I’m in Chennai to speak at a function and as I drive down Mount Road, I know it’s got another name now, but Mount Road it will always remain to me, and as I drove down that long, very busy road that ends at the St Thomas Mount, I saw what I’ve always been awed by; the tall, very tall LIC building: It’s nigh over sixty years since it came up, but still reigns supreme, standing tall and imposing, making a mockery of other buildings around.
Half a century is a long time. In certain cities you have to do a structural audit if even your two-story structure is over twenty-five years old and I’ve heard residents shaking their heads and telling each other, “We’ll soon have to pull down our building and build again!” “Why?” I ask. “It’s nearly twenty years old!”
I look at that twenty-year old building and think it was only yesterday I’d seen same building coming up, but in Madras, or Chennai, as they insist on calling the city, the LIC stands tall.
I remember visiting the city when I was a toddler and dad saying, “We’re going to climb up the tallest building in the city!” We didn’t climb, we took the lift and then reached the most spectacular view of any city I’d ever seen, because those days in India, the other buildings, just as tall, were I think, only the Kutib Minar if at all.
And the LIC still stands, as imposing, as spectacular as it was in those days long ago, which made me think as I drove down Mount Road about many of us; how long will we stand tall?
I see so many of us pushing hard to try and stand head and shoulders over others in our peer group, “Look at me,” they shout, “I’m tall!” “Where are you?” we shout a few years later. “I’m here!” “Where?” “On the ground! I fell!” “What happened?” “Bad foundation!” The LIC building I believe was built on Chennai’s very sandy soil. “No rock!” shouted the builders. “Dig deeper!” shouted the owners, and a very firm, solid foundation was laid.
I stop the car and look at the building, “Any message for us who seek to stand tall?” I whisper. “Yes!” says the busy building, it’s lifts running up and down, carrying hundreds of people to it’s offices spread all over it’s twelve or thirteen floors. “Make God your foundation and you’ll always stand tall..!”
