The Sad Story of Raja Kalvai (Waterbodies of Chennai - 60)

In the good old days, the current suburban areas around Tambaram were fertile villages. The region had an incredible number of waterbodies. Raja Kalvai was one such water body.

Have you ever heard about Raja Kalvai? Possibly, not! It's dead long back. It was perhaps the largest channel (Kalvai in Tamil) of the region in those days, and people named it Raja Kalvai (meaning the King among the channels).

It was a surplus channel of Selaiyur lake and was also a link channel between Selaiyur lake and Tiruvancheri lake. (Well, I hear you! You wonder where is Tiruvancheri lake. That's a different sad story.)

Even till the early 2000s, the channel was not disturbed, mainly because of real estate restrictions, thanks to the Airport of IAF, located nearby. However, after the relaxation of rules, the mushrooming real estate industry thoroughly eliminated this royal waterbody.

Even nowadays, every year during the monsoon, the channel hopes to reincarnate itself. But, it could do nothing. The real estate giants have claimed all its original areas. They are in the form of apartments, stores and even a temple. It cannot reclaim its sovereignty ever. 

This is the sad story of Raja Kalvai. There are many such untold or forgotten stories of water bodies, which none of the region's history books talks about.

Happy travelling.

Note: As per a report, there were about 650+ waterbodies in Chennai region till 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 had been shrunk badly. In Chennai, there are tank roads without tanks nearby and lake view roads without any lake in the vicinity. There is a high possibility that even the few water bodies that we have today might vanish in the near future. I thought of visiting the currently surviving waterbodies of Chennai and its suburbs and write about them in my blog as a series.