Once a big pond of fresh water and associated with the perennial drinking water project of Puducherry during the French regime, the historic Aayi kulam at Muthurayarpalayam on the outskirts of the city is now in a very pathetic state.
Legend has it that King Krishnadeva Raya (A.D. 1509-1530) of Vijayanagar Empire, while on a visit to the house of Uiyyakunda Viswaraya Mudaliar in Villianur, mistook the house of Aayi, a courtesan, for a temple and bowed before it.
When he was told that it was a Devadasi’s house, he ordered its demolition. Aayi pleaded with the king and decided to dig a pond there to quench the thirst of people. This tank, later, served the purpose of providing drinking water to the entire city during the French regime.
Later during the 18 century the city experienced water scarcity. Napoleon Bonaparte III deputed his engineer Lamairesse to solve the problem. Lamairesse stumbled upon the pond constructed by Aayi in Muthurayarpalayam and brought water through canals to the area where the Bharathi Park is located.
Rampant encroachments
A visit to the pond brought to the fore its pathetic condition. Thick vegetation coupled with rampant encroachment on all sides is now all that remains of the pond. With the authorities turning a blind eye, unbridled construction of illegal structures over the years is now slowly erasing a bit of history.
“The degeneration of the water body started some 20 years ago and assumed alarming proportions over the years. Most encroachments are by residential buildings in and around the pond and sewerage lines are directly emptied into the pond,” says K. Ramamoorthy, president of Sembadugai Naneeragam, a non-governmental organisation.
Mr. Ramamoorthy said that the pond was also the Theppakulam for the temple festivals and was a perennial source of drinking water. During the post-merger days, the administration had dug around 12 borewells opposite the pond in separate premises to draw sub-soil water at the rate of 20 lakh million litres per day.
The government had also come out with a plan to revive the pond by drawing water from the Oussudu lake to Aayi pond situated a few metres away from the pumping station at Muthirapalayam way back in 2008.
Though funds were sanctioned, the work didn’t take off due to reasons best known to officials. The pipelines then laid from the Oussudu Lake to the pond are broken at many places. The historically significant pond should be immediately restored, he said.
Puducherry has irrigation tanks and more than 500 ponds forming lifeline of the groundwater source. The number of ponds that remained at over 650 in 1990’s has now come down to 400 because of encroachments, says V. Chandrasekhar, president, Bangaaru Vaickal Neeraadhara Koottamaippu.
