Chennai from the air

Most international flights from Chennai (Madras) leave after midnight so this trip (with all the within-India hopping that I'm doing) was the first time that I got to see the city from the air.

Marina beach looks clean, wide and gorgeous. That blue-striped building in the foreground is a metro station. There must be a new metro line that runs alongside the beach (the metro line didn't serve the beach when I was in college). The cluster of dots near the ocean are fishermens' boats -- the boats provide one of the few places to snatch a bit of privacy in a crowded city and were (still are?) a primary hangout place for young couples with no money.

The IIT Madras campus is still an oasis of green in the middle of city, although it seems more built-up than what I remember:

The bridge over the Adyar (river) is picturesque with lots of greenery still preserved -- that must be an awful lot of real estate bribes that some unheralded bureaucrat turned down:

Madras is so pretty that I might want to live here!