The coast that made Chennai

Look out of an aircraft window as it descends into Chennai and the coastline is the first thing that catches your eye. A long blue-grey edge against the city, with the sea on one side and the sprawling city on the other. From up there, it looks permanent, almost as though the line where the land ends and the sea begins has always been exactly where it is today.Before Madras became a colonial trading centre, the coast was home to fishing settlements, and it was in this coastal landscape — between the Cooum and the Adyar and near the older settlement of Mylapore — that the English eventually chose to establish Madraspatnam in the 17th century, which grew around Fort St. George into the city we know today.The coastline that greets a visitor today is very different from the one that would have