Amrita Pushkarani, Selaiyur (Waterbodies of Chennai - 10)

Selaiyur is called the Tirukadaiyur of Chennai. The 250+ years old Abirami-Amritakadeswarar Temple is located here.

The temple has a huge tank that covers an area of around 0.25 acres. It is called Amrita Pushkarani. The tank must be as old as the temple. The images of personified rivers such as Ganga, Yamuna, Krishna, Narmada, Kaveri, Tamraparni, and others are found on the four sides of the boundary walls of the tank. It is depicted that the holy water from all these rivers flows into this tank. Unfortunately, although all these rivers flow into this tank, the tank is dry nowadays, thanks to poor maintenance.

Note: As per a report, there were about 650+ waterbodies in the Chennai region till the 1980s. Today, only a fraction of them exist. And most of those surviving waterbodies hardly have water, and even some of them that have water have been poorly shrunk. In Chennai, there are tank roads without tanks nearby and lake-view roads without lakes. There is a high possibility that even the few waterbodies we have today might vanish soon. I decided to visit the currently surviving waterbodies of Chennai and its suburbs and write about them in my blog as a series.

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