City: Chennai

Wearing Bluetooth earbuds and facing a mobile screen Gowri Gnanasambanthan strains to hold a forearm plank. Her instructor joins in on a WhatsApp video call, teaching her the right way of doing it.  Ever since the lockdown in March, Gowri's apartment terrace has become her gym. “I can’t work out alone.  I have a WhatsApp group with a close circle of friends where we share videos, take on challenges and work out together. My husband is my workout partner. This motivates me a lot," she says. Gowri has not let stress and boredom inflicted by the lockdown disrupt her fitness…

On March 18th, Chennai reported its first COVID case, that of a 20-year-old man who reached the city from New Delhi in a train. Fast forward by a little over four months, and the city has seen a total of 1,07,109 cases, with 11,720 active cases at present (figures as on August 7th). Due to two major clusters -- the returnees of Tablighi Jamaat congregation and Koyambedu market -- the city recorded thousands of cases in April and May. The good news, however, is that from reporting 3,000 odd cases every day, the city now records about 1,200 odd cases…

City gets third miyawaki forest The civic body has begun work for developing the city’s third miyawaki forest in Mugalivakkam, Alandur zone. Regional Deputy Commissioner (RDC) South Alby John said the plan was to have been kickstarted in March, but faced delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The corporation plans to plant 2,000 saplings in 35 cents of land. The city already has two miyawaki forests , one each in Adyar and Valasaravakkam, where 2,000 and 700 saplings have been planted. The civic body calculated that the forest in Adyar would consume 11.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide and give out…

The COVID-19 outbreak has slowed down Solid Waste Management (SWM) across the city, with all the composting and segregation centres in 162 locations closed. Most residential areas and other gated communities have struggled to segregate their waste during the lockdown due to the lack of in-house waste management facilities and staff. Awareness around the subject is low, and the motivation to initiate the process is also missing. However, in the midst of this, The Atrium, an apartment complex in Thiruvanmiyur has managed to keep the operations of waste management going. The Atrium community started waste segregation with a systematic and…

Historically there have been many ways of isolating patients with infectious diseases. The ill can be removed to a place where they cannot infect others. If they are treated at home the residence itself can carry a warning sign – a method that has been in place since the time of the plagues. The most disturbing however, and even traumatic for those living in such houses, is the prospect of being barricaded in. And yet, this is precisely what the city’s civic body is doing, and this is now being copied by other cities too. The modus operandi, so we learn,…

Every evening, A M Aravind, a birdwatcher in Madipakkam, ensures he spends at least an hour hanging around his balcony or terrace. The lockdown may have temporarily halted many of his regular activities, but not his bird watching hobby. Though he could not travel to the woodland edges or the marshes, Aravind has spotted over 35 species in his neighbourhood habitat over the past three months.  Like Aravind, many city residents have taken to balcony birding or backyard birding this season, to enjoy a break from the mundane routine of the lockdown. The high-pitched, loud and persistent calls of the…

Recently, Citizen consumer and civic Action Group (CAG) conducted an online dialogue on Chennai’s Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) bus service. The dialogue was part of a national campaign (Lakh ko 50) by the Sustainable Urban Mobility Network (SUM Net India), which asks the government to ensure that there are at least 50 buses per lakh population in our cities. The idea was to hear from commuters to understand what is needed to improve the bus service. Transportation experts also spoke on how the MTC’s fleet strength is inadequate for the number of passengers it serves, and pointed out that there…

COVID-19: Dip in number of cases, results to be sent via SMS Chennai recorded 1,026 fresh COVID-19 cases on July 31st. There were 1,026 recoveries and 21 deaths. Among the frontline workers, 35 workers in the civic body and Chennai district collector R Seethalakshmi have tested positive. Infographic summary of COVID-19 cases in Chennai. PIc: GCC/Twitter In a bid to speed up the process of declaring COVID test results, the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) plans to send the results through SMS. Presently, the field volunteers convey the positive results to the patients and a list is also issued by ward-level…

‘Social distancing’, a phrase that was alien to a majority of us has now become one of the key weapons in our battle against the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Along with masking, limiting contact with others by ensuring a metre's distance between individuals is one of the recommendations that has been widely acknowledged as a measure that could help contain the spread. Cities across the world went into extended lockdowns to prevent the spread of the virus. Halting of public transport, closure of shops, movie halls, malls, bars, restaurants and other establishments took place in most cities.  But while crucial to…

As we watched the whole world being gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic during the initial months of the lockdown, little did we know that the virus would hit so close to home, so soon. Six members of my family - my wife, elderly parents, three children and I were infected by COVID-19 in June 2020. Arming ourselves with the knowledge to combat the virus and keeping a cool head helped us overcome this ordeal. In the first week of June, my wife began showing symptoms of body pain.  On the second day, the body pain persisted and she was feverish.…