Bridge at the edge

The road does not climb - or drop, if you will - when you go across this bridge and yet, there is a feeling of leaving something behind. Heading out south of the city, the Marmalong Bridge (before it became Maraimalai Adigalar Bridge) marked the end of Madras in the early '70s. All on a sudden, there were no buildings, more greenery and one could see clear across for a very long distance. There was the other bridge over the railway tracks at Guindy, but by then, the city was far behind.

More than 30 years later, the Maraimalai Adigalar Bridge can be thought of as just another point on Mount Road; although there is still some greenery beyond the bridge, straight down to the Raj Bhavan, the buildings on the right proclaim it a part of Chennai. Still, it was almost 300 years ago that the first bridge was built here, so give us some time to believe it is not the city's boundary any longer!

Pro bono bridge

According to legend, Thomas Didymus - Doubting Thomas, as he is also known - was martyred somewhere on Parangimalai, or the hillock known to us as St Thomas' Mount. That hillock was south of the Adayar river, which made it slightly inconvenient for the Europeans - the Portugese initially, but also the British later - who were predominantly based further north of the river. There were several bridges fording the Adayar, but it was only after Coja Petrus Uscan built the Marmalong bridge connecting Saidapet (though it was not called by that name, most likely) and Little Mount that access to the township of St Thomas' Mount became much more convenient.


Coja Petrus had settled in Madras barely three years before he had this bridge built. He was quite well off, having been involved in trading between Madras and Manila, where he was based before moving to Madras in 1723. The Marmalong bridge cost him 30,000 pagodas (Rs.100,000), not a small amount in 1726. He did not stop with that; he also gave 1,500 pagodas as a corpus towards regular maintenance of the bridge - that gesture goes a long way towards proving that the bridge was truly built "Pro bono publico".


The Marmalong bridge lasted for over 200 years; it was only in the 1960s that the bridge we use today was built - rather, looking at an old photo of Marmalong bridge, it appears that the existing bridge was strengthened and new lanes added on. The bridge itself was then renamed Maraimalai Adigal Palam. I haven't been able to find too many photos of the old bridge, but here's a painting that supposedly has the bridge in the background!

Porky colours

It is a wonder how anyone who grew up in Madras could ever get around to eating pork. When I was in school, the only pigs we saw were the ones that lived on the garbage dump at the 'Lake Area' near Valluvar Kottam. The stink of the garbage could be smelt one bus-stop away and if you were game enough to look at the mounds of muck, you would see an army of pigs gambolling through them, blissfully content with their surroundings. The only feature that distingushed them from the piles of black filth was their mobility. If they stood still, they would completely merge into the background, for their hairs and skins were blackened by constantly rooting around the garbage.

It was therefore a challenge to any butcher to sell pork. Buying it in the form of sausages or ham from Spencer's was the chosen mode. As pork gained popularity, other 'cold storage' outlets began to stock it, but even then, it was always the processed meat. The only shop that I have seen selling fresh pork is this one near the Saidapet bus stand on Mount Road. For RGS, the positioning was, and continues to be, important. This shop does not sell any old pig; it is 'white pork' that is sold (and it says so even more explicitly, 'white pig meat', in Tamizh).

This shop came to mind after a question at the Madras Day Quiz - What are the ingredients of Chinnamalai Pork Curry? This shop is close enough to Chinnamalai to have been the bespoke supplier of the main ingredient of that dish!

For the record, Chinnamalai Pork Curry (as described at the quiz) is made with pork, mango, brinjal and drumstick!

Not in session

In most commonwealth countries, the lowest level of the justice system is the Magistrates Court. Most of the cases that come up here are of the type where the presence of a judge is necessary to carry out the bureaucratic processes that are a large chunk of legal proceedings - remand of suspects, swearing of affidavits, issue of warrants - all those little bits of paper that add up to the might of the law.

Chennai has 26 Metropolitan Magistrates; 24 of them operate out of fixed offices and 2 are 'Mobile Courts' - a large van that travels around within the Court's jurisdiction, taking justice to the people. Between them, they cover all the police stations in the city, though it might take quite a while to figure out how exactly they are connected - if you have the patience to do it. This building in Saidapet houses 7 of the 26 Magistrates (the biggest chunk is with Egmore which has 12 and George Town takes up the remaining 5; both Mobile Courts are attached to Egmore)

At 8 am, the buildings are shut and sleepy. As the time for the courts to begin their day approaches, the pavements wil be filled with all kinds of touts, lawyers, police constables, small time criminals hoping to either advance or retard the wheels of justice. I don't think it is a fun place to be unless you have a good idea how to work the system - or if you're just there to take pictures!