Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Loss of a heritage and a link with a cosmopolitan past

This new found drive of the Worshipful Hon'ble Mayor of the Corporation of Chennai to rename everything English is no more unfortunate than a bad carpenter blaming the tools for as foretold: What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet, perhaps Shakespeare knew about our city beforehand! How dry a joke I bet and yet not to digress I trust the primary task of a Civic Corporation is to provide adequate infrastructure in the form of good motorable roads, pavements and avenue trees for shade, urban waste management and well lit roads. Unfortunately the Corporation headed by the Hon'ble Mayor has failed miserably in this task save for the well lit roads of Chennai (kudos to him for this). But Does this city have decent motorable roads in the main business district, perhaps the Worshipful Hon'ble Mayor might retard Do we have a business district at all? The roads in and around Egmore, Nugambakkam and Mount Road present a pitiable and shameful sight for most roads are full of patch works right from Casa Major Road, Pantheon Road, Montieth Road, Marshalls Road, Commander-in-Chief Road, College Road, Nungambakkam High Road, with little or no avenue trees or even a decent pavement for pedestrians to walk along. And even if ever one can spot a road with a smooth black top in comes the veritable and unsurmountable manhole covers that are way above the road (thanks to the little kindness of my car's suspensions, am still fine despite the bumpty bumps!) and that reminds me that nothing can stave of the drains of the black hole!! Nevertheless we the commons with our traffic chaos chug along. Come what may the denizens of Chennai have moved on taking with them all the insults of the Worshipful Hon'ble Mayor and his dysfunctional and callous Councillors and a confused civic Corporation who care little for the comforts nay basic necessities of the commons therein and yet claim to champion their cause for no valid reason. What a bunch jokers? Would not be surprised if H.E. Lord Ripon would turn in his grave when he gets to know that a bunch of jokers (our noble councillors) rule the roost and decide the fate of the names of the roads and addresses of perhaps 9 million denizens sitting in the air-conditioned comfort of a building chosen to deify His Excellency and yet these jokers know not what they were elected for and sprightly with populism wish to mislead the fools of a city into a chasm of relative ignorance and this seems to be the objective of our noble coucillors who pride themselves as the oldest civic corporation in Asia and champion our cause, what a shame!!!
When will our councillors understand what they were elected for? When will cheap populism stop? Don't they ever understand that the very cosmopolitan fabric of a city nay a big village that they have reduced this once great garden city into has been torn away in the name of Tamilisation. Madras as it used be was the hub of whole of South India, a melting pot of the Telugu's, the Tamils, the Malayalees, Coorgese and the Canarese, and thereon the Marwaris, the Gujaratis, and many others and today where is that cosmopolitan culture, slaughtered and buried once and for all and here are these fools wanting to talk about a world class city, a financial capital, an industrial and service hub what rot! Who are these men trying to fool around with. Let these elected coucillors of ours get back to the streets and clean them up, cement the pavements, provide decent motorable roads, with no patches, bumps and pavements with avenue trees that can allow one take a tireless decent walk alongside the roads of the city. If this they do then our Worshipful Hon'ble Mayor deserves respect or else perhaps let me shed using Worshipful Hon'ble, perhaps he is just another Mr. Mayor assisted ably with a bunch of jokers nay our esteemed councillors!!