This innocuous building (below) on Lloyds Road/ Avvai Shanmugam/ VP Raman Salai may well hold within it the seeds of five localities of the city. The Madras Government Servants Housing Co-Operative Bank was once the owner of this structure and it gave birth to Gopalapuram, Lakshmipuram (Royapettah), Sriram Nagar (off TTK Road), Norton Street (Mandaiveli) and Ganapathypuram (Guindy). We sent photographer Surya Kumar to see if all these areas have anything in common. And sure enough, all of them are leafy neighbourhoods, exemplars of how housing colonies were once planned.
