From heritage to high-rises, how Chennai grew taller

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Once relatively flat, the city today has tall buildings and skyscrapers vying with each other for space. While garden houses became apartments, kiosks gave way to malls. | Photo Credit: JOTHI RAMALINGAM B

“Andha kalathula ellam…” [In those days...] is how many memories of Chennai, or Madras, begin. We all grow up, and inevitably, so do our beloved cities. Every goodbye is followed by a hello: old buildings are torn down for new high-rises, beloved theatre screens go dark, garden houses become apartments, and corner shops give way to malls and multiplexes. Relatively flat for most of its early development, the city today has tall buildings and skyscrapers vying with each other in certain parts. Swept up in the business of being a metro, Chennai grew wide and tall; and as it did, it changed the memories that different generations carry of home.

“In 1962, I would cycle from my quiet residential area of Teynampet towards the Mambalam station to board a train to Ambattur for work, meditatively gazing at weirdly coloured homes — pink, green, yellow — with political party signs on plastered walls. I would cycle across the massive T.I. Cycle campus to the canteen for hot idlis. Back then, T.I. Cycles, T.I. Diamond Chain, Dunlop, and TVS were huge. They were sprawling complexes, unlike the tall, glass-paned facades of this day. My father worked near The Mail newspaper on Mount Road, next to The Hindu — both beautiful Art Deco buildings,” says 88-year-old M.L.N. Bharathi.

“Now, if I were to make a similar commute to Semmenchery in an office cab, [I would pass] glass towers, high gated communities, malls, choked restaurants chasing online virality, with fleeting glimpses of my old Madras buildings — some miraculously intact, others fading and worn out,” he said with a sigh.

Meanwhile, Srivatsan, a Gen-Z resident, holds onto the memory of his parents moving into an independent house in the 2000s, his mother and grandmother sitting peacefully on the porch, watching the passers-by and birds chirping. “I finished school about a decade ago, but whenever I see the building, flowers falling from the trees on the campus, it takes me on a nostalgic trip. Same with my alma mater, Loyola College — a beautiful campus dating back to the old Madras period. As entertainment moved more online, recreation became spending time at indoor sports facilities, and people hang out more at cafes and sometimes, theatres — I still prefer a Sathyam Cinemas screen over one at a mall, but not all do,” he said

If one wanted to time-travel across the different eras of the city, one could visit the modern LIC building — the first multi-storey structure of Chennai — on Anna Salai (then Mount Road), the white Ripon Buildings, Victoria Public Hall, and Madras High Court complex of the colonial times; the San Thome Church in Mylapore and St. Lazarus Church in R.A.