Water hyacinth saves lives at an abandoned quarry in Chennai Metropolitan Area

What you see in Ottiyambakkam is straight out of Lawley Road in R.K. Narayan’s delectably imaginary, pint-sized but variegated universe, Malgudi. In a post-Independence, post-colonial environment, efforts to recast roads in a native mould, specifically names, a populist obsession that continues to this very day and minute, reach Malgudi with Sir Frederick Lawley’s statue being removed intact from Lawley Road before the renaming of the thoroughfare. After the statue has been lifted off its footings, fresh information about Lawley’s immense contribution to Malgudi’s growth surfaces, causing a change of heart. The mood now is: Lawley Road should continue as Lawley Road and the British official’s life-size statue live on in Malgudi. 

Superimpose that idea upon the abandoned Ottiyambakkam quarry, where a carpet of green woven with water hyacinth spreads across the waters.