Metro Rail is certainly a matter for great celebration for Chennaiites. But Metro Rail is also a miserable metaphor for the laggard, leisurely, laboured pace at which our cherished city is struggling to become a real, well, metro. As we rejoice at the latest locomotive landmark, we can’t also avoid rueing the missed and messed opportunities. The hoot that heralded the first Metro Rail was also a wake-up call.
Chennai has a hoary history. The city was not born in the 17th century just as the country was not born in 1947. Such colonial concoctions are willfully or unwittingly consumed and continued by many here. Ft St George is not Chennai which actually stretched deeper into time and much beyond that so-called walled confines. From Mylapore to Triplicane to Mamallapuram, and Thiruvalluvar to Thirumangai Alwar, copious literature attest to a ‘Greater Chennai’. May be it evolved from a string of isolated settlements but that’s how cities come into being.
This flashback is not a potshot at some who have diminished its antiquity, but rather a pointer to what our dear Chennai truly deserves to be. At a macro level, Chennai is strategically placed on the global map with the rare endowments of land, air and sea connectivity. Not just Chennai, but the entire Coramandel coast has traditionally been a gateway to Southeast Asia and beyond. Since the earliest Sangam periods to the modern era, the towns and harbours here have been hubs of hectic mercantile and military activity. The advantage was gradually ceded to other Asian cities. Colombo’s collapse in the early 1980s owing to the Tamil issue was Chennai’s most recent chance. But this was not seized.
Those who have made this city their home talk evocatively of its laidback lifestyle and an accommodating culture. Indeed, many like me cannot think of living in any other city and for those who had to go, coming back sometime is always a happy prospect. But the unrushed charms and unseemly chaos pose a painful paradox to the denizens: Is Chennai to be seen as a sign of serenity or a symbol of stagnation? Let the beholder decide!
The Metro Rail project, however, is the latest reminder that the city has to make a quick choice, to forge forward fast or be left out. The latter, we know, is not an option at all. Whether one likes it or not, the city will grow, in spread and population. So far, much of it has happened in a haphazard manner, mired in corruption, red tape and public recklessness. It is no consolation that most global metros, challenged by rampant urbanisation, face this problem. The ones aspiring for true greatness, and there are hundreds of examples from just the last one decade, still find ways to arrest the decay and stage a smart, systematic recovery. Modern civic tools and technology lend themselves commendably to such infrastructural and public utility initiatives. But the process starts with political will and therein lies the catch.
It is common knowledge that a host of non-project but wholly political factors inhibited the Metro from getting on rails much earlier. And we are not yet thinking of expediting the existing lines and expanding beyond, a dire necessity. Instead, there is this ugly and mean public sparring over the credits which ideally should go to the faceless thousands who toiled under the sun and after sundown and the planners in the shade and most of all, those who lost their limbs and lives due to freak accidents or negligence.
Does it really matter to us which party did what when the project itself spanned three regimes? The rail runs at last and thats it. Indeed, if there is to be a quarrel, it has to be on who caused the most delays! Really, our entire political class, steeped in ‘self’ respect as against respecting public interests, had not just stalled this Metro but sadly, Chennai’s march itself towards becoming a world metro.
Still, as the train flies overhead every ten minutes we cannot help wondering at how the landscape right at our backyard has changed, slowly yet suddenly. And while on that short trip, the child in you leaps out as the familiar lanes and landmarks that you once walked or cycled around swiftly pass underneath. The plush interiors and cool efficiency, though late in coming, still evoke pride. Hopes and imagination fly higher and faster than the carriage. How we wish our bruised, battered but ever beloved Chennai gets more of such public conveniences! That’s when the station arrives, we disembark, hit the road, dust and traffic only to behold the poster/cutout to realise that at ground zero, its a different world! Same, rather!
By the way, come polls, don’t expect free Metro rides as part of any political freebie package. You will be slapped … a fine, that is, if you somehow manage to enter the coach!
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