GENRE: Features

At a time when the city’s green cover is shrinking steadily, parks in the city could potentially provide an oasis in the midst of the concrete, apart from a much-needed sanctuary and leisure spot for the citizenry. According to data in the public domain, the city has 525 parks though a look at their locations reveals an extremely skewed distribution across different regions and zones. Chennai is divided into three zones -- North (Zones 1 to 5), Central (Zones 6 to 10) and South (Zones 11 to 15). While the central and southern regions have 202 and 204 parks respectively,…

Wearing a loose khaki shirt over a polyester saree, Shanthi D starts her auto on what promises to be yet another challenging day. She has been an auto driver for almost 16 years now. Shanthi started her career at a time when very few women had the courage to choose this path. Years have gone by, and while the number of women colleagues in the profession has increased, even now, she is greeted with amusement or shock by many. Strong and determined Women auto drivers in Chennai are a growing tribe. While their choices do reflect a degree of empowerment,…

A chartered accountant by profession, Snehal Gokhale takes pleasure in what used to be a hobby – watering her plants, watching the flowers bloom and the butterflies flitting from one flower to the other. “I took up gardening to nurture an eco-system where all creatures big and small had a place of their own,” says Snehal, who has a garden in her ground floor Paud Road flat. “And we take pleasure in eating what we grow and watching the birds and butterflies and insects in a symbiotic relationship with each other”. The nature of urban gardening is being transformed, perhaps…

A deadly plague. A committed and determined municipal commissioner. An aware and active citizenry. That was the beginning, in 1994, of Surat’s remarkable 25 plus year journey: from being the country’s dirtiest city with zero basic infrastructure, to the second-best managed city with well-maintained civic infrastructure. “The biggest success of the then commissioner S R Rao was that he changed the mindset of an entire population” says textile industrialist, Indravadan Mahadevwala. “Till then, we had a municipal corporation only by name.” Surat citizens were always known to be the happy-go-lucky types. Its decentralised textile industry had prospered enough to profit…

While the city had a narrow escape during the recent landfall of Cyclone Nivar, K Srikanth, who runs the Chennai Rains blog, spent about eight hours tracking the movement of the cyclone, understanding its nature and updating his followers. “In general, the time spent on tracking the weather depends on the need. During Cyclone Nivar, I spent about three hours in the morning to share daily updates and five hours for follow-up posts and analysing the weather,” says Srikanth, who has been blogging for a decade. Srikanth is just one among a flourishing, passionate breed of weather bloggers in Chennai,…

“To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves." -- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi Suchitra Akella, an ex-employee of HSBC, planted her terrace garden five years ago when she was pregnant with her second child. “Although I had ornamental plants while living in a flat, I was worried about managing the terrace garden,” says Suchitra. “My initial efforts failed many times. Then V S Kumar, Naresh and Shastry from the Rythu Mitra gardening group provided great support. The horticulture department was also helpful. Now, we source fresh produce directly from our terrace vegetable patch at…

When 25-year-old Vivek Gurav, working in an IT company in Pune, came across a video of Swedish native Erik Ahlström on YouTube, it struck him that this might provide a way of reducing plastic waste and be a way to bring youth to become volunteers of change. “I come from a small village near Kolhapur and I used to swim in the river flowing near my village,” recalls Vivek. In Pune, it saddened him to see the city’s water bodies covered in garbage and plastic waste. “While a student of MIT institute of Computer Engineering in Alandi, Pune, I was…

“Everything is changing with visual entertainment moving to laptop to cellphone,” says Mayank Shekhar, renowned film critic and columnist. “What used to be a collective experience has become an individual feel, that we earlier associated with books. More in-depth viewing is also happening, like the six-part Suitable Boy series which got a lot of viewership.” The move to web series on OTT platforms has been forced on movie makers as traditional movies and movie watching in theatres being virtually extinct for now. Web series are creating a more involved experience with deeper characterisation and more exploration and experimentation. “Theatres will…

It was pouring, as happens in December sometimes in Chennai. But the four musicians getting drenched did not pack up. They played on, completing the two hour video, called “Friends in concert”, which was unlike any classical concert Chennai has ever seen. “Friends in Concert” opened the traditional Margazhi (December) Madras Music season in these extraordinary times in the most extraordinary manner. And musician T M Krishna, as he is wont to do, was breaking all rules of the kutcheri format for Carnatic classical music followed in the hallowed sabhas of Chennai. It was the first time this season that…

"There is the fear of COVID-19 but you hear the music and you forget the pandemic," says music aficionado Shreeya Jayaraman on her live concert experience this Margazhi. Having attended one of the few live events in the city, a T M Krishna concert in Kilpauk, Shreeya adds that nothing can beat an in-person concert as the fans get to enjoy the full kutcheri experience. When it rained unexpectedly mid-concert, the audience had to be moved indoors. While social distancing norms were still followed indoors, Shreeya chose to remain on the periphery and listen to the rest of the show.…