Amidst the clutter of SWD construction materials, and the furore over sewage overflows and severed power cables, P James shows up unexpectedly, with his balloons and magic wand to lighten up the fraught atmosphere.
The course
Just when one wondered if time and change had wiped P James off Chennai’s walls and out of its collective memory, his unmistakable scribble appears on a forgotten wall.
The integrated stormwater drain project cannot expect to make an impact without the canals (which includes micro canals) playing ball with it. There are micro canals that know how to draw and hold attention, showing up regularly on busy corridors, and then there are those that slink away like shy birds into bulrushes — take the Greater Painted Snipe for illustration — and are only partially seen.
The Nungambakkam Canal is that kind of a creature. A Canal that is underground in some of its parts and is open to sky in the rest, it is largely tucked away from the public glare.
The rusted gates
From Haddows Road, one gets a faint glimpse of the Canal. Parts of its gates are reddish-brown, the metal eaten away and in some places, visibly coming off in flakes. The lock similarly betrays lack of use. There is some refuse in the open section Canal off Haddows Road that ought to be removed. On a wall along the Canal, details about it and its alignment with the road are scribbled, and betwixt blocks of such information is an odd but familiar scribble. “Event, magic show, balloon decoration” followed by that familiar number. It is a mystery how P James managed a scribble on that wall. For the uninformed, more than a decade ago, he had turned the entire metro into a “graffiti wall”, advertising his skills as a magician and organiser of parties.
The scribbles on the wall
While his scribbles across Chennai have largely disappeared as walls change colour with the season, this one has stayed, clearly because the wall and what it overlooks have been “left to their own devices”.
A GCC official notes that based on instructions from higher officials, any cleaning work would be undertaken at the Nungambakkam Canal.
