More on Woodlands Drive-In
With nostalgia I read the article written by Mylapore Venkata Shasidhar – Woodlands Drive-In: A Restaurant That Became a City’s Memory (MM, Vol. XXXVI No. 3), May 16, 2026. I agree with him and would like to add a few points.
1. Favourite dishes were the crispy vadai and rava idly.
2. We could exchange a handshake, smile or strike a conversation with the famous singer P.B. Srinivos who would be there. He moved to New Woodlands on Dr. Radhakrishnan Salai after closure of the drive-in.
3. From the third to fifth year while studying engineering, soon after getting the hall ticket for our semester exams, we friends, used to meet at the drive-in to exchange notes, discuss expected questions and the strategy to be adopted in studying for the exams.
4. Twenty years after leaving college, around 50 engineering students of our batch met here and from then onwards we have been meeting regularly at some resort or the other. This is our 47th year but Drive-in Woodlands is still green in memory.
5. In 2004, at Venus restaurant in Muscat, I happened to meet Mr Bhat, a former employee at Drive-in. He recalled that all the employees were given a free pass to watch the movies released by Gemini Studios.
I thought of sharing my experience at the Drive-in Woodlands with your readers.
Arumugam P K
arumughampkabali@gmail.com
Watch out if you are visiting Elliots beach
I am a senior citizen and I go to Elliots beach almost every day along with my wife for an evening walk, hoping to catch the cool breeze and uncontaminated free air.
There are two walkways in this beach, one with a smooth floor and the other one a little less smooth. We chose the second one for our walk.
On the beach there are hundreds of shops selling food and other assorted items with several plastic chairs around each shop. In addition, there are more than a hundred stray dogs looking for throwaway eatables. Further on the walkway there are some pushcarts selling various products including eatables and frequently two-wheelers are driven on the platform itself. There are well designed cement benches, which are often occupied either by vendors who have spread their wares on them or the stray dogs lying on them, leaving less space for the visitors.
As one walks on the pathway, it is difficult to see the seawater, as the view is blocked by the numerous shops in many places.
On May 15, 2026, as I was walking on the walkway with the pace that a senior citizen like me is capable of, two dogs were chasing each other and one of the dogs suddenly dashed against my leg in high speed, as a result of which I fell down on my knees and found it difficult to get up. My wife and some passersby helped me up and gave me a lot of unsolicited advice.
While one of them advised me to sit on the bench for some time, others told me to drink some water, walk with a long stick and not walk without being accompanied by a youngster. The final advice was that I should avoid Elliots beach for walking, as the place is crowded with shops, pushcarts and stray dogs.
After relaxing for a few minutes, I limped back to my flat and reminisced on my fall – violently hit by the stray dog. It reminded me of the incident I witnessed a few days earlier, when two young girls were sitting on the cement bench eating some food while two stray dogs were standing near them, looking at the food. Embarrassed by this, the girls started walking and the two dogs followed them with a third dog joining in. The girls panicked and started running and were chased by the dogs. A few alarmed passersby drove away the dogs and the girls quickly left Elliots beach.
Several people who have travelled around the world have opined that Elliots beach is the most beautiful beach in the world. However, while it would remain naturally beautiful all the time, it should not be unnaturally marred by the numerous shops, thrown away eatables, stray dogs and hawkers. It is a million dollar question whether Greater Chennai Corporation would take any steps to maintain its natural beauty!
When I was discussing my experience on Elliots beach with one of my elderly friends, he said that one should look at the positive side instead of being obsessed with the negativities. He further remarked that we should be grateful to the Corporation for allowing only stray dogs and not monkeys to roam around on the beach!
N.S.Venkataraman
H-119, Flat 2A, Ramaniyam Samudra
33rd Cross Street
Besant Nagar
Chennai 600 090
What’s a Summer Vacation for, Anyway?
There is a particular kind of silence that descends on Chennai in April and May. Not the poetic, misty silence of hill stations or the contemplative hush of a library, but the practical silence of people refusing to step outside unless absolutely necessary. The sun, meanwhile, behaves less like a kindly celestial body and more like an over-enthusiastic industrial lamp that has forgotten the concept of moderation.
And yet – this is when the school calendar declares, with great optimism, that it is vacation time.
Most teachers and parents in the city are only a few weeks into the new academic term when the word “summer vacation” starts appearing in conversation like a promised land. Those outside education assume it is a long holiday filled with leisurely mornings, travel plans, and the noble pursuit of doing absolutely nothing. Those inside education, meanwhile, are usually trying to finish portions, revise portions, complete worksheets, update records, and simultaneously remember where they kept their own sanity.
Somewhere between these two perceptions lies the truth – slightly crumpled, mildly sunburnt, and carrying a steel waterbottle.
There was indeed a time when summer vacation meant something closer to a pause. A proper pause. Teachers could step away from school registers without feeling as though they had forgotten an organ at home. Children disappeared into grandparents’ houses, mango-sticky afternoons, cricket in the lane, and the occasional “don’t come inside, you’ll bring the heat with you” warning from elders.
But modern vacation has developed a new personality.
In Chennai today, even during “break”, WhatsApp groups of schools remain remarkably alive. Circulars arrive with cheerful urgency. There are reminders about “light reading”, “holiday homework (creative, not burdensome, of course)”, and “a quick update of pending documentation”. One begins to suspect that the vacation was designed primarily to give everyone time to catch up on the work they were doing during term time!
And yet – hard is not the same as impossible.
If one thing Chennai teaches you (along with how to survive without stepping on a hot pavement barefoot), it is adaptation. The real challenge of summer vacation is not the heat alone, but the art of protecting it from being quietly filled with work. Because between lesson planning and Excel sheets, there is supposed to be something called rest. A slightly neglected concept, but still valid.
Of course, “rest” in Chennai is a flexible idea. It may include:
Sitting directly in the line of a fan and calling it “recovery”.
Strategically planning all errands before 9 a.m. as though one is conducting a military operation.
Drinking tender coconut water and believing it counts as hydration, wellness, and emotional support all at once.
And the classic: promising oneself that this year, summer will be “productive but relaxing”, a phrase that usually collapses by the second week.
Walk through any neighbourhood in the city during peak summer and you will see the unofficial curriculum of the season in action. Children cycling at 6.30 a.m. with the seriousness of early commuters. Parents negotiating with ice cream vendors as though they are part of essential supply chains. Apartments humming with the faint ambition of “summer classes” that somehow resemble school, but with marginally more boredom and better snacks.
And yet, there is something deeply important about this pause – even if it refuses to behave like a pause.
A Chennai summer vacation is not just a break from school; it is a break around school. It is when children learn that boredom is not an emergency. That afternoons can be slow without being unproductive. That a well-timed trip to a relative’s house can feel like a full cultural expedition. That mangoes are a legitimate food group. And that “I’ll do it later” is sometimes a seasonal philosophy.
Which brings us to the slightly uncomfortable question raised in conversations about school calendars: are vacations truly designed for rest, or merely arranged for convenience?
As one observes Chennai’s rhythm – where heat, humidity, and harvests of mangoes quietly dictate daily life – it becomes clear that the academic calendar does not always negotiate with geography. The city does not pause for summer; it simply adjusts its posture and survives it with grace, ceiling fans, and complaint.
Perhaps that is why summer vacation here feels both essential and slightly ironic. It arrives at a time when stepping outside feels like a calculated decision. Yet it also becomes the only socially accepted permission to slow down.
And so, we return to the original question: What is a vacation for, anyway?
In Chennai, it is not escape. It is not luxury. It is not even rest in its purest form.
It is a negotiated truce between heat and habit, between work and weariness, between the calendar and the human need to occasionally do nothing without justification.
And if one manages, in between the worksheets and the WhatsApp reminders, to sit under a fan with a plate of sliced mangoes and absolutely no guilt at all – then perhaps, just perhaps, the vacation has done its job.
Priyanka Soman