Coimbatore :
Tall stacks of tyres, a small board tucked in the middle of the mound, and a tiny temple announces your arrival on one of the noisiest roads here- Patel Road. What follows is a beeline of shops- that sell iron and steel scraps, chequered plates, steel pipes, iron rods, textile machineries, automobile spare parts, casting iron, carbon and alloy steel; and offers services like retreading, sheet bending, steel cutting, pipe bending, fabrication work.
A smattering of houses here and there and the rest is occupied by the age-old, rundown godowns and shops. Dust wafts in the air, noise of welding steel and iron rip through the ears and heat engulfs the atmosphere- but no one here seems to be complaining.
R Janardhanan, an iron scrap merchant, who has been a permanent resident on the noisy street for the last 40 years, quips that the situation doesn’t matter to him anymore.
“This was my grandparents’ property and I moved in when I was merely 6 or 7. I spend my time locked indoors and hardly step out because of the grimy air. The vehicle movement on this road is terrific and even if a truck passes by, you need to run for a shower. At dusk, you will be swarmed by mosquitoes. But I have got used to all this.”
Barring a few buildings that came up in the recent past, the rest of the street is lined with old structures. Two-wheeler cover manufacturer P Vincent, who has been selling products for the last 25 years in a dingy shop, tells us, “You won’t believe but this street used to have some of the worst traffic jams when I started out. This was the only road that connected people to North Coimbatore and was like a deadlock when the railway gate was shut. Thankfully, the situation has improved after the bridge came up as commuters don’t have to wait for the train to pass. On Sundays, a deadly silence falls on the street.”
Historian Perur K Jayaraman considers this street an important one that contributed to the industrialization and growth of the city.
“A majority of the roads in the Ram Nagar area took the name of freedom fighters. This was no exception. The road, rightly named after the Iron Man of India Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel around the ’40s, houses hard metal industries. Industrial development was at its peak once here and it’s no surprise that the government too came up with its MSME Development Institute on this road.”
source: http://www.articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Coimbatore> Iron Man / by P Sangeetha, TNN / December 29th, 2013