Madambakkam Lake (Waterbodies of Chennai - 55)

The waterbody that runs parallel to Tiruvanchery Road covers an area of about 80 acres, with Muthmariamman Temple at one end and New Grace Church called Madambakkam Lake.

Hold on! A much bigger lake spreading over 128 acres from Agaram Then Panchayat Office to Meikai Vinayak temple of Madampakkam is also named Madampakkam Lake.

It does not stop there. 87 acres of the lake that start near the Vengaivasal community hall till the back side of Ruby Garden apartments of Tiruvancheri is called Madampakkam Lake.

The little 6 acres of waterbody near Tellus Avenue is also called Madampakkam Lake.

What do you think? Are there four or more lakes in the city with the same name? Nope! It is a sad story of such massive encroachment, drastically changing the landscape.

Somewhere I read that the lake was sprawling for 200 acres originally, and now it shrunk. I deny that. In my opinion, the original size of the lake must be around 900 acres. Over 70% of the waterbody has been converted into schools, colleges, temples, churches, flats, and plots. This has been happening for many decades. What remains today is the lake divided by lands in between with significantly less water and a large amount of garbage.

This is not a dying lake; it's almost a dead lake.

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.