Five stars of Chennai

Chennai: Though Chennai endured a calamitous end to 2015, courtesy the unprecedented flooding, the situation also brought forth the deep lying Chennaiites’ volunteerism.

It did not matter that there was chest-deep water or that poisonous reptiles were swimming along, the needy were rescued and fed. But defiance in the face of odds is not something new for the city.

Maduravoyal residents
In July this year, Maduravoyal residents federation joined hands with lorry owners’ association to fight to fill potholes on EVR Periyar Salai, a national highway. Tired of playing the waiting game over several years and admittedly deciding that no action would come through, the residents took it upon themselves to initiate action in the interest of society.

“It is one of the key roads that connects two southern states. Despite it being a toll road, it is in an abject condition and lorry owners have the most to lose because traffic is always slow moving,” said S. Yuvaraj of the lorry owners association.

Although they were disrupted by police when attempting to lay the road, widespread publicity of their action pushed the state highways department to do   patchwork on the damaged portions. “After the rain, the patchwork has been washed away and we are back to square one,” lamented B. Varadarajan, president of the residents’ federation. But if the highways stall yet again, Yuvaraj warns that residents will once again do it for themselves in the New Year.

Residents of Villivakkam Rajaji Nagar
Leading from the front is not an unusual thing to do for seniors among us. Often it becomes the bounden duty of grandparents to instill good ideals in the minds of the younger generation.

Seniors of Rajaji Nagar are no different. Once a month, they gather on the streets armed with brooms, ready to do a Swachh Bharat. Villivakkam, which is also one of the worst hit localities during the recent flood, is on the fast lane to recovery thanks to such efforts.

“We want residents in our neighbourhood to live in a cleaner environment and these initiatives are our small contribution towards that objective,” explains A.V. Surendiran, chairman of the welfare association.

The broom-wielding seniors have even managed to hook the younger lot’s attention, most of them school students, who too have now stepped up their game and help the elders out.

Meenakshi Ramachandran, home-maker and garbage segregator
Meenakshi, who is a popular figure in Exnora circles, has been segregating garbage for the past decade. Comparatively, Chennai corporation in the last 10 years has done nothing more than merely announcing its intentions to start garbage segregation on half-a-dozen occasions.

The 67-year-old does not waste any of her kitchen refuse. The result is that she is able to maintain a decent garden within the boundary walls of her home. “Since it is only me and my husband, we are able to generate around one kg of manure from the kitchen waste every 45 days or so,” she says with a smile.

She recollects how it has been a tough task trying to get either the corporation or her neighbourhood on an equal footing. “The corporation has no land to allow us a few good willing citizens to set up a compost yard and my neighbours don’t have the time to put waste in different bins,” she says. .

“Segregation of garbage can be achieved only if we teach the next generation on its importance, Meenakshi believes. Only if from childhood the practice is imbibed, will it then carry over into one’s adulthood,” she points out.

Chitlapakkam Rising
This group’s rise in popularity during 2015 is well-documented. They have a prominent presence on the social networking site, Facebook and the numbers have swelled since the first time they let their hands do the talking.

Chitlapakkam Rising was formed by a group of friends, most of whom are residents of this southern suburb near Tambaram, when the sight of wall posters defacing the city’s infrastructure became unbearable. The group was inspired by The Ugly Indian, a Bengaluru-based group with similar ideals.

Despite their work of art reflecting off the walls of the Pallavaram flyover among other places, the defacing continues. But they are not the ones to give up. “We cannot expect change to happen all of a sudden. We will continue to tear down posters and re-paint the walls,” explains U. Udaya Kumar, one of the founding members.

In fact, their contribution caught the attention of Pallavaram municipality so much so that now a sanitary officer does night rounds to check whether any of their artwork is being defaced. So, what’s next? “We wish to convert Chitlapakkam into a plastic-free area,” Udaya signed off.

Park it like Krishnapuram residents

When Krishnapuram residents raised close to Rs 7 lakh back in 2008, helped by a generous donation from one of the industrial majors in Ambattur, it was not to conduct a temple festival or construct a welfare association building. They chose to develop an empty plot belonging to the erstwhile Ambattur municipality, which was not of much use anyway, into a park.

Nearly seven years later, the park now serves as an attraction due to its proximity to MTH Road and has playing equipment for children and wide open space for elders to relax and work out. All of it in the middle of a burgeoning and bursting-at-its-seams Ambattur area.

But after the park came up, the residents continued to pool money on a monthly basis by way of membership fee from the nearly 1,500 families that live here, to pay for its maintenance and security because the municipality could neither afford nor care. Only recently, after the Corporation of Chennai expanded its limits,  residents had to reluctantly hand over the maintenance over to the local body.

“So far so good,” is how a former residents association president Seshadrinathan describes the Corporation’s maintenance work. “But as they say, there is always scope for improvement,” he adds.

 

 

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