Pallikkaranai Vaidyanatha Swami Temple Pond (Waterbodies of Chennai - 46)

This pond is located on one of the busiest roads in Chennai, Tambaram-Velachery Road in Pallikkaranai. Thousands of us pass through this place every day. We hardly notice this pond. Many of us do not even know about its existence. How many of us are bothered to worry about the sorry state of this tiny waterbody?

The pond occupies an area of around 0.3 acres now. I am sure it has shrunk to half of its original size. It has clearly encroached from three sides, and the remaining area is poorly or hardly maintained. The locals use this merely as a place to throw garbage. Thus, a supposed to be beautiful pond is turned into a drain.

The pond belongs to Vaidyanatha Swami temple, which is located next door. When I decided to pray to Lord Vaidyanatha seeking help to protect this pond, I could see the board in his temple seeking financial aid.

Happy travelling.

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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