Dei Poromboke! Participate in the Madras Poromboke Quiz, get to know Chennai better

If you thought that the word “Poromboke” was an insult in Tamil, you would have not been called out until recently, since it is generally believed to mean “useless”. After the Chennai floods of 2015 however, environmental activists are trying to reclaim the word, which actually refers to land that is meant for shared or public use, or commons land. Recently, a satirical music video focused on the word to highlight the loss of common spaces in Chennai as a key reason for the floods. And now, environmentalists are launching a quiz on the environmental history of Chennai called the Poromboke Quiz. The Poromboke quiz is among the many events organized at the Madras Literary Society in Chennai on October 15. Chennai-based environmental activist, Nityanand Jayaraman says that the event aims to inject lost value to Chennai’s common heritage, whose importance was most felt during the floods last year. “Mostly Madras Day quizzes are about tracing Madras’ built heritage. We are primarily focusing on the intersection between the built and the unbuilt structures – through which we would be tracing Madras’ environmental history. So basically, how Chennai has changed over the years,” he said. “We would like to reclaim this dirty word and to bring under spotlight the pieces of land that have the ability to save the city from natural disasters, but have consistently been undervalued,” he added. Just as with Poromboke land, the Poromboke quiz is also not being claimed by any one individual or group, says Nityanand. Anybody can volunteer to provide ideas, inputs and suggestions to make the quiz work better. People interested in participating in the quiz, which is open to all age groups, can register at Poromboke blog.