Chennai turns 370

Today was Chennai’s 370th birthday and here is a shot note about Chennai city and its existence.

(National emblem of India on Kamaraj salai Chennai)

Been appeared to the world as a simple fishing hamlet, today Chennai seems to be one of the most important and 4th largest city in India. In 1639 August 22nd, the so called Chennai today, was formed by then as Madras was happened to develop as a city only after the arrival of Europeans to immigrate here. Portuguese to be the first to immigrate here in 1552 had been settled in Santhome area and have been doing business.

The place where today the Chennai High Court exists had a temple then, called Chennakesavar and around the temple there was a hamlet named Chenna Kesavapuram. On 22nd August 1639, Francis Day and Aandru Kohan of East India Company had bought the land where St. George Fort was today, from Chennapa Naicker. In memories of him, the village on north side of the Fort was called Chennapattinam and the south as Madras. The British then merged both the villages and named it Madras, and Tamils kept calling it as Chennapattinam.

In 1997 the name was changed as Chennai. To the ancient Chennapattinam, there’re few great nobilities for being first in India. The first Christian temple, first Hospital, first entertainment institution and first Municipality were formed in Chennai. Today, Chennai have grown in various sections and 6 million in population, it leads as a forefront city in miscellaneous sections such as Education, Hygiene, Information Technology, History, Auto mobile, tourism, art…

(Chennai Santhome Basilica Cathedral)

In medical industry, Chennai shines as a capital with immense hospitals around and next to Bangalore, Chennai continue to be so as an IT hub in list of large cities with many motor vehicle factories are formed in Chennai. In movie making, Chennai remain next to Mumbai. Alike many other cities in India, Chennai has its part of troublesome too. Scarcity of drinking water (thankfully lately the problem is less, since reservoirs around Chennai gets enough water by rain and linked by canals), lack of proper rainwater draining system to not even withstand a little showing (thanks to ‘J’ government to come up with a wonderful rain water harvesting project to increase ground water level and reduce water wastage), announced and unannounced electric resistance, unending traffic and more unsolved problem are there to find solutions.

While celebrating the Chennai day or week, let people think to do something to make certain problems are solved and esp. the vehicle traffic and rainwater draining. Government should also think about to control the vehicle population in city to reduce traffic and pollution.

I wish chennaities a very happy birthday of our city and I wish to write more about Chennai and hope to do so sometime soon.