Public spaces for seniors: a Greater Chennai Corporation park ‘owned’ by a gang of elders

Often, we return to things we realise we have left for good. The reason for revisiting or doing those things all over again might be different, but they could be geared towards the same objectives. A toddler learning to walk is given a walker for gait training. A senior unsteady on their feet is given a walker for gait restoration. Young adults and older adults (aka senior citizens) socialise is an uncannily similar style. One group congregates around a tea shop at eventide to shoot the breeze; the other group does the same on park benches. And the excitement in meeting their crew members does not flag with age.

Recently, at the Greater Chennai Corporation park at Bhagat Singh Road in Thiruvalluvar Nagar, Thiruvanmiyur, when this writer introduced himself to S. Rajarathinam, a senior citizen and a regular visitor to green space, and announced the purpose of his visit (conducting interviews for a series decoding what public spaces, particularly parks mean, more appropriately, should mean, to senior citizens, he was met with a plea. Rajarathinam has just stepped into the green space; and he wants his “group” to gather before the questions are shot off and the camera goes a-clicking. The seniors’ group numbers 15 or thereabouts, and it would be quite sometime before the benches fill up. So, as his crew members join Rajarathinam in trickles, this writer seeks permission to start asking the questions. Being a Kottivakkam resident, Rajarathinam lives farther from the park than most others, if not all the others, but the evening ritual is sacrosanct to him, as also to the others.

Camaraderie draws them to this evening meetup, but the upkeep of the park is what has made sure it continues to be the venue. The park trumpets its status as a plastic-free park through a board. To maintain that status is a tall ask as that entails visitors’ cooperation. The gardener observes that he and the watchman keep clearing any litter, including plastics, that is left behind by a visitor. On the day of this writer’s unannounced visit, there was no plastic waste, not a scrap of it, across the park, except what had been dropped dutifully in the bins.

The placement of benches at this GCC park on Bhagat Singh Road in Thiruvalluvar Nagar in Thiruvanmiyur is not particularly conversation-friendly. A 15-member seniors’ group that thrives on conversations every evening would be better off with a seating arrangement that allows them to face each other more easily.
| Photo Credit:
PRINCE FREDERICK

The realisation slightly altered the focus of this report — not so much altered the focus as extended it. What parks can mean to people in the twilight of their lives, and what they can teach those whose lives are just dawning. A board titled “plastic pollution free Tamil Nadu” demonstrates how plastic can be hidden in plain sight, lurking in utilitarian things in everyday use that are not plastics by themselves. Another board lists healthy foods. These can be messages for everyone, particularly the impressionable young.

The GCC park looks clean and fetching in terms of greenery and provision of amenities, particularly two tiers of walkways, one tiled and the other just concreted. The park is maintained by a private entity, Rialto.

Though there are not yet in full strength — in fact, far from it, they are just one-third of their usual strength — the seniors agree to a snap, seated on a bench, with a Traveller’s palm tree with its fan-like leaves dominating the backdrop. In the frame are Sadanand Krishnan, Janakiraman, Munuswamy and Rajarathinam. Rajarathinam requests their names be mentioned. They ask the watchman, Zakir Alam, to pose for the camera with them. He is told politely that all the 15 members of the group cannot be mentioned; only those in attendance now. He had also reeled off what they were doing in their active first innings — in other words, the organisations they had retired from. He hoped the report will chronicle that, and was politely told that would not help the report in any manner. He himself is proud to mention a zillion times that he worked with Sarvodaya Sanagam in Thanjavur.

The afore-mentioned snatch of conversation revealed something about being a senior removed from the everyday bustle of life and those still stuck in it. The former want to be heard; and hanging out with those at the same life stage is their best bet of finding listening ears. The rest of the world just speeds past them.

And to have those conversations with the peers, they need a cosy park — the tea shop stopped working for them many decades ago.

How the benches are placed does matter. This park at Bhagat Singh Road does not have the best of seating configurations — the long concrete benches are placed side by side. Considerable turning and craning of the neck are required to face someone who has their jaws moving. But the park making up for this in other ways, in fact in many other ways, the senior gang patronises it.

Facing benches and benches placed in a circular configuration are conversation-friendly. Senior gangs anywhere would lap it up.