South Chennai mourns the loss of a beloved park

Huge trees stood uprooted and the leaves were already wilting in the post-cyclone sunshine.

CHENNAI: Two days after cyclone Vardah tore through Chennai, residents in various neighbourhoods are waking up to the loss of thousands of avenue trees, but also the erasure of happy memories spent in parks.

The facade of the park | EPS

At the Desodharaka K Nageswara Rao Pantulu Park in south Chennai, people from the neighbourhood filtered in through the gate like mourners to a wake to gaze in sadness at the loss of a beloved personal space.

An elderly visitor at the park | EPS

Indeed, the park was a picture of desolation. Huge trees stood uprooted and the leaves were already wilting

A huge tree that was uprooted | EPS

in the post-cyclone sunshine.

Civic workers with mechanised hacksaws cut through tree trunks that had stood proud for decades.

St Mary's Road resident Lakshmi Baliga said she has been going to the park for 40 years. “I am shocked to see so many trees uprooted. I’m really saddened.”

A dangling civic worker tries to cut a huge trunk of a tree | EPS

And she added, “It's not only human beings we grieve. Trees are also like us.”

And then somebody remembered the birds. What chance did their nests have? Mrs Baliga said: “The birds may not ever come back.”

Every park is the personal space of its people. The Nageswara Rao Pantulu Park is that to people in south Chennai -- synonymous with outdoor recreation and leisure, a reminder of a time without gyms,
malls, multiplexes, cellphones, internet, cable. It was not as big as the IIT campus or the Vandalur zoo or the Theosophical Society greens but it was
a critical lung space in a choked city.

Set up in 1940 on land donated by altruists Ramayamma Pantulu, Aravamutha Iyengar and Nainiappa Mudaliar, the Nageswara Rao Pantulu Park is engraved in the hearts of the local people. It was a park redolent of old Madras of neat pathways and mighty trees with a lazy sun peeking through. It was a small paradise in a quaint old city with the promise of lip-smacking south Indian cuisine available nearby at Luz Corner and Mylapore.

A tree that broke apart during the cyclonic storm | EPS

There had been several revamps of the park but never had it been flattened as it was Vardah on Monday .

Among the park mourners on Wednesday, there was some anger too. One visitor said the damage should have been anticipated, and prevented. A senior citizen said, “It has taken a cyclone of such mammoth proportions to make us aware of how many trees we had.  What prevented us from preserving what we had?” 

Smaller shrubs and plants that were extirpated | EPS

The towering over 50-ft tree that has withstood the onslaught | EPS

A gardener got busy attending to the few trees that still stood. He pointed to a 50-ft one swaying in the breeze. “I’ve known this tree for 20 years. It was there when I began working here.”