In me, a new gaze finds a new Chennai

When I inquire it for the Madras I grew up in, Chennai foregrounds softy cones melt-dripping bright-white into formation sand; tamarinds stone-struck disconnected branches and cracked open, tang connected tongue; flute-song wafting connected oversea breeze, lullabies drifting into tuition classrooms; school-bus daydreaming past peepal, past palm.

In my twenties, aft years of moving and studying connected different shores, I came backmost to Chennai recently funny astir collectivities, politics, power. Chennai offers, then, Periyar Thidal, wherever chromatic slabs nether banyans announce, “There is nary god” — ineffable blasphemy serenely nestled successful the leafy bosom of a temple town. It offers maine protests astatine Valluvar Kottam — memorial to a writer activistic — wherever hundreds gather, banners proclaiming: “Stop bull-dozing democracy” and “No spot for hate.”

Then, successful a hard psyche season, erstwhile I inquire Chennai for a healing quiet, it lays, successful my path, Tholkappia Poonga — an estuary surrounded by mangrove green, frequented by lone a fistful of walkers and lush with different life. I spell each day. I learn, there, words similar “cormorant” and “egret” and “wagtail”; larn to locomotion attentively to spare domino roaches, reddish bugs and beetles. I learn, from thoughtful rock-slab signage, however effortfully restored and conserved that old, fragile ecosystem is.

One evening, different walker pauses to ask: “Have you heard? They’re going to enactment factual everywhere. They’re going to chopped down the trees.” Heart-sink. A week later, I’m successful the Chennai River Restoration Trust office, crossed from an irritated bureaucrat telling maine that they would not concretise the paths, they would not chopped the trees. But of course: Concrete has been carried in, trees cut, the estuary closed for renovations for the past year. In me, a caller regard finds a caller Chennai: this is, supra each else, a waterscape successful relentless dialog with urbanity’s impulse to conquer, to want.

In Odiyur, a lagoon resists a highway. In Kattupalli, a seashore resists a megaport. In Ennore, a stream and a creek basal wherever industries and powerfulness plants spill poison upon poison. Urbanity wins tiny battles. In yearly floods and relentless erosion, h2o has its say. The casualties, regardless, are the same: Vulnerable communities, displaced oregon enactment retired of work; marine and avian and insect life, rendered breathless, habitat-less; a metropolis astatine large, flood-prone, conscience heavy.

I inquire Chennai: Is it imaginable astatine all? For quality impulses to coexist with the remainder of life? It offers, a abbreviated thrust away, Vedanthangal, wherever for centuries husbandman people person protected the waterbirds, grateful for their fertilising guano. It suggests a peek astatine the Theosophical Great Banyan, kept effortfully harmless and live for hundreds of years, allowed an acre of its own. I deliberation excessively of the frangipanis and copperpods I climbed arsenic a child, the gulmohar buds we wore arsenic nail paint, the rosary pea seeds we collected similar gems. Our truest impulse, Chennai memories punctual me, is to playmate and co-create with non-humanness. Someday, we’ll remember.

In my contiguous Chennai, I portion 2 coffees dilatory crossed the eating array from my spouse and we chitchat, precocious into the morning, astir essays we’ve some work successful quiet. It’s a clear-skied Sunday. We realise we privation to beryllium outside. We speech implicit a prawn curry luncheon astir wherever to go. Kotturpuram Urban Forest, to spot the flying foxes successful the clump of fig trees? Or Croc Bank, to the gharials and muggers and komodos? Or Pallikaranai oregon Sholinganallur oregon Broken Bridge, to conscionable the storks and pelicans and herons and terns? We settee connected a fashionable formation cafe — a 3rd java would beryllium bully — but erstwhile we get there, the euphony is excessively large to perceive the oversea truthful we acceptable disconnected shore-walking instead.

We’re connected a spot of Panaiyur Beach I haven’t seen before, successful 16 years here. Egrets are picking astatine food drying connected sheets. Crows are diving for clams. Barnacles person made homes of abandoned chappals, bottles, driftwood. Couples canoodle, toddlers pursuit waves, ice-cream and balloon and foodstuff vendors regard sea-ward. This is familiar, gorgeous stuff. This is home. Then, by the tide line, we spot an Olive Ridley oversea turtle, ammunition dented by trawler. Then another, eyes bulged unfastened from trawl-net suffocation. Reflected successful those eyes, I spot its Chennai for the archetypal time: Treacherous, drowning, blue.

Jha is an essayist funny successful the authorities of the everyday