With its smooth walkway and safety railings, the bridge across the Adyar estuary was a perfect stage for Rickshawkaran (1971), in which MGR and Manjula to dance to ‘ Kadaloram Vaangiya Kaatru’ . Today, the crew of Thedinen (with Sahir and Lakshmi Nair) is shooting below. In the intervening years, portions of the bridge have fallen apart, leaving a yawning gap between its ends. This filmy landmark is now the broken bridge. But the estuary, says the crew, is unbeatable as a backdrop, more beautiful than in MGR’s time — thanks to the sandbars.
For me, it’s love at first twilight sight. “Best place,” says Mythili, the Maya-Rupa beauty parlour boss celebrating her birthday standing on the bridge, and the young men sitting on what is left of the side-walls agree. “Where else can you see a river joining the sea so calmly?” From the bridge, I can see the classic horse-shoe-shaped sandbar, which acts like a dam and throws up a temporary lake. It is a shallow stretch, where the river-bed is exposed during low-tide; where timeless rhythms of the in-and-out movement of the river and sea create an open “gourmet restaurant” of sea food for the birds equipped to live on mud flats.
Film crews shoot, pack up and go, but a variety of interested groups have travelled to the city to stop here, to watch the birds, study the ecology, clear it of waste and fight for its preservation. “Olive Ridley turtles prefer nesting near estuaries and the Adyar estuary is no exception,” said Akila Balu, turtle conservationist. “On average, nesting is higher on either side of the estuary, compared to the rest of the Chennai coast.” Last season, her conservation network guided nearly 30,000 hatchlings to the sea.
“It is a unique geographical feature; a bird refuge, an open space for the city, a wetland that takes care of your subterranean water table,” wrote Tamil film historian and wildlife conservationist, S. Theodore Baskaran, narrating stories about its attraction. Around 1972, bird/wildlife enthusiasts R. Sukumar, Selvakumar and Siddhardh Buch began looking at the Adyar estuary from the wrought-iron walkway of the old Elphinstone bridge and concluded that the estuary offered a fascinating insight into the natural world for city-dwellers. The Madras Naturalists’ Society, formed in 1978, invited Salim Ali to visit the place and suggest ways to preserve it.
The estuary, with its thick mangrove border, was home to aquatic animals, said Dr. T D Babu, marine biologist. The river helped in maintaining both inland and marine biodiversity; more than 200 species of fishes, aquatic micro-organisms and plants have been counted here. Old-timers remember seeing millions of juvenile shrimp “hanging-out” in the waters under the broken bridge in the 1990s. “That’s proof that the water was clear,” they say. Fishermen found worms for bait on the river bank and caught prawns and crabs that breed in the river mouth in abundance. The estuary was their livelihood support.
Efforts were made to declare it a sanctuary; WWF-India and INTACH endorsed the idea. An estuary in the middle of the city is no less than a declared heritage sight, argued bird lovers and eco-watchers. Once, a signboard appeared on the estuary banning trapping/shooting of the flocks of birds that include sandpipers, shanks, ducks, stilts, flamingos, lapwings, bee-eaters, terns and the European stint – altogether some 70-plus species. Where is it now?
Then the decline set in: frenzied urbanisation brought in garbage and construction rubble. The presence of rotifers (zooplankton) indicated high levels of sewage in the waters. Most of the mangrove trees are gone, leaving little proof of a rare mangrove site within the city. The shoots that appear are quickly grazed out by cattle. Cleaning drives fail to halt the medical waste collecting under the bridge.
My camera catches activity across — where tall buildings stand like sore thumbs. What is the JCB excavator digging up? One report says it is work to “restore” the estuary, in the area between Foreshore Estate and the rear of the Theosophical Society.
Under this project, the estuary will be cleared of plastic and other waste, seemai karuvel (Prosopis juliflora) will be uprooted, and in three phases, territorial plants, reeds/grass and mangroves will be planted.
A new and “improved” estuary should come into view by 2016.
I chant a silent prayer. This is an ecologically fragile zone. Won’t the dredging activity damage the dynamics of the river/sea bed? Is there guarantee the sewage let-up will be blocked? As Babu reminded me, “In spite of the injustice done to it, the Adyar estuary saved human lives and habitat during the 1985 cyclone and 2004 tsunami.” Will this “restoration” let us say thanks by bringing back its glory?
