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City's Street Names - Past and Present

Cities all over the world have had their roots, in some way or the other, associated with the names of their busiest roads and Chennai is no different! Try these names- First Line Beach Road, Mowbrays Road, Edward Elliott's Road, - remember them? These are the old names of what are now Dr. Rajaji Salai, TTK Road, and Radhakrishnan Salai. The post-independence Indian governments made it their business to replace the street names from the British era with Indian names and nobody is complaining!

However, it can't be denied either that there are certain names that have proved quite difficult in getting replaced- they simply refuse to go away, even though the change has officially occurred. The most renowned example would be that of Mount Road which technically is Anna Salai now. Even though the name in name took place decades ago, many Chennaiites still swear by the original name, 'Mount Road'. "I think I'll never get over calling Mount road Mount road, because that was how it was introduced to me and first impressions are hard to get over!", said Mrs.Sugantha, who has lived in the city all her life.

Lattice Bridge Road in Adyar (LB Road) is now Kalki Krishnamoorthy Road,while the famous Chamiers Road is Pasumpon Muthuramalinga Thevar Salai- both failures as far as name change is concerned. But topping this list would be Nungambakkam High Road which was rechristened to Uthamar Gandhi Salai, a name that never made any impact at all. Bharthi, an engineering student from the city had this to say when asked about Nungambakkam High Road's 'official' name: "I don't think I've ever heard anyone call Nungambakkam High Road with its official name! If I asked an auto driver to take me to that road, he would probably get confused and ask me which area I wanted to go to!"

If you thought the city's residents were touchy about forgetting the old names of their roads then think once more! When the Tamilnadu government decided to abolish caste names from all road names, some famous ones like, Dr.Renga(chari?) Road, Beemanna (Mudali) Garden, Vellayan (Chettiar) Road and many more, became curiously mutilated. Of course, there were exceptions to this too, in the name of a road in T.Nagar called Dr.Nair Road- making that 'Dr. Road' would have been very confusing. Also, this abolition of caste names was not implemented in North Chennai where you can still find roads being called Linghu Chetty Street, Thambu Chetty Street, Errabulu Chetty Street and so on.

And so, we can finally say it is not an exaggeration when Chennai is called, the city of a splendid mix between the old and the new, for its people definitely don't forget their 'past' easily!