Tiffin at Sukha Niwas in Luz.
And I was on my way to the release of ‘Lockdown Journal Chennai’, the unique book of stories, essays and notes written by Chennaites during the recent pandemic years. The hawker stalls on the pavement are the poor man’s lifestyle shopping destination. Fascinating.
It is here that I spotted two youths, locking a cycle. At the head of the street that leads to Pallakumanyam Nagar, a sprawling colony developed decades ago by the TN Slum Clearance Board. The boys wore the Chennai School uniform. And at 6 p.m., I was wondering what they were doing in this place. They had come to shop for footwear.
We conversed.
They were 10th Std. students at the school in Alwarpet and the special classes to prepare for the public exam had just got over. We conversed freely. Since I knew a bit about the school and the teachers there, the leads for the chat flowed nicely.
Do you guys play in school? I asked.
They said a majority of their classmates played football, that the school had only a worn-out basketball court and a volleyball court. They told me the PT master was a bored man. And that they and their friends played as a football team at the Chennai Corporation playground on St. Mary’s Road.
Who decides how the city’s civic body must plan and execute ‘extra’ facilities for a school, or for your Ward, or for your colony? Rarely the people for whom it is meant for.
Later that evening, after the release of ‘Lockdown Journal Chennai’ at the vintage Ranade Library in Luz, I spotted this social media post on the page of Greater Chennai Corporation.
It was a post on a modern, multipurpose ground laid for a Chennai School in MGR Nagar. Students can play volleyball, basketball or kabbadi here. And I thought to myself - have GCC officials chatted with students of the Alwarpet school, sought their ideas and planned sports facilities they want today?
Our newspaper has covered the city’s civic body down-top.
That is, reported on Ward and Zone level conversations, plans and projects. This is the broad style of how things work - councillors meet and present their local issues at the zonal level: then officers weave in key projects that GCC Headquarters wants implemented now, and they nod for minor pleas that keep councillors half-pleased.
Grassroot democracy has been stilted in our city.
A Ward has ten sabhas. Each sabha must chose a member, preferably a representative of the area. This process has been cannibalised in Wards where politicians have a say: civic-minded people are sidelined. When are we going to have area meetings to discuss local issues?
How will our councillor get to know that his / her area needs a football field for its youths and not flower beds under the flyover this summer?
How will GCC officials be told that a recently-relaid playground that minister Udayanidhi Stalin inaugurated is a half-baked, hurried job?
<< The photo featured here is of girls who are coached privately on a ground by the Marina, owned by TN Housing Board.
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