A new selfie point on the block

After the selfie point at Marina Beach, a new point has come up thanks to a stretch of besant nagar promoted as Health Walk Track

For a good part of the day — of course, outside the period when the sun pins people down with a pointed stare and gives them a five-aspirin headache — a hangout space at the Health Walk Track plays its role to the hilt. The zeitgeist of the times is documentation of the everyday and the commonplace. With the advent of the mobile camera, the celebration of the quotidian has been on the upswing, interesting nuances being added to it every passing day.

With phone photography pushing the envelope and post-production tools built into platforms like Instagram, images shot in banal settings come alive in unbelievable texture and colour. A good backdrop is a bonus, and the generation that found the smartphone in its crib knows a good backdrop when it sees one. And there is one at a reasonably wide hangout space carved out on Besant Avenue Road for those hitting the health walk track.

And for many, the part has come to represent the whole, as they hit the track just to park themselves at the hangout space to take photos and selfies.

Fibreglass sculptures of a woman in mid stride, a pet dog looking up to her and a man parked in a bench taking a break from a run seem to have an aura of quasi-celebrities, as visitors stand next to them for their photos much like they would next to film and sports stars.

The golden hue on these sculpted images would wear off, and so would people’s fascination for them. For now though, this space is a congregating point for families and to a larger extent, groups of youngsters, for a click or two.

As Bessie is nearby, it probably might have a higher fascination quotient than one might be led to believe.

In the early hours of November 25, a group of youngsters, some of them having biked from as far as Valasaravakkam to Bessie, had a pitstop at a minor hangout space on the track — the one on the bend of Besant Avenue Road.