Walks decoding neighbourhoods have a thick cladding of facts, usually ferreted out of yellowing documents. Emotions come into play only as the accompanist, never the guitar-strumming, crooning frontman. Facts and feelings meet without getting entwined. A walk titled “Chetpet” takes a detour from this standard format, having almost every fact infused with emotion. Designed as a community-led walk, that infusion is not just acceptable, but desirable.
Authored by Yein Udaan, a non-profit in the education sector, this walk is still softly trodden, being just two outings old. In October 2024 and for Women’s Day in 2025, the walk was conducted in collaboration with Madras Inherited.
Ashmitha Athreya, lead storyteller and head of operations at Madras Inherited, observes that her organisation imparted to the Yein Udaan team, largely composed of members from an “invisible” part of Chetpet, an understanding of what makes a walk stick in the head long after the shuffle of curious feet had died down; how to delineate the route and integrate storytelling into it. “This is structured as a cultural walk. Community history is central to it. It is a sharing of stories about the community,” Ashmitha explains.
A snapshot of the Dhobikhana in Chetpet on March 26, 2012.
Photo: R. Ravindran
| Photo Credit:
RAVINDRAN R
Last week, a diluted version of “Chetpet” was organised off the cuff for The Hindu Downtown. It was led by those who derive their identity from this Chetpet, which lies on the northern side of McNichols Road. Symbolically, on the leeward side, if one is aware that on the opposite side lies the upscale Harrington Road with its grid of car-lined avenues and a scatter of educational institutions whose uniform, parents would give their right arm for their children to wear.
On this side, invite yourself to Jaganathapuram, Brindavanan, Mangalapuram and MS Nagar, low-income neighbourhoods with a majority of homes battling poverty on an everyday basis, measuring success by how well they scraped through the long day. The average monthly income of the households here fall in the range of Rs. 4,000 to Rs. 8,000, remarks Vedika Agarwal, founder of Yein Udaan, which runs three after-school learning spaces for children in the community with a kindergarten unit thrown into the mix. Vedika adds that in a significant number of homes, the men fritter away the family’s earnings on alcohol, and some of these men also shirk work, placing finances under further stress. Domestic violence is rife. And back home from school, children are faced with an unsafe and inconducive environment for studies, Vedika elaborates. This side of Chetpet is served by three Corporation schools and one government school, a majority of them not heard beyond these neighbourhoods.
An old typewriting institute at Jaganathapuram in Chetpet.
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Special Arrangement
The wider world has little use for this lacklustre piece of Chetpet and it stays largely in oblivion. This section draws outside eyes for its Dhobikhana, the second oldest in the country having been established in 1902 as the “Madras Municipal Dhobykhana”, its foundation stone laid on December 8 that year by Colonel Sir George Moore. Even this attention is short-spanned and seasonal, usually unfurled around Madras Day, and with the shifting of the news cycle, this Chetpet gets buried again deep in a mass grave of headlines.
In addition to this walk, a documentary-film Chetpet by Yein Udaan is an attempt at presenting this Chetpet with its suppurating wounds, as also the efforts to apply balm to them through education.
Four of the guides on this rustled-up walk (E. Karthikeyan, R. Madhesh, M. Rohit and D. Vennila) are residents of Chetpet from the cradle. Madhesh and Rohit — who have entered collegiate education — have benefitted from Yein Udaan’s after-school learning programme. Another beneficiary, Karthikeyan is older and wiser to the ways of the world, and his banter along the way includes working as a Home Guard in Chennai and regular employment with a residential construction major. In their spare time, the three youngsters serve Yein Udaan as volunteers. Vennila is employed at the non-profit as social worker for the last three years.
And the fifth one is Vedika Agarwal. The Yein Udaan founder is an outsider holding a “green card” in this Chetpet by virtue of her work, one that brings a rare empathy to its children. Given her privileged background, Vedika’s decision to carve out a career in this urban slum with social fractures has left people in her circle and outside surprised as well as impressed. Her work rooted in what comes across as a deep care for the children of this area (watch her TED talk at KC High in 2023 on YouTube), insiders instinctively treat her as their own. She is ‘Vedika miss’ not only to the the nearly 350 children currently at the three after-school learning centres, but also to their parents and grandparents. Due to Vedika’s popularity in these neighbourhoods, the walk moves in fits and starts, much like a drive in rush-hour traffic on nearby Sterling Road and McNichols Road, being interrupted by exchange of pleasantries.
Vedika points to what are line houses where optimisation of space is at play. Part of a row-house format or not, most houses across the four neighbourhoods are matchbox-sized: from the outside, one can see how cramped the space inside would be. In dysfunctional households, such living spaces disperse tensions between father and mother instantly to the children. Vedika and her team take it upon themselves to engage with such families in the interest of the children’s studies and development. And that often means having tough conversations.
In Jaganathapuram, one has a glimpse of the Dhobikhana. With one phase under renovation, the entire Dhobikhana has come under a veil and is now off-limits. The renovation extends beyond the workspace to include living quarters. Vennila notes some of the families have moved out temporarily, and some others are staying on, having found rental accommodation elsewhere within the locality. She adds that in another part of the locality, what was a market (loosely called “fish market”) was pulled down to raise a facility for those in the traditional laundering business to conduct it.
Vennila reveals that during the two walks, a nonagenarian-lady familiar with the Dhobikhana dwelt on the daily grind of the families that depend on it for sustenance. Entire families are engaged in this work, the children pitching in before they leave for school and after they return home. Vennila notes that those working in the Dhobikhana constitute just one segment of residents. Among the rest of the populace, a majority work as daily wagers.
Another stop is an Yein Udaan learning centre, located on the first floor of a building and it has been taken on rent. Vedika volunteers information about the space: previously, a school (Lourde Nursery) functioned for over two decades up till the pandemic struck, which proved its death blow. The pandemic led to changes in topography, Vedika goes on, pointing to slightly bigger houses, some of them small apartments. Rendered jobless due to the fallout of the pandemic, some residents sold their properties. Vennila notes the presence of an old typewriting institute — Chetpet Typewriting Institute, said to be five decades old — provides a sense of continuity.
At the afore-mentioned first-floor learning centre, children have their noses buried in books. But a break is round that corner, when those same noses would be buried in plates of snacks. Vedika remarks these are healthy eats made at homes of Yein Udaan staff, taking turns. Twenty-four out of 28 staffers are from the community. The payment they receive for making these eats augments their income; and resources are ploughed back into the community. It is a practice of circular economy, she adds.
What follows is a brief stop at Ambedkar Playground which sports a football turf; and some of the children from the after-school learning programme, including girls, are being coached by members of a non-profit, Life Is A Ball, that uses sports, particularly football for empowerment. Vennila remarks that decades ago, this Chetpet would have a regular taste of gangster violence , recalling an incident she witnessed as a seven-year-old from behind the half-open doors of her house. Thirty-seven now, she observes the area is a far cry from that reality, being peaceful. “Decades ago, residents seeking to keep youngsters from falling into bad influences would organise kabbadi tournaments,” she shares.
The walk ends where it began at the Yein Udaan learning centre on McNichols Road, a facility whose exterior with its brick design leaves one in no doubt about its former life. It was the Chetpet police station before the personnel moved to a well-appointed facility on Mayor Ramanathan Salai. The old building functions as an Yein Udaan learning centre.
