AFVOA Newsletter May 2020

Section 3 - Memoirs Newsletter No. 1 / 2020 P a g e 35 | 101 Metro, a dream come true for Chennaites, is here and now. There can never be a better exposition of a service by anyone other than a passionate and hands-on Practitioner, which was in full view when Veteran Wg Cdr Gurunath Reddy took charge of the podium for the next hour. Soft spoken and self-effacing he was, but the project that he and his team have achieved as on date is a gargantuan reality! Every Phase and Stage of the mammoth project was dealt in detail, aided by elaborate and fitting maps, sketches and photographs as part of his presentation. What we get to see is the fancy toy in operation over ground but the challenges of underground excavation and building safe tunnels are to be heard live to be believed, with the water starved Chennaites sinking bore wells to extreme depths seeking that evasive nectar of life. Also, the tunnelling opened up avenues of unexpected windfall in the form of damage suits, for not just residents of the affected neighbourhood but the whole of Greater Chennai Corporation limits! The fact that Chennai Metro have winded their way underground through unplanned city of Chennai’s thickest residential areas and commercial districts must rank as the eighth wonder of the world! The project schedule had just not stopped at meeting expectations but exceeded them, even in the face of the quintessential and compulsive Indian habit of theft of copper wires / anything valuable left-over ground! The magnitude of the facilities planned for the Chennai Central Metro hub made the audience wonder why the over ground structure is not befittingly designed. That is when the Speaker made the anecdotal reference that gave a whiff of Dravidian politics of unfailingly subjugating monumental achievements solely to promote and project a larger than life image of their departed Leaders. It seems that the State Government did not permit any design of the Metro hub that would divert the attention of unsuspecting onlookers from the front elevation of Madras Central Station which has now adopted the prefix of the name of their departed leader! So much for constitutional rights of political parties!