Five years of showcasing chennai

When this journey began, we waded through the floods of 2015 as the entire city drowned in the downpour of a century. Homes were marooned, people thronged their terraces for food packets, swank cars were swept into the sea and a stretch of the Mount Road turned into a river near Saidapet. Lives were lost, the value of properties drowned but the spirit of Chennai survived and we reported.

As we gained a firm foothold over the next several months, Cyclone Vardah struck Chennai in 2016 -- uprooting trees, destroying lampposts as the city plunged into darkness yet again only to bounce back stronger. Since then, there have been severe droughts, more floods, scorching summers and mellow winters – Chennai’s weather trackers and bloggers bring them

When DT Next entered the city, Chennai Metro was a tourist attraction. Today, the chic blue coaches of Metro Rail criss-cross the city from Washermanpet to the Chennai Airport covering two of the most populous roads, Mount Road and Poonamallee High Road.

The city’s first pedestrian plaza in T Nagar has set the standard for the Smart City that Chennai is set out to become with the fashion district of Khader Nawaz Khan to follow suit.

The city and politics have never been separated and this came to the front when Jallikattu was banned in TN. The year 2017 began on a political note as Chennaiites, who had never seen a Jallikattu in their city in their lifetime, thronged the Marina in millions day after day to express solidarity with their country cousins, who were fighting for their right to play their ancestral sport. The unprecedented protests, that was largely peaceful and spontaneous, earned the city’s young and old a place in the history of the sport.

As we celebrate half a decade of existence, the city continues to battle coronavirus and its economic and social impact better than most states in the country. With over 90 per cent recovery rate and less than 2 per cent fatalities, the city’s health care system has successfully flattened the curve of the pandemic. Going forward, the city and DT Next can only look forward to better times in the coming years.