A case for promoting a fitness culture on beach sands 

Is there a case to promote sports at beaches

Two football goalposts sit on the beach in Dumming Kuppam. They are dwarfish, taking after goalposts found in small-sized, eight-a-side football facilities. The field is, obviously, also of reduced dimensions.

And those who “designed” the football field clearly live their lives defined by their aspirations, not limitations. Because, in all other aspects, it is the opposite of a well-appointed football facility. The goalposts are “clothed” in raggedly hand-me-down nets. Painted casuarina poles staked into the soft sands form the framework for these goalposts.

A youngster, who is a resident of Dumming Kuppam, and whose football-chasing feet have measured the length and breadth of this makeshift field, reveals youngsters from the community cobbled it together.

A short distance away, there is another illustration of a similar aspiration. This time, it is a volleyball court, also created with sparse facilities. The materials are repeated to the last fibre: Casuarina poles staked into the soft sands. For additional support, the poles are tethered to boulders hard by. These boulders belong to the 1980s when they locked arms and formed a wall of protection against a sea that would regularly invite itself to what is now the Marina Loop Road. Again, the nets look weather-beaten.

Recently, when The Hindu Downtown connected with a Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) official about the “extended beach” on Marina Loop Road, there was a throwaway remark about these crude apparatus for sports. The official noted that the youngsters create these facilities for themselves. The question to ponder: Should not GCC actively provide these facilities? In fact, residents have this question on their lips.

These facilities could be temporary — only that they would be proper poles, goalposts and nets — and they could be dismantled with the same ease with an assembled Jenga board can be.

These facilities can also be used by beach-goers, and thereby promote a fitness culture on the coast. Made up of out-and-out temporary structures, they would be easy on the environment.