While April is supposed to be the cruellest month, the soaring temperature in May has made April better this year. Even the nights are highly sultry and the young and the old find it difficult to have a sound sleep.
In this backdrop, if most of the city residents are anxiously looking forward to something during daytime, it is shade. Unfortunately, the city has not much of a green cover to give them the most needed shelter from a scorching sun.
Few years back, a Deputy Commissioner of Police (Traffic) earned criticism from the residents when huge branches of a lot of trees were cut down, though for providing some clearance for CCTVs. Now, DMK MLA P.T.R.P. Thiagarajan has raked up the most important issue once again when he pointed out that government authorities were felling trees ahead of the Chief Minister’s visit to the city.
However, electricity board sources clarified that it was only routine work to trim the branches of trees to keep them away from overhead cables. One of the major works on power shutdown days is to chop off branches intruding into the overhead cables.
And the EB authorities do it so religiously that many trees along the power line give a unique look reflecting the imbalance of growth on their top. The city trees do not have a symmetrical growth as the branches that get closer to power lines are indiscriminately axed giving them an artificial and awkward look to the trees.
Eventually, the city loses significant areas of shade during hot afternoons. Concrete pavements also choke the trees to a premature death.
Most affected are the two-wheeler riders, auto-rickshaws and call taxi drivers. For they are finding it difficult to park their vehicles at vantage points due to lack of shade. “If we park vehicles under the direct sun for a few minutes, it will have its impact for at least an hour even after switching on the air-conditioner,” says B. Alagarsamy (33) of Anna Nagar, a call taxi driver.
While idle, he takes additional effort to travel more than a couple of km to find shade. “There are more trees in K.K. Nagar, Anna Nagar, Bibikulam and near Gandhi Museum. I don’t mind wasting some fuel for this. Moreover, parking under the sun will also lead to evaporation of fuel,” he says.
He is particularly worried about lack of trees on the entire stretch of four-lane highways. An autorockshaw driver, P. Sudhakaran, says there is no space with shade to park his auto between Periyar bus stand and Goripalayam.
The only other option is parking in the underground parking lots in shopping malls and commercial establishments. But, many such buildings either lack such facilities or have put them for other use.
But, T.M. Suresh Kumar, a medical representative, says various factors such as widening of roads and newer commercial buildings have taken a heavy toll on huge trees on Kamarajar Salai. “At least 30 trees were on this road. But, in the last 15 years, only three huge trees have survived. Newer buildings have come at the cost of the green cover,” he says.
However, few shops have put up pandals across roads that would give the shopkeepers and the customers a big relief from the scorching sun.
The roadside juice stalls that have come up in large numbers attract a lot of passers-by, especially two-wheeler riders, for the shade of the trees under which the carts are parked.
Men and women do try to protect their heads with helmets and scarves and their eyes with sun glasses. Some auto-drivers have also put up coconut fronds over their vehicles to reduce the impact of the hot sun.
Former MLA N. Nanmaran, during his tenure, repeatedly raised the issue of providing underground power cables so that the trees are not axed by the EB.
Mr. Thiagarajan concurs on that idea. “In any civilised society, power cables have to be underground. Besides helping to have better green cover, it will also ensure safety and also protect the electric poles from natural calamities such as cyclone and storm,” he says.
He wanted the civic authorities to measure the present green cover and set goals to increase it periodically.
“Their performance should be appraised also based on protection of green cover,” he says.
Concrete pavements also weaken the base of the trees, says M.C. Saravanan, secretary of a voluntary organisation, Vaa Nanba. He wants the Corporation to formulate a plan to have provisions for planting a minimum number of trees in each street. Indiscriminate usage of nails to put up advertisement materials on trees also ruin the trees.
True to the Tamil adage, “Nizhalin arumai veyilil theriyum,” the city residents have realised the importance of trees under the impact of a cruellest summer.
