Transformation of a cute little colony!

On my first official visit to Chennai in 1967, I had to visit Sastri Nagar in Adyar, responding to a dinner invitation from the Branch Manager of my company. I remember that we had to cross a narrow one way iron bridge over the Adyar river connecting Gandhi Nagar and the areas beyond with the city. A traffic constable was stationed to allow vehicles from either side to go over the bridge alternately. My Branch Manager’s house was one of the dozen independent houses in the area, with plenty of open space all around. I was told that during the rainy season the entire area would be flooded and Sastri Nagar would look like a lake dotted with houses! I never imagined that within seven years I would move to Chennai and settle down in Sastri Nagar, a beautiful little colony then with lovely houses built by retired bureaucrats, upcoming businessmen and a few professionals. By the time I moved to Sastri Nagar, the area had seen some development, with more independent houses. Besant Nagar, lying between Sastri Nagar and the beautiful Elliots beach , was fast developing, with a complex of Housing Board flats serving different stratas of society. For all our daily necessities we had to go to Besant Nagar or walk up to Lattice Bridge Road (LB Road). Laxmi Sagar, the Udupi Restaurant dishing out delicious South Indian snacks, was the only restaurant serving the entire area and it was located (and continues to exist) diagonally opposite Adyar Telephone Exchange. Today, Adyar has a choice of multi-cuisine restaurants offering Indian, Chinese, Italian, Korean, Japanese and Continental flavours You can get every thing- from `pin to elephant`- in Adyar today. In Sastri Nagar, the streets are not sequentially numbered; Eighth Cross St. becomes 5th Cross St., 14th Cross St. merges with 13th Cross St. and the other way around. 7th Cross St. runs parallel to 12th Cross which in turn runs parallel to 8th Cross St. 11th Cross St. cuts across all these streets! Confusing? Imagine the plight of a first time visitor to Sastri Nagar trying to locate an address without proper directions. He will be totally lost in the maze of ‘cross streets’. In the last two decades, greedy builders have managed to tempt the owners of the beautiful houses to go in for joint development of plots, with the result that Sastri Nagar has become a concrete jungle. Many of the streets are witnessing the appearances of commercial ventures in a primarily residential area, transforming the profile of the locality. My home, which is one of the few independent homes surviving, was a peaceful place tucked inside a small lane facing the colony’s only Corporation playground. Today, we are surrounded by multi-storied apartments on three sides leading to a feeling of suffocation. I will, however, not think of leaving Sastri Nagar because of its strategic location. Just a ten-minute walk from my home to the lovely Elliot’s Beach where I can watch the sun rise and breath fresh air every morning. It is another matter that I go for a walk in my car! This article appeared in Adyar Times issue dt.22-28 August,2020