The past is a continuously growing beast ravenously gorging on the present the very moment it is birthed. Monuments in public places are a witness, bearing a testimony of the past and sharing it. At a surreal level, they are also a silent witness to the growing past as it happens around them. Only that they cannot articulate it, incorporating the new information into their plaques.
In the middle of a junction at Mandavelipakkam stands a pillar of the City Improvement Trust (CIT). It sports plaques bearing witness to an exercise to improve conditions in Mandavelipakkam decades ago through construction of affordable housing and bringing the locality to align with an ideal format.
In a stroke of magic realism, if this pillar is enabled to articulate what it is a silent witness to, it would demand that the carriageway around the junction be improved upon.
Three roads meet at the junction — Second Trust Main Road, Fifth Trust Cross Street and Lazarus Church Road. (As one could see, by their names, two of these roads testify to CIT’s efforts in this locality)
Lazarus Church Road where it meets Second Trust Main Road in Mandaveli. Photo: Prince Frederick | Photo Credit: PRINCE FREDERICK
Around the point where they meet this junction, all three roads are pitted, and as the monsoon intensifies its grip on the city, the carriageway around the junction would only disintegrate further. On Fifth Trust Cross Street, a few good Samaritans, who are habitues of this road, have devised and executed an idea to warn motorcyclists off a pothole — they have placed a tyre on it. This temporary measure cannot be the solution, another can be. Greater Chennai Corporation has reported that it is undertaking quick fixes at roads damaged by rains, applying wet mix macadam. If there is a junction that deserves the benefit of this exercise, this one certainly is.
Second Trust Main Road is the longest of these roads, cutting through the junction, and extending on both sides of the CIT pillar, meeting Madha Church Road on one side and South Canal Bank Road on the other. Along its long course, it has a less-than-ideal surface in many places, and given this, it might need a thoroughgoing relaying exercise. That can wait, but mending the junction that it is a part of cannot.
