Enough water for adventure sports!

CHENNAI: If you could call them roads, everything would be hunky-dory in Tharamani. Students at the many educational institutions in the area quip that they could run adventure sports businesses here, marketing their venture as Chennai’s perfect off-roading venue. Jokes such as these are inevitably followed by a souring of the mood and animated complaints of their hardships.“Your timing couldn’t have been more wrong. Come here when it is raining and the water will rise till here,” said 20-year-old Arivu, holding his arm out at an angle that resembled a Nazi salute. “We have to get to college anyway, don’t we? So, we leave our phones at the hostel and wade through the water,” says the student of the Institute of Leather Technology.The suited young men of the nearby Institute of Hotel Management, Catering Technology and Applied Nutrition have it no better. Kini Prasad Pandurang, a Third year student says he and his classmates have to hold their shoes and other valuables above their heads and wade through around 400 metres of water that is at least waist-deep to get to their campus. “I will be finishing my course in a few months and the thought that I won’t have to come through this road again fills me with optimism,” he adds.Pandurang leapt deftly across a stream of flowing sewage before walking back into their college. Unfortunately, scholars and faculty of these institutions who have neither the age nor agility to perform such leaps of faith suffer.