William Satish, who often collaborates with me on Chennai photography, asked me if I recalled the major flap in the 1990s when radioactive material was dumped in the Cooum. How could I ever forget it? That was the week when I took up residence in the city, little realising how closely I would be involved in documenting its past then. And the Napier’s Bridge was the scene of action.
The news broke when the Indian arm of an American company, famed for oil drilling, with its office just outside Madras, reported that it was missing a certain quantity of two chemicals: Caesium-137 and Americium-beryllium. The first was radioactive and had made it to the news in 1986 following the Chernobyl disaster. The Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC) had imported these chemicals and handed them over to the American company, which stored them in its Madras office.
