Once a much loved spot, today the Adyar broken bridge is only a forlorn remnant

Remember super stars Madhavan and Suriya engaged in a fight with soda bottles and blood streamed faces, on a broken bridge, in Mani Ratnam’s Aaytha Ezhuthu? Or Ajith romancing Simran and Jyotika in a duet song on the same  bridge, in the movie Vaali?

There is a reason why this broken bridge is a favourite with South Indian movies: This is one of the very best views that captures the natural beauty of this city, which begins from where the sea ends.

This broken bridge is across the Adyar River, a slow water current beginning from the mouth of the Bay of Bengal and flowing parallel to the famous Theosophical Society. The winds from the sea, the setting sun across the city’s skyline, the green cover of the Theosophical Society, and the golden sands of the beach, all combine to give the best shot for a visual.

This bridge was built in 1967 and it partly collapsed a decade later due to strong currents of the river. The authorities did not repair the bridge and it soon became a favourite with those walking in the Theosophical Society campus.

The bridge is not easily accessible as one has to come from Eliot’s beach and traverse a kilometer long sand filled road, passing the fishing hamlets. So it remained pristine, neat and just as nature intended, quiet.

Even at the start of  year 2000, this broken bridge was a haven of solitude for a nature lover. The width of the broken bridge was slightly more than a railway track and spanned over hundred meters in length across the Adyar River, before it abruptly snapped  from the other side of the shore, at Santhome.

Early morning joggers would run on this stretch, to the rising sun  and the breeze from the sea and fishermen moving below in wooden rafts. The best part is that the broken bridge is in the middle of nowhere and so you see the traffic on Thiru-Vi-ka Bridge – that stands parallel to it. So right in the middle of a city bursting at the seams, this broken bridge was an oasis, not hassled by the frenetic growth of the metropolis.

Many known film directors featured the broken bridge in their movies and that attracted college students in the city. Around 2005, beer cans and potato wafer covers began to be found around the area. The young crowd came in droves in noisy motorbikes, breaking the silence of solitude that nature maintained until then.

Today, the bridge is seeing another phase, as a haunted place, due to no street lighting in the dark hours and lack of road access. It is so deserted, with only a broken pebbled road leading to it and hardly anyone there save the birds and crabs.

But once upon a time, this was one of those few places where you could capture the natural beauty of Chennai, with the beach and river, sun and green forest in one sweep of vision.

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