Swamped by problems

One of my assignments involved the Pallikaranai Swamp.Here is the piece.It is important to me and I intend to follow up on it.


The Pallikaranai Swamp along the old Mahabalipuram road has always served as the city’s stormwater drain and as a mini-ecosystem supporting over 106 kinds of migratory and wetland birds.However,over the years,its size has shrunk from 40 sq km to four square kilometres.The marsh has served as a landfill for solid waste and sewage and part of it has also been used by Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority(CMDA) for housing,and for building a Government hospital,colleges, and the Mass Rapid Transit System(MRTS) .

(Photo taken from Frontline magazine)

According to Mr.Ramkumar,an advocate working with Exnora,the two main issues concerning residents and others like the Save the Pallikaranai Marsh Forum(SPMF)are the unscrupulous garbage dumping and the destruction of the water ecosystem.Mr.Ramkumar said that under the pretext of reclaiming the marsh,the National Institute of Ocean Technology had been allowed to construct its building right in the middle of the wetland.

Exnora has been propagating a system of waste management that would tackle both the volume and nature of garbage.It is suggesting the use of composting and recycling,both of which can reduce reduce the volume of garbage to only 10% of the original volume.Mr.Ramkumar explains that since roughly 50 percent of the city’s garbage is organic it can be composted and the inorganic waste can be recycled.

Even composting,he said,can be done at the family level or at the community level- “You can compost garbage in plastic buckets at home.Or, a few families can employ a person to do it.Only 25 percent will remain,which you can add as fertilizer to the topsoil”.He adds that it is essential to develop a market for various recyclable items.This could reduce the city’s solid waste output from 5500 tonnes to merely 250 tonnes.

The SPMF,on the other hand feels that the encroachment of the marsh will affect its biordiversity as it is the breeding place for wetland birds.Mr.Murugavel of the SPMF pointed out that birds are hunted down indiscriminately using ‘spray bullets’ that contain metal ions to stun them en masse.

The SPMF also voices the concerns of citizens living nearby.Many people have respiratory diseases due to garbage burning.Similarly, discharge of industrial effluents has caused an increase in the levels of lead,chromium and mercury in the water table.

Due to the efforts government organizations and fora like Care Earth,SPMF and Sustain the Government is finally “taking interest now” in declaring Pallikaranai a protected area,Mr Murugavel said.

However,the SPMF still plans to conduct a ‘Satyagraha’,involving fasting,on October 2nd.Their goals are to ensure that the marsh soon be declared a protected area under the Tamil Nadu Forest Act (1882) and Wildlife protection act (1972),to prevent dumping or burning of garbage,and to ban building construction in the marsh.

However,if the Government does not do so quickly,and if the remaining part of this natural flood barrier is destroyed,the whole of the adjacent area of Velachery could be flooded.This will not only mark the end of an ecosystem but will leave the city bereft of a storm drain and the residents of the area swamped by new problems.

Observation piece

My Professor who took the Language and Style classes asked us to write an observation piece.It has been returned to me,and I think he marked me pretty okay since his comment was "very nice". :)

The dark, betel- juice stained, narrow stairway leading to the flat actually had vivid electric blue walls that were hidden by the lack of more than one zero-watt bulb on one floor.Even summer daylight did not seem to touch them.

The house on the second floor had a disproportionate “K” written in white paint on a black circle near the doorbell.The door which was usually a dull white was open,and revealed pale blue walls within.A dull beam of light from the balcony near the door rested near on the right temple of a man lying in the middle of the hall.At that exact moment, a series of splitting wails from a plump woman sitting by him drowned out the horns of impatient buses on the street.

Her partially silver hair was loose,and she hit her chest rhythmically,blowing her nose on the red border of her saree at intervals.A lopsided reflection of her on the television screen nearby faded slowly as the sky was overcast.There was no sign of blue anywhere for a moment,until the clouds passed.

An old man in an immaculate white dhoti with many warts near the hollow of his eyes
went to a dresser.He pulled out a bottle,vigorously shook the pale yellow liquid and
sprayed it,his nose crinkling.The strong scent of airplane tissues swam around the room.

The dead man seemed around sixty,his hair grey and sparse at the temples.His nostrils were stuffed with wads of cotton and the bandage binding his big toes was fast wearing out. A young girl of about thirteen sat near him,her face smudged with tears.She rested her head on the still chest occasionally and closed her big brown eyes.But everytime she lifted her head,her eyes would be flooded again.

The number of hushed voices and dusty bare feet increased slowly.The sky faded to the same colour as the wall and the odour of death overcame the reek of the eau de cologne.But the girl did not move.


(Note:No guesses as to the protagonists of the piece.And though it looks incomplete,we had to work on a word limit,and plus the point was not to write a novel.)

Women and public space

Here is an assignment I wrote.I had written a very acerbic and unconstructive critique titled 'Why men are pigs' prior to this.But I found that thinking for a while actually helped me in putting my point across.

A few days back,I was travelling by a city bus that was splitting at its seams.Everyone knows it can be very suffocating and painful to remain standing in such a situation,while being sandwiched between the lady whose hair is laden with jasmine and the ubiquitous man who reeks of beedis. Most of us get used to it.

But what I can never get used to is the occasional male who insists on using the crowd to add to your discomfort.He stares, breathes down your neck, or pretends that his hand has no place to rest except a vulnerable part of your anatomy.Both your body and your perception of public space are altered.

Perhaps the most vexing experience I’ve had is on a cold night a few years back during a school trip in Hyderabad.Three of us were walking towards our bus, when three men started following us.Panicking,we started walking faster and then broke into a run.But then, overwhelmed by a mixture of mad rage and helplessness, I turned back and yelled at them,using the choicest profanities I knew.They stopped and faded into the nearby shops.But, my sense of security was eroded.

Women everywhere are forced to accept the violation of the little security that public places provide us, since any recourse by law is tedious.We are routinely leched at, touched inappropriately and then are trained to accept it as normal behaviour.We lobby to be given the right to work night shifts in factories,but forget that the right to safety may not accompany it.

Any attempt to walk on the roads with the simple identity of being just a human being is futile .Most of us grow up actually feeling grateful that we have not faced more than the “usual” or “acceptable” amount of harassment.We never stop to examine what this means and who defined its parameters.

What is worse is that,universities are now setting dress codes to condone popular perception of women.In public consciousness,there will then always exist a clear division between the vamp and the virgin,the woman who can be whistled at because she is 'inappropriately attired', and the woman who will be whistled at even if she is 'acceptably dressed'.

But the irony is that neither category(if you can divide women so rigidly at all) can walk on the road as just another person.The identity of being a woman will always remain. And,not as a positive one.