Those who travel on Velachery Main Road between Velachery and Pallikkaranai cannot miss this large lotus Pond. It has full of water with lotus flowers floating on it. Surrounded by varieties of trees and a pathway, it also serves as a park nowadays.

People refer this pond as Lotus Pond nowadays. Few people even refer this as Adi Pureeswarar temple tank, as they believe this waterbody belongs to that temple located on the other side of the road. However, it is not correct. The pond is named as Veerathaman Temple Pond. The temple that owns this pond is very small and is hidden amidst the concrete jungle.

The pond with a typical rural look is indeed well maintained today. There is no doubt. But that was not the case till few years ago. If you think this is such a huge pond that spreads across two acres, I would say you are not wrong. It is difficult to find a pond in this size in Chennai. Well, what we see is merely 10% of the remaining pond. Originally the pond covered an area of about 22 acres.

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 waterbodies 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.