The CBC TABLOG 2 : One aspect of Chennai that I would like to change

This post is part of 'The CBC Tablog - 2.' Chennai Bloggers Club (CBC), a group of active bloggers of Chennai city has hosted this series focusing on 'One aspect that I would like to change in Chennai' to celebrate Madras Week 2014. 

The previous post in this series by Dr. Jennifer Divia Clement who blogs at Princess of God and at a couple of other blogspots. She has written about the one aspect she would like to change in Chennai here.

Call it Chennai or Madras, the city is beautiful. It has its characteristics, some good and some bad. After all, contrasts make both living and non-living things interesting.

When we say the city is beautiful and has interesting sights to offer to us, why not we stop for a while and take in all that the city is!

The one aspect I would like to change in Chennai city is that its people give their vehicles a break in their neighbourhoods.

To the market, the temple, the grocery, the salon and even to hire an auto from the street-end, people in Chennai just hop into their cars or ride on their bikes. I see many women with kids in the front and in the pillion of the scooters fly around taking them to their afterschool activities. I see people getting down right at the gates of the temples, schools and shops. I see them drive with a goal to get one thing done and get back in the same breath!

Try holding the little fingers of your kids and walk along showing them the streetscape, the road signs, the flower seller on the pavement, the strings of hair clips, the posters in the newspaper shops, the tea shacks ... It is hands-on knowledge of the good and the bad, the to-do and the not-to, on the road. Walk along with your partner in your neighbourhood for fetching milk and for the evening worship in the colony's temple. The neighbourhoods throw many surprises from a celebrity's name board to a clay potter's wheel workshop.

I am not talking about walking for fitness. But, about walking for an experience. I am not wanting the change because of the crowded roads, but because the people of Chennai miss the beautiful sights of the city and the village existing together in this fascinating city.

I wish the series continued and I passed on the baton to another blogger. Yet, thank you all bloggers who participated in this series. I eagerly looked at what each one wanted to change in the city for the past one month now.