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'Progress" comes to my village [contd]

Once the bridge over the creek came up 30 years ago and the Canal began to die, it was time to consign all these picture postcard scenes to history and embrace modern times. Muttukkadu is red-hot, real-estate today. Land is at a premium. No wonder it is coveted. No wonder too, that our controversy is rooted in land use.

Between half and one kilometre exists between Yellow Board, Jambodai, Kuppam and Colony,the four hamlets of Muttukkadu, in that order and set along the edge of a rough circle. All the land within this circle—on either side of the current ECR— has been bought up by outsiders and many weekend homes and farms have come up since the 1980s.

The main Hindu temple is the small Vembadi Vinayagar Temple ['Ganesh Under the Neem Tree'] at Yellow Board.It owns several acres of land in various parts of the parts of the village. In a straight line of sight between Yellow Board and Jambodai, and near the recent Dakshina Chitra, a fine heritage conservatory, was a small shrine without an idol,

where every Friday a drummer played for a half-hour. That practice has ceased but the shrine exists, quite ignored.

Further on, was a shrine to Pidari Amman, whom the fishermen worshipped. This got surrounded by properties bought by MGM DizzieWorld, an amusement park, in 1994. After a few years of conflict between MGM and the fisherfolk, who had difficult access to the temple, a compromise was reached and the villagers took away the idol to their own hamlet and built a small temple for it. From time to time, the villagers mutter that a few little-reported fatal accidents have occurred in the amusement park due Pidari Amman's curses at being dislodged.

Finally, we come to a major property of Vembadi Vinayagar, of about 3 acres lying in the Jambodai hamlet. The survey numbers are 108/9 and 108/10. These lie right by the sea and had till 1998, a stand of over 50 mature, grand, coconut trees. These lands have been historically assigned to Nagalathamman ['Goddess of the Four Seasons'].

Fishermen have worshipped here and prayed for their safety at sea and prosperity. And this is the 'temple land' that is the focus of an unresolved controversy.

In the mid 1990s, the MGM group of companies was buying lands to develop an amusement park [-as briefly noted earlier] and to build what is currently the Quality Inn MGM Beach Resorts. The group is known for its 'daring' entrepreneurial spirit. The founding patriarch, Chevalier Dr M G Muthu, is a well-known name in coal handling, transportation and more recently, in hospitality, leisure and liquor businesses.

A controversy now revolves around MGM Resort's use of Nagalathamman temple lands—which have become contiguous to its titled lands— for its commercial programmes. The Resort says they have lawfully leased the land from the Temple Endowments Dept. Villagers say, that a lease had been given for just one year—1996—which was only for enjoying the produce of trees and nothing more.    [NEXT PAGE]