by a crossbeam - can handle only 2 or 3 passengers at a time. But hey, the crossing can be done in less than a minute, and so there not going to be many complaints from those waiting!

Ghostly view

A few days ago, I had a chance to go to one of the buildings at MRC Nagar, right on the beach. The view of the Bay of Bengal was so amazing that not much conversation happened. Couldn't get away without taking a few pictures.

This one shows the mouth of the Adyar as it meets the Bay of Bengal. If you look closely, you can see the 'broken bridge', jutting out from the Besant Nagar shore of the estuary, hopping a bit into the water and then giving up the attempt to get to the MRC Nagar / Foreshore estate side. 

You may remember having seen this broken bridge on this blog earlier. In the time since that post, I have not been able to get any more information on what this bridge was all about. But since then, the legend about the broken bridge being one of the most haunted spots of Chennai has gained ground; if only it were true, this window will have a ring-side view of the hauntings!

Photo of the year

For a couple of generations to come, 2015 in Chennai will be remembered as the year of the floods. In November 2015, rainfall in Chennai was a shade under 105 cm (42 inches); it narrowly failed to beat the record of 109 cm set in November 1918. But it was enough to set up a wet December; the first two days of the month brought 34.5 cm of rain. To find a similar deluge, you'd have to go back to 1901. On those two days, the city was brought to its knees, officially being declared a disaster zone on the evening of December 2. 

This picture is from 3rd December, after the flood waters had been receding from this street through the day. A broken crate stuck in the middle of the road warns people of an open manhole at that spot. This was one of the less-affected areas of the city. In many of Chennai's suburbs, the waters remain, not finding a way to go out.

So, the city looks forward to 2016 being a 'normal' year. Sunshine for 350 days, and sixteen days of rain being spread out from October to December, helping us forget the wet end to 2015. So, a very happy New Year to everyone - may 2016 give of its best to all of us, getting us closer to our dreams!

Daily cleaning

Every day, the tide comes in. And every day, the tide goes out. Each flow of the tide moves a lot of sand and silt. The motion of the sea waters off the Chennai coastline causes the sand to gather along the Marina, having been pulled away from further north. 

Of course it is a problem if the sand blocks up the mouth of the Cooum. There is a permanent effort to keep the sandbars away from the path of the river waters. A couple of dozers and a backhoe-loader-digger are stationed at the northern end of the Marina beach to ensure they carry out the clearing operations in time.

They can't stay there when the tide comes in. Every evening, like some beasts from an industrial age, they go away to roost, moving up above the tide line and then returning to their foraging grounds in the morning!

Nearer river

A city needs rivers to survive and to thrive, and today's Chennai has the Adyar, the Cooum, the Otteri nullah and the Buckingham Canal. The last named is a man-made creation, but more of that elsewhere. In 1639, when Francis Day and his boss Andrew Cogan were negotiating with the Nayak of Poonamallee for a lease-hold on the beach, they used the Cooum as the southern boundary of the area they wanted. On the east, the Bay of Bengal limited their territory. The northern end was not so well defined - there probably was an existing settlement which couldn't be encroached upon. To the west, there was a river, one that is not often remembered today.

The River Elambore was closer to the 'factory' established by the British East India Company. But over the years, it has lost its identity and, in the early 19th century, it became a part of the Buckingham Canal - and in today's maps, it is described as a loop of the Cooum rather than a river by itself.

This picture was taken along the Flagstaff Road, and it shows the river flowing in from the west, forming the northern border of the Island Grounds.

Second bridge

In the earliest days of the city of Madras - essentially the Fort St George - the main exit from the city would probably have been through the Walajah gate, heading out west to the seat of the Nayaks at  Poonamallee. There would have been less reason to go south; the twin rivers in that direction would have made it even less attractive. But by the early 18th century, the journey to the Mount was a reason for the residents of the Fort to cross two rivers. Bridges were required. The Elambore River was probably the easier to ford; there is a record from 1714 about a "Water-Gate Bridge" between the Fort and the Island. The second bridge, over the Cooum took another two years to be built.

Called the Triplicane Bridge, it appears to have been a rather ill-fated bridge. In 1721, it was damaged by floods. Though it was repaired, repeated floods brought it down. As if nature wasn't enough, la Bourdonnais also brought it down. Between man and nature, the bridge kept falling down and rising up, until the new century came up. In 1805, a new bridge was built. The earlier one(s) never had any formal name(s) - Triplicane Bridge and Island Bridge were variously used, with startling originality. 

The same originality continued into the new century, with the new bridge. Or maybe it was just superstition or sentimentality, for the bridge was named after the patron saint of England. Not just that. It was called the New St George's Bridge, for, in the intervening period, the Water-Gate Bridge had been replaced by St George's Bridge about fifty years earlier. That name continued to be in use for well over a hundred and fifty years. It was only in the late 70s that it was renamed after EVK Ramasamy Naicker, and it is by his name that it continues to be known today - Periyar Bridge!

River and sea

That's another view of the Adyar river going out into the Bay of Bengal. You can see the green expanse of the Theosophical Society on the south bank, and with a bit of imagination, the 'broken bridge' across the mouth of the river.

That spit of land in the middle of the estuary has a few office buildings, a hotel, an apartment complex, and a building that starred in Mission Impossible:4. Can you spot it?

No prizes for guessing where I am! 

Bridge the gap

Once, about a dozen years ago, this bridge made the list of spookiest places in Chennai. Surely you would be spooked too, if you suddenly came upon a bit of concrete stretched over 3 pillars. It was not built in that manner, but for several - maybe 25 or more - years now, it has remained that way, after the original construction was washed away.

The bridge was intended to help fisherfolk have a short-cut between the fishing villages of Srinivasapuram to the north and Olcottkuppam to the south. It is a narrow path, barely enough to take a stout two-wheeler in any one direction at a time. Maybe that was more than enough in the late '60s. 

But then again, maybe it was not. When the bridge was washed away, circa 1977, there was no effort made to replace it. The fisherfolk also did not raise a demand for it, I guess, for it is difficult to imagine such a demand being ignored for so long. These days it remains a favourite spot to watch the sunrise, a quiet place to sit and chat of an evening and most of all, a gap-tooth in the Adyar estuary as the river goes out to the Bay of Bengal!

Mouth of a river

You may have seen the mouth of the Cooum earlier and remember that as a fairly straight-forward affair. The river runs in through the city and empties out into the Bay of Bengal near the northern end of the Marina Beach. On the other hand, the Adayar river splits off into the Adayar Creek, a marshland ecosystem, before merging with the sea. The mouth of the river is therefore less well defined as that of the Cooum and for that reason, it is all the more interesting. 

This view from the Government Music College shows a part of the mouth - the river Adayar appears to narrow down a bit as it passes into the Bay in the distance!

Poignant music

That one turret reminds you this was once called a castle. James Brodie, an employee of the East India Company, was given a grant of 11 acres along the northern bank of the Adyar river. A quick - and not very authoritative - check of Brodie genealogy takes you back to 1262, starting with a MacBeth, Thane of Dykec. James probably thought of re-creating the legends of his clan and so named his house Brodie Castle.

But he invested it more with the tragedy of MacBeth than the grandeur he intended. James Brodie stayed in the castle for a very short time. There was some misunderstanding with the Company over his private trading activities and he fell on hard times. The Castle was let out to the Company administrators. A boating accident (or was it suicide?) in 1801-2 took Brodie's life. Soon after, the house was bought by the Arbuthnots, who let it out to other prominent citizens of Madras. 

The ill-luck stuck on. 1810 - Rev. Edward Vaughan moved in and lost his wife; 1866 - James McIvor of the Bank of Madras lost his family in a boating accident on the Adyar; 1906 - the Arbuthnots had to sell Brodie Castle after they went bankrupt. 1943 - the river rose into the house and soaked Sir Alfred Henry Lionel Leach, Chief Justice of the Madras High Court. In 1952, Kumaraswami Raja, who was occupying Brodie Castle, suffered a shock electoral defeat in his pocket borough of Srivilliputhur. 

Since 1956, the property has been in the hands of the government, as the Government College of Music, Chennai. Even though it has been renamed Thendral, the earlier name is retained in the eastern-most stretch of RK Mutt Road! 

The S-bend

Okay, so it is not really the ‘S’ bend. It would have been nice to get the Adayar river to heed the conventions of the Roman script, but the river has its own mind.

Few history textbooks of record it, but the Battle of Adayar was also one of the arms in the S-bend of the city’s history. When the French turned the British out of Fort St George, the Nawab of Carnatic thought he could do the same to the French. Knowing that the French army was only around 2,000, mostly native soldiers, the Nawab thought they would be no match for his force of over 10,000. He did not realize that the spahis (or siphais, or sepoys), trained by the French, fought to a different drummer than that of his force. The Nawab was crushed; European training and discipline trumped native daring and courage. The battle thus finalized a template that would be used by the British to hold the country together for a couple of centuries after that.

There is a different march on the river these days. A decade ago, a picture like this would have shown very few buildings. One hopes they remain the only constructions even in the years to come!

The final bend

That's what it is, the River Cooum turing due east as it heads out to the Bay of Bengal, marking the end of its 65-km run. During the past few days, there has been some renewed interest in the project to beautify Cooum, what with the Deputy Chief Minister reiterating the government's committment to not only beautify, but also restore the river to its glory days.

In those glory days, boating was quite common on the Cooum. Although there have been no boats for quite a long while now, skeletons of the boat houses are still around - you can see one on the right, just over the wall. It is rather surprising to see them standing even today!

The house by the river

By some quirk of history, the Southern Command of the Indian Army is headquartered at Pune, in Maharashtra. Apart from the four southern states, Maharashtra, Goa and Gujarat (!!) also come under the Southern Command. It is not only the largest Command geographically, but also the 'senior-most'; the latter arising from the fact that Surat (in Gujarat), the site of the East India Company's first 'factory' in India, falls under this Command.

The two Area Headquarters under the Southern Command are at Mumbai and Chennai. Needless to say, the one at Chennai covers the four southern states - in army shorthand, it is ATNK & K Area. The ranking officer becomes the General Officer Commanding in Chief for the Area HQ. Of course, the GOC-in-C has a very nicely appointed house to live in; across the road is a sign that could well have become gibberish to the civilian had they insisted on putting in the 'GOC-in-C' bit also - it would have read "ATNK & K Area GOC-in-C, Flagstaff House"

That the Flagstaff House is on the banks of the Cooum is certainly a disadvantage, but one that can easily be borne by Maj. Gen. EJ Kochekkan, the current occupant. A lifelong armyman, he's certainly not going to be put off, no matter how many mosquitoes try to raid his residence!


i

Riverside park

This is one of the grand ideas of Chennai that has been shaping up for a while. Billed as the first ever eco-tourism project in the state, the core of the idea is to restore the ecological balance of the Adayar creek and estuary area. The river itself has been considerably polluted; in many places, unchecked growth of slums has taken over the river's course, choking it still further. The Adyar Poonga hopes to showcase the potential of the river as a dynamic ecosystem, at least in the 'last mile' of its course.

While that may not be technically correct - the Poonga will be fed by a canal that runs off from the river just where Adyar joins the sea (does that make it a creek?) and will therefore be impacted by the coastal tides, too. In any case, once it is done, the Poonga will have restored this diverse ecosystem, which will in turn motivate similar projects along the Adayar's course, or along other rivers. But the scope of the Poonga is vast, by the standards of conservation projects in Chennai; the first phase, which is the public face of the Poonga, expected to be completed by December 2010, will cover about 58 acres, which is roughly a sixth of the 358 acres around the creek/estuary to be covered under the Ecological Restoration Programme.

For now, all you can see is some very basic information on the flora and fauna of the region; at this time of the year, there are quite a few migratory waterbirds that are nesting on an island just inside. With an opening time of 10 am, the Poonga's promise of visiting a forest and getting back to Chennai by breakfast time seems a tad out of reach just yet!

Boating on the river

Close to its source, it is associated with godliness; two temples to Lord Shiva, going back to the 10th century CE, were built to take advantage of the clear waters of this river. From there the river travels about 65 km in its search for the sea and has had the ill-luck of choosing a path that takes it through the city of Chennai. Entering the city close to Koyambedu, the Cooum which until then followed a reasonably straight course, twists and bends, almost trying to go out of the city; the city goes with it, though - Arumbakkam, Anna Nagar, Aminjikarai, Nungambakkam, Chetpet, Egmore, Chindadripet, Park Town - all of them coming up along the Cooum's course for various reasons.

Until about 25-30 years ago, Cooum was pleasant; the tourism department maintained boat houses at various points along the river and they were actually used. Even then, some warning noises were being made. A study in 1975 showed that the number of fish species in the river had dropped to less than half, from 49 in the early fifties, to 21. But nobody cared and the city of Madras continued to pour its filth, sewage and industrial effluents into the Cooum, believing she'd be able to bear all of it and more. Over the past decades, she has given up and is today a stagnant cesspool, an embarrassing reminder of the Chennai-ite's unconcern and a potential health-hazard to anyone who ventures too close to it.

There is hope, however. If you want your voice to be heard in support of reviving the Cooum, please speak up at 'Cooum Subbasin Restoration & Management'; this website is expected to provide updates on the progress of the latest World Bank funded 'IAMWARM' project, specific to the revival of the Cooum. I hope that we will once again see the boat house in this photo filled with people, very soon!