On the first floor of the spacious Anna Nagar Post Office on Second Avenue Main Road in Anna Nagar, a team of four postal staff is filling pigeonhole-shaped wooden boxes with the day’s regular letters. These postal workers are at the despatch room where all the regular letters are sorted on the basis of their addresses. This team has an unenviable task, something the other postal staff on the first floor would not want to take up for all the tea in China. They have letters that have same addresses, but have to be delivered in different areas of Anna Nagar.
As you know, Anna Nagar is divided into avenues and blocks. The problem is that Anna Nagar has two ‘Y’ and ‘Z’, which has given rise a wide range of problems, including establishing the identity proof of residents living in these four blocks. These four blocks are located on both sides of Second Avenue Main Road in Anna Nagar.
“We follow a simple system, devised years ago, to differentiate between one set of two blocks from the other set,” says J. Anbumani, postmaster, Anna Nagar Post Office. In line with this system, each of houses in the two blocks (Y & Z) that were in existence before Anna Nagar was developed as a planned neighbourhood has a four-digit number as its door number. In contrast, each of the houses in the other two (Y & Z) blocks that were formed along with the other blocks in the 1970s when Anna Nagar was developed as a planned neighbourhood, has been given a three-digit door number. In other words, houses in the old ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ blocks have door numbers from 2,627 – 2,900 (Y block) and 3,056 – 2,977 (Z block). And those in the new ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ blocks have three digit numbers 01 – 239 (Y block) and 02 – 187 (Z block). Corporation officials that initially, new ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ blocks were formed as it was thought that there will not be any confusion as they would be located on the opposite side of the Second Avenue Main Road with a different street name.
The old ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ blocks are located near Sixth Avenue and the new blocks on 13thMain Road in Shanthi Colony. However, in later years, confusion arose, and the door numbers of houses in these blocks had to be altered.
Most residents of the other blocks and sections of Anna Nagar are not aware of the existence of these blocks with identical letters. Even the president of one of these blocks came to know of it only recently. “Despite being a resident of Anna Nagar for more than 40 years, I came to know about the issue only recently when a few residents raised it. So far, no one complained about it,” said 82-year-old C. Chellappan, former president, (old) ‘Y’ Block Residents’ Welfare Association.
