On the day, when I made my first acquaintance with Saidapet, it was raining cats and dogs in Chennai. There were breaches in two lakes. The Adyar River, the Cooum River and the Buckingham Canal were all inundated and water was flowing in the Spencer area of Anna Salai at a height of about three feet. Even Nungambakkam, Chintadripet, Pudupet, Egmore and Chetpet were flooded. The Railway bridge over the Adyar in Saidapet was damaged and hence the trains ran from Beach station to Mambalam only. The south-bound long-distance trains were cancelled for two, three days and after that they started plying from St. Thomas Mount station.

I was just ten years old then. You must be wondering how I remember all that I saw at such a young age. Let me tell you the reason. Without knowing anything about the flood situation, we had come from Secunderabad to leave my sister and her newborn child in her house. In those days, only the wealthy people were the proud owners of a radio.

Even newspapers were bought only by them. My father used to read the newspaper, if at all he could get one, only in his office. I had the opportunity of reading a newspaper only in my college library. So we were totally unaware of the floods in Chennai and came to know about them only after our arrival in the city.

We reached Central station from Secunderabad. From there we came to Park station, took an electric train and came to Mambalam. We spent the night in a relative�s house. The next day we took a horse-driven carriage to reach Saidapet. That street in Saidapet has not undergone any major change in these fifty to sixty years. That is the Bazaar Road. Saidapet has different streets to denote different communities. Besides Bazaar Road, Jones Road, Jeenis Road and Karaneeswarar Koil Street, you have streets with the names of different communities in the oldest localities of Chennai. Now these names have been changed to English. For example "Oil-monger Street". When this name is mentioned many people will not know about the oil-presses that were present there once.

Let us scan Chennai again....

Ashokamitran
(Translated by Sujatha Pradeep)