Moving from ECR to a new home in interior Sholinganallur

The exercise of transplanting trees fallen during Cycylone Michaung has begun in Chennai; State Highways Department has entrusted a Coimbatore-based non-government organisation Green Care with carrying out the transplantation of trees at Sri Raman Thangal Eri, which is under Greater Chennai Corporation’s watch.

Hidden in the viscera of Sholinganallur, Sri Raman Thangal Eri presents an unlikely marriage — the union between the urban and pastoral.

The ‘tail’ of a huge gated community runs parallel to the lake. This lake is girdled by a tiled pathway that seems to be as accustomed to the clatter of hooves as to the tread of feet. Bovines as much as humans lay claim to the walkway. On this morning of December 22, people from a neighbourhood bordering on the eastern section of lake use the pavement on the way to their workplaces. Bovines are nowhere in sight but they left behind evidence of their patronage of the space — dried cow dung.

Besides, there is splatters of mud, barely dry and clinging on to the walkway. These small clumps of mud on the pavement are the result of an ongoing exercise, one that brings living pieces of East Coast Road to these parts.

Some of the trees uprooted on a section of East Coast Road (from Neelangarai to Akkarai) as part of a road-widening exercise, are finding a new address at Sri Raman Thangal Eri.

According to a State Highways department, “Based on the permission and guidelines from District Green Committee, hundreds of trees have been felled to facilitate the road-widening work. And around one hundred trees are being transplanted around this lake. Together with the Forest Department, 8,000 saplings of native species will be planted on this section of ECR (Neelankarai to Akkarai), the restoration of lost green cover being worked out in a ratio of 1:10 (10 trees for every tree that was felled).”

The State Highways Department has entrusted a Coimbatore-based non-government organisation Green Care with carrying out the transplantation of trees (around 100 of them) at Sri Raman Thangal Eri, which is under Greater Chennai Corporation’s watch.

K. Syed Kattuva of Green Care points out that the “mother soil” is taken to the lake and the transplantation spot for each tree is filled with it, so that the tree is rooted in its familiar environment. He further adds that the use of mother soil is central to the various other treatments that go into preparing the new home for each of these tree.