Stories buried under concrete

The names Semmancherry and Pazhathotta Salai are akin to chewable capsules of information. Consume them, and there is an immediate glow of understanding in your head. Semmancherry on Old Mahabalipuram Road is rich in red soil, and hence the name. The locality still retains many open spaces, and this may help you identify the link straightaway. A street in Semmancherry is called Pazhathotta Salai (fruit grove street) and it has mango groves in its vicinity, helping you to make the connection.

Considering the degree of development on OMR, a few years on, these names can become abstruse. Today, in many parts of OMR, it is hard to see soil. And mango groves are being replaced with buildings at the rate of knots. The mango season has arrived, but it is no longer what it used to be in these parts. A recent drive down OMR convinced me of that.

As late as the 1990s, when I would visit OMR periodically, mango groves dominated the landscape along with casurina and cashewnut groves. Palm trees would also be found in good numbers.

These trees would offer a silent commentary on the wide diversity of soils found on OMR. Many sections of this road are characterised by pure coastal sandy soil. This is why casurina and cashewnut trees thrived here. A type of black soil (karisal man) is found in some pockets of OMR, and this soil is said to be extremely favourable to mango trees.

M Gopi, 27 years old, is a watchman-caretaker of a mango grove in Sholinganallur and has lived on OMR for 22 years. He believes mango groves established on parcels of land with black soil have done well.

“Eight varieties of mangoes were common. There was a rare variety called ‘sakarakatti’ . It would be the size of a big gooseberry and taste as sweet as sugar,” he says.

In some parts, there is sandy-loam soil, which probably explains why palm trees dotted the landscape impressively.

For me, these are the hidden stories of OMR, now lying hidden in concrete.