CHENNIA: It may be the second largest brackish-water lake in the continent, but the piles of litter were growing at such an alarming rate that it might have begun to compete with the lake. “Most people come here to drink. It’s as simple as that,” rues Satish, a fisherman who has turned to taking tourists to the islands on his boat after the tsunami washed away their fishing fortunes, “If only they didn’t smash their beer bottles, we’d actually manage to keep the place clean ourselves,” he adds. But come Saturday and the entire section of coast in and around the Pazhaverkadu fishing hamlet was dotted with students in blue T-shirts and caps, poking at the sand like treasure hunters. For the very first time in recent history, an organised clean-up drive had come to the coast of Pulicat, thanks to AARDE (Art and Architecture Research, Development Education) Foundation. Says Xavier, an architect who began the foundation two years ago, “We have been watching this natural coast being laid to waste by people. Finally, we have managed to bring young people to spend their time in reversing these actions.” Close to 160 students from the government schools in and around Pulicat and NSS volunteers from Government Colleges in Ponneri, landed up well before breakfast time and collected their clean-up implements with eagerness. When asked, most of the students had surprisingly never been to Pulicat before, “We have heard much about going down to Pulicat for a day of enjoyment but we never imagined that the effects could be this bad,” admits Vishal, a II year Computer Science student, as he tied his fourth sack of floating debris, brought in. While the high school students were confined to work on the beach, the college-goers were given more reach to travel to the islands by boat and clean up these remotely visited places.After spending over five hours cleaning up the shoreline at Pulicat, most of the students seemed frustrated than excited; tiredness aside, they realised that after all that work, they had cleared less than 15 per cent of the rubbish that clogged the area, “It’s like no matter how many cigarette bottles and chips packets we fish out, there’s always a hundred more,” rues Yogalakshmi, from the Government College. But, their resolve was admirable, “Though most of the students were tired out and were itching to return home, a few of them sought us out and promised to return next Saturday to help clean the coast again,” says Xavier.
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