‘Dump sites’ on Karanai Main Road

This section of the road has a sprinkling of gated communities — Cassia Jones and Bolleneni Renatta found in the immediate neighbourhood.

The Ottiyambakkam leg of Karanai Main Road is a “store” that latches on to its “stocks”, its mind impervious to the notion of year-end clearance. It hoards a random assortment of items — a sofa set sitting pretty among a caboodle of household discards, automobile parts that dropped out of the journey, clothes that have long ceased to trace the contours of a human frame. And then, just tightly tied bundles whose contents are a mystery. This store keeps piling them and sees them go to tatters, shrivel, rot, crumble and sink into the soil.

These products are garbage having been carted past the last window of opportunity — the possibility of re-embodiment and installation in a new life. Organic, a huge part of this garbage could have gone into compost pits. There is an ensemble of recyclables. They invite repurposing and recycling exercises —in a better world, those possibilities would have been realised for these products. But here they are, squatting on the road as an embarrassment to it.

One needs to cool their heels out there just a wee bit to be able to see a motorcyclist wheel in and wash their hands of things that were once of use to them; or a bundle of waste being rolled in on larger wheels and disgorged. Usually, dumping of the latter kind happens under cover of darkness.

Prolonged scruffiness encourages further scruffiness. The dumping is no longer restricted to a spot diametrically opposite a gated community. New pockets of dumping have emerged nearby. And the diversity of the discards suggests that this section of the road has caught many pairs of eyes as an easy spot to get rid of offscourings. One patch “specialises” in coconut-related waste; another deals in textiles.

This section of the road has a sprinkling of gated communities — Cassia Jones and Bolleneni Renatta found in the immediate neighbourhood.

A Thalambur resident, Neela Chandran has been tracking the “growth” of this “dump site”. She believes that unless residents of the gated communities nearby make their displeasure known and seek the clearance of this unofficial dump site that sprang up overnight, the patch cannot be made whole again.