An outing that 80-year-old C. Aravindavalli continues to cherish is a tram trip from Triplicane to Mylapore when she was in her teens.
“We would look out of the window and every time there was a stop, a bell would ring,” she recalled. Born and raised in Triplicane, she has witnessed how a rather traffic-free residential area transformed into the bustling locality it is now, all the while quietly holding onto its own quirky charm.
C. Aravindavalli
“Bharathiar lived close to our residence. While unfortunately, I had never met him, my father did and I heard so many stories about the poet. Our house used to be a thatched house before we rebuilt it to what it is today.
Everyone in the area knew each other well and it was almost like a very large extended family. Now, everything is different,” Ms. Aravindavalli noted.
Old routine
A walk to the beach with the whole family and shopping at Pycroft’s Road would be the routine for the residents back then, she said.
“There would be just a few buses and a lot of cycle rickshaws but most of us would just walk. The beach would be clean, calm and somewhere around we would hear cinema songs through the radio. It was blissful,” she recalled.
Through these eight decades, Triplicane has heard the sweet strains of her veena and three years ago, she managed to get her doctorate too, undeterred by the exhaustion that comes with her age.
