Decades ago, Sambasivam Padmanabhan would cycle through laterite soil roads to his school in Adyar, his little sister on the carrier, with barely any building or vehicle around. “Occasionally, we would spot an Ambassador car or a Morris Minor and would get excited,” reminisces the 57-year-old Padmanabhan, one of the long-time residents of Adyar.
Today, it is quite refreshing to see trees bordering several roads in this area. The Besant Nagar beach is a hub of sorts today, with a host of restaurants close by. “But it would be empty back then in the 1960s and we would hardly see anyone. The whole area has transformed now,” he adds. Like his grandfather and father, he thoroughly enjoys taking a walk in the Theosophical Society. “It feels like walking in an oxygen chamber, completely at peace,” he says.
In all these years of living in Adyar, one incident he says that will always stay with him was to witness Adyar river in spate. “I had to leave home and stay in a hotel for a day, looking at the water level rising rapidly. Had the rains not stopped, the situation would have been far worse,” he says.
From eagerly waiting to watch Indira Gandhi and then the Dalai Lama travel through these roads, he cherishes living in Adyar.
