...crazy Tassie doing dream park in Chennai!

"Tasmania's splendour flows from its subtle mixture of colours and textures and from the play of light between earth and sky. There are grander landscapes and broader heavens, but no where have I seen such breathtaking contrasts arise so naturally from the dialogue between mountain and forest, clarity and cloud, sun and moon. A person can disappear in beauty like this." - Arthur Rosenfeld Tasmania: Light at the End of the World Exhibition, 1991

Today is Joss Brooks' birthday. This crazy Tasmanian is 65 years old today, an age in which most Chennai men would retire to take life easy, read their morning newspaper, drink a slow beverage, give up their coffee, count their BP, develop fear of death and start to spiritual classes that they can't hear or comprehend any longer. However, Joss has been busy last few years developing a heaven for Chennai-vasis. He has been dreaming, creating and convincing us of the Adayar Poonga. 

Chennai's normal idea of park is a middle class convenient dream, consisting of korean grass lawns, few date palms, funny bushes of colourful croutons and a few flowering plants to complete the scene. The Chennai Corporation Parks have the advantage of the aesthetic sense of the hoary institution, with a mixture of unimaginative combination of tiles, pathways in strange shapes and water fountains and falls that defy all reason and logic. 

To people with such mindset, Joss has been addressing his idea of a park, local flora, rock formations, wooden bridges, rock benches, signages to educate people on the local flora and fauna, re-creating a forest on the banks of the adayar river that had piled up 40 years of garbage mound till he came along. Every day for the last couple of years, he has walked the banks of this river, from the ugly estuary where sewage of Chennai clearly indicates the human indifference to their living conditions up till the junction in the Adyar river till which the Government has granted him permission to develop a park, picking garbage (a few thousand lorry loads of it), shaping the landscape as it would have been in a natural forest space, planting trees and bushes, placing a rock here and a stick there, 'to allow the birds to perch themselves and shit', as he puts it, because, 'the most natural way of a forest formation is through the seeds that the birds shit'! 

All this is not new for him, in 30-odd years, he created a beautiful forest in one of the most barren lands in Tamilnadu, at Auroville. Anyone who has been to Pitchandikulam and seen the early photos and what has become of it now, will know what miracles this, 'gardener' (as he prefers to call himself) can do. What's new to him, is the indifference and insensitivity of the city of Chennai towards someone like him. Every step in the creation of this Poonga (despite the contract from a government not known for any environmental sensitivity) has been surrounded by controversy. The environmentalists were up in arms early on saying that the best way for a forest was to allow it to appear on its own (strangely they assumed it will happen on its own on 40 years of garbage mound!), they even managed a court order that placed severe constrictions on Joss' work. Then there was the rumour in civil society, by jealous 'friends' about how he has succumbed to a political design and he was being 'used' to evict slum dwellers by political powers and how his contract too was corrupt (Joss once dryly remarked that he may regain some respect in civil society if the next government puts him behind bars for awhile!). And as the work progressed, the bureaucratic strangle at every step of his way, rendering each day and week as a negotiating between the crazy Tassie to bring in the value of environmental awareness and the large government machinery wanting to reduce him to a civil contractor that he cannot be. 

The city almost succeeded in beating him up, it gave him a heart attack last month. But, his conviction and strength is rather deep and that has kept him going. He was back at work a week after undergoing a heart surgery to ensure that the Poonga was ready on schedule. 

Come Jan 2011, we will have a beautiful park in the heart of Chennai. While Chennai celebrates several Colonizers (the eyesore of Munro statue with its manicured lawns a telling sign close to the zero point of the city), the city may forget this gifted gardener who left the beautiful forest he created to come up and create this piece of oasis for all of us. But, generations will walk in this park (or whatever the Corporation will make of it eventually), sit silently in one of the stone benches and listen to the birds sing, watch the sunset amidst the skyscrapers that hang as its backdrop or just walk in the simple pathway around the Poonga...and if someone wondered 'wow! why can't other places be like this?', that would make Joss quite happy! he may consider his job done. 

Here is wishing this Tassie much strength and Peace and many more years of making dreams and dreamlike spaces! 

photo: Joss Brooks delivering the 7th Samanvaya Freedom Lecture, Aug 2009