Once power centre, Jayalalithaa's Poes palace turns haunted mansion

CHENNAI: Tightly shut doors, a dimly lit portico and deafening silence. These have turned J Jayalalithaa's opulent Poes Garden residence into one of the spookiest places in Chennai.

When TOI made a late night visit to the house, guards at the portico where a portrait of Jayalalithaa is kept, said the place was so eerie that nobody would want to stay here for long. And we soon realised they weren't lying.

The state government is considering proposals to declare it a memorial. But, for now, about five months after Jayalalithaa's death and the imprisonment of two other high-profile occupants, V K Sasikala and J Elavarasi, the famous Veda Nilayam, No. 81, Poes Garden resembles a haunted mansion. It remains under tight security blanket, most people on duty are from private security agencies, and no one ventures beyond the guard room at night.


Basic maintenance work is done, but there are issues over payment of salaries to long-time employees of the house, said a guard. Within weeks after Sasikala left for the Parappana Agrahara jail in Bengaluru on February 15, her kin stopped coming to the house. "Many don't feel comfortable staying there at night, and some have bigger houses in Chennai," said another man on night duty.