|
Magazine
Viewpoint
Too industrial
KRISH RAGHAV
|
The giant geometry of the MRTS stations evokes a mixed reaction. A response to an earlier article.
|
Photo: S.S. Kumar
A hint of tiredness: An MRTS station in Chennai.
Travelling the MRTS, it almost seems as if at some point in time, amidst lines of motivated construction workers overseen by an enigmatic and ambitious supervisor, a draught, a light zephyr of weariness, tempered by delays, bureaucratic haggling and
governmental diplomacy, made its way across this buoyancy of engineering wonder and settled like grime on the station walls.
The ceilings at MRTS stations still bear some remnants of this earlier era. They’re spectacular engineering marvels, crisscrossed steel and concrete superstructures tracing intricate patterns. The walls, in stark contrast, came in the wake of that malevolent zephyr. They’re dull grey, the paint missing, the sheen non-existent, and the very life sucked out of them by the elements.
The escalators do start working, at Government Standard Time, but their constant whirring and humming isn’t the satisfied purring of a clockwork machine, but the grating rhythm of an out-of-place contraption. Even the paatis choose to use the lift, (when it decides to start working).
Purely functional
The trains bear the gruff lines of functional design to serve the purpose they were created for: to compress as many people into a square inch of space as possible (a la Mumbai). Which makes the MRTS seem even more surreal, the compartment dotted with only a few travellers, watching the hand-clamps on the ceiling swing back and forth in rhythmic melancholy.
I have heard that the first floors were intended to be swanky shopping malls, and the stations themselves hubs of activity, centrepieces of public transportation, and cathedrals of convergence.
I’m reminded of China Mieville’s novel Perdido Street Station, named for the edifice at the centre of his fictional city of New Crobuzon. The Perdido Street Station roosts at the heart of Mieville’s teeming metropolis, where the five monorail lines of the city converge (Tirumailai, in a way, would be its poor second cousin). “Nothing could challenge the chaotic majesty of Perdido Street Station”, he writes, “lights flickered on across its vast and untrustworthy topography, as it received incoming trains into its bowels like offerings. The buildings nearby were nothing beside the station; a little concrete addendum to that great disreputable leviathan building, wallowing in fat satisfaction in the city-sea”.
And indeed, at the Kasturibai Nagar station, four giant arches, like the skeletal ribcage of a monstrous predator, do devour the trains as they enter. Only none could describe the MRTS stations as majestic. They are too large, too ungainly. Too ... industrial, in their colour and appearance and functionality.
But the station at Kotturpuram manages to hide even its gargantuan girth. Some trick of the eye, some trick of topography lets it hide behind corners, and it almost leaps at the cars as they wind down the wilderness of Ponniamman Koil Road near the Adyar river.
The Mandaiveli station is complete in its incompleteness — the gaps in its walls give way to magnificent views of the city, and from the front, it resembles a useful Exhibit A – Cross Section of Station, MRTS.
Narrative circles
The route bisects Chennai with geometrical accuracy. The first concentric circles of slums and small tenements surround the train line along its entire route, enveloped, overshadowed and slowly encroached upon by the second circle, the glass facades of IT establishments on the left going towards Beach, and the stones and towers of government buildings and universities on the right.
Using the MRTS resembles the ferry routes in a game of Scotland Yard. They only connect a few select locations right along the Thames, they get you across large distances in a single bound, but you have to use them in conjunction with other modes of transport to actually get anywhere important.
In the game, the enterprising thief characters invariably use the priceless black ticket to cover their tracks while on the ferry. One wonders if the Chennai populace chooses to do the same. The dozing receptionist behind the ticket counter might concur.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Magazine
|
