I studied at the Institute of Hotel Management and Catering Technology at the Central Polytechnic (CPT) Campus behind the VHS hospital and alongside IIT in Chennai. Its located next to the Film Institute at one corner of the CPT campus, next to he village of Kanagam on the road that runs along the IIT campus perimeter. This was in the late Seventies when everything South of the CIT campus was scrub jungle through which a very rough ‘road’ (where the Ascendas IT Park is located today!) led to the village of Taramani.

Today’s IT Corridor, then the Canal Bank Road, was then a meandering, very badly surfaced undulating road covered with potholes that essentially was the access road to Taramani along which a single bus used to ply at one hour intervals. The canal itself was an idyllic scene, curving towards the lattice bridge, with trees and plants growing along its banks, but already quite polluted. So it was that the students of ‘Catering College’ (as it was popularly known) had to reach the start of Canal Bank Road (now called Madhya Kailash after the temple complex which was not there then) by a certain time every morning to catch that bus! If not, you had to walk the distance, or hitch a ride with some kind soul on a bicycle or a motor-bike.

Returning in the evening was equally harrowing, so some of us used to walk all the way from the college to the Adyar bus terminus every evening (some great friendships resulted from the bonding during those walks last even to this day!). Even then, we preferredto walk through the CIT campus and along the (then) parallel road in front of VHS hospital to get to the main road, as Canal Bank Road was a desolate sort of road used only for the bus service to Taramani. Little did I realize that, over twenty five years later, I would work in a gleaming technology campus that is Tidel Park, and drive down that little used, pot-holed road every day to work on what is now the IT Corridor!