Assemble here!

If you were in Chennai last Saturday - the 13th - you could not have missed the inauguration of the new Legislative Assembly and Secretariat building complex. After 53 years, the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly met again within the Government - now named the Omandurar - Estate, having spent those years meeting at Fort St George.

It is the first Legislative Assembly in the country to be awarded the LEED-Gold Certification; that's not the highest level of 'Green-ness' for buildings. But it missed (or rather, opted to not go for) the LEED-Platinum certification for 2 reasons: using an air-cooled system for CO2 monitoring, which consumes more energy than a water-cooled system and having bright facade lights, keeping in mind security and aesthetic concerns.

But even then they can switch off the lights in the daytime can't they!

Three-card trick

Through most of the '70s, even well into the '80s, it was not uncommon to find cows and buffalos being led from street to street by the local milkman. Milk was fresh, straight from the udders and you could feel the warmth spread through the vessel as the milkman poured out your requirement. It was a leap, not merely of faith, but of several degrees of temperature, when Aavin began regular supply of milk through the city sometime in the '70s. Chilled bottles with candy-stripe tinfoil caps would be delivered at a milk booth, twice a day; folks from the neighbouring streets would have to come to the booth and pick-up their quota. Once you made a decision on how much milk you needed every day and how you wanted it split between the morning and the afternoon deliveries, you had to live with that decision for the rest of your life - or that is how it seemed to be.

Milk bottles gave way to half- and one-litre sachets; more choices came by. Toned, double-toned and low-fat varieties were added. More automatic vending machines sprung up. The gathering of housewives and servants at the milk booth of an afternoon gave way to aggregators picking up volumes on behalf of their customers; the new age milkmen, supplying sachets at your door, for a fee. With the state loosening its monopoly on milk in the late '90s, private dairies increased the choices available. Through it all, Aavin's milk-card remained a prize; with a discount of close to 15% being given to a card-holder, it made sense to buy a card. In the past, being allowed to buy one was the result of reams of documents and several 'inspections' and 'verifications'. You had to trade off the guarantee of supply (which the milkman was naturally very bad at) against the flexibility of your need (which Aavin seemed to consider an act of treason). And then the deal was "no card, no milk". But with Aavin simplifying the procedures significantly, the 15% discount looks very inviting. Even after the milkman's fee, you have something left over.

The dates for buying / renewing milk cards vary from locality to locality. Yesterday was our turn; our milkman came up and told us that there were new cards available at our booth, all we had to do was go there with proof of residence and we'd get our cards. And so, here I am, three years after having moved into my current flat, with the first set of my milk-cards!

Official craft

I am not sure if this was originally intended to house a government institution, or if that institution moved in there later. Whichever the order, this building, housing the headquarters of 'Poompuhar' - the brand name of the Tamilnadu Handicrafts Development Corporation Ltd - seems quite different from others of similar vintage along Mount Road.

Where most of the others - think Higginbothams, the State Bank of India building, the Gove Building, P.Orr and Sons - seem to show off their architectural splendour, the Poompuhar building seems to revel in its straight, box like lines. Despite all that, it is easy to make out this building is also one that has seen a lot of history go down the Mount Road!

White, black and red

No matter how many sleek cars come out, the Ambassador seems to have a completely impregnable niche as the car of choice for all officialdom in the country. Though Hindustan Motors has a manufacturing facility in Chennai, the Ambassador is built at their plant in Uttarpara, West Bengal. The first ever car to be mass-manufactured in India, the Ambassador was originally based on the Morris Oxford, but has had a few changes (that's right, just a few) in its design since the first Ambassador rolled out in 1948.

I am sure in much of the country's hinterland, the white Ambassador continues to be an enduring symbol of the government; and even within that, there would be categories, I guess - white Ambassador with pitch-dark windows would indicate a senior official, while one that includes a red beacon would probably be the pinnacle of babu-dom. On the streets of Chennai though, this is just another car, trying to use the extra fittings to get past the traffic faster!

For public good

For more than 25 years now, the state government has been dictating liquor preferences of the people of Tamil Nadu. Before 1983, the state had been tinkering with prohibition, moving back and forth from total bans to partial restrictions. In fact, during the 1970s, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat were the only states in India that had had total prohibition; Gujarat, as Mahatma Gandhi's homestate, still continues to drink under a cloak. Tamil Nadu was burdened by the legacy of the Mahatma's daughter-in-law's father (is there an English equivalent for sammandhi?), Rajaji who railed against the evils of drink. It took someone with the stature of a demi-god to lift prohibition and that too with a tear-filled request to mothers in the state to forgive him for doing so.

So came into being on May 17, 1983, the Tamilnadu State Marketing Corporation (TASMAC) as the exclusive wholesale supplier of liquor - other than the indigenous toddy and arrack - across the state. Since then, the whole system of procurement of liquor has been carried out inside a black box; most of the purchase is from in-state production facilities, 6 for spirits and 3 for beer. In 2003, TASMAC went a step further and took over the entire retail distribution network also, and shops with their bright signages gave way to these government green boards. The idea was to ensure there is no revenue leakage from 'above-MRP sales'; though the website gives the pricelist, the markup of a rupee or two is still made at the retail end. The TASMAC website also says that certain products are "procured through import from other states" - and therein lies the nub: everyone cribs about those import processes not being transparent, fair and equitable. The result - a thriving grey market, catering to those who want brands of their choice, rather than what comes to hand as the retailer puts out an arm to the shelves.

There are also very many who are perfectly happy with the retailer's choice for their 'cuttings' of a morning to help them get through the day; though the official timings are from 10 am to 11 pm, many of the shops open as early as 6 o'clock. This one, though seems to be one that follows the official timings!

Administrative block

The District Collector is arguably the most powerful government official in any district of India. The position was instituted by the British and was in many instances the de-facto ruler of the district; so his (for a long time - the first district collector was appointed sometime in the 1770s, but a woman in that position did not happen until the late 1900s) office not only reflected the awe-inspiring nature of his duties but also the prosperity of the district under his control. Considering that Madras was one of the earliest parts of the country to come under the control of the British, it is reasonable to expect that the Collectorate offices are housed in a building befitting that legacy.

But for some reason, the Madras Collectorate was a more workmanlike office; the first building exclusively for the District Collector of Madras was one that was constructed almost a century earlier; it had been built in 1793 for the use of merchants who could not be accommodated inside Fort St George. It was only after some renovations in 1817, when the Supreme Court of Madras moved to it, that the building was named 'Bentinck's Building'. It continued to house the Presidency High Court, after the Supreme Court of Madras was abolished in 1862. In 1892, after the Courts vacated Bentinck's Building to move to their own complex that the building took on the mantle of the Collectorate. It was used as such until the mid-1980s, when they vacated the building for it to be pulled down. The decision to demolish the building was taken in the mid-1970s, but the vanguard of Chennai's heritage movement managed to stave off the act for well over a decade. Once the Collectorate moved out, the building was literally left to rot. However, it didn't cooperate and after about five years of waiting for it to collapse, the official machinery took on that task itself - at it took them more than a year to do it, such was the solidity of Bentinck's Building. The only part of the old complex they left undisturbed was the last cupola that held the wandering statue of Lord Cornwallis.

In its place came up this rather unimaginative and uninspiring block. Even naming it after Comrade M.Singaravelar, that doyen of India's labour movement, has done little to create any feeling of awe, it just looks like an administrative block!


A picture of Bentinck's building can be seen on the Chennai Collectorate webpage.

What's in a name?

As far as aspirational names go, 'Ezhilagam' must be a serious contender for the top spot. This building is situated on the Marina near the Triumph of Labour statute and the MGR Memorial. It was built to house several departments of the state government and for a long while after its construction was complete, it was a kind of odd-man-out, a modern structure along a row of buildings largely in the Indo-Saracenic style. (The statue of Babu Jagjivan Ram in front was a much later addition, though).

Ezhilagam (எழிலகம்) roughly translates as 'the essence of grace'. Anyone will promptly agree that 'grace' is not a word that can be used to describe the functioning or response of any government department, anywhere in the world. Maybe the brief for the building asked for grace in design and construction; with what looks like a cactus at its crown, there was probably a lot lost in translating that brief!