A walk down MG Road with N.S. Parameswaran

Resident of MG Road in Chennai, 71-year-old N.S. Parameswaran takes a walk down his locality to show The Hindu Downtown some areas of improvement. They include design and maintenance of pavements and hanging cables

MG Road in Shastri Nagar is a beaten path to N.S. Parameswaran. It is his everyday route to fitness. Customariness can lead to acceptance of the bad and the ugly. Not so with 71-year-old Parameswaran. Just as Glenn Campbell in Rhinestone Cowboy knew every crack in the sidewalk of Broadway, Parameswaran knows the sidewalk of MG Road like the back of his palm. He would have walked up and down the pavements of MG Road a zillion times, but he refuses to take the brokenness of those pavements in his stride. He seethes at every familiar crack, every broken slab, every toppled bollard and everything else that turns the walk into a trudge. He believes vendors belong in the pavements and a well-regulated vending zone is the pride of any pavement. It is the poor design and maintenance of pavements that irks him. 

As a resident of MG Road, he is not too far placed to take a quick walk down the eye-catching and well-tended Health Walk Track on Besant Avenue Road. But he would rather continue his walking routine closer home, and bristle with anger at what his feet meet down the pavements of MG Road. 

He invites The Hindu Downtown to join him on a walk down this road, on March 14, 2024. The walk is punctuated with pauses and comments about the low points of the pavement infrastructure. For want of space, a selective few observations by this resident are being presented in these pages.