Not NPR yet, but will get there

I must admit that I'm not a great FM radio person; for one thing, my commutes are too short to bother with finding the right station and settling down to listen to it. For another, most of the channels seem to do pretty much the same thing - Tamizh movie songs - so it is hard to figure out which channel I'm listening to at any time. But a lot of that changed with a phone call on Sunday evening - was most surprised that I was being invited as a guest on a live talk/phone-in show. So surprised in fact, that I didn't even properly register the name of the channel that had invited me!

When I got around to finding out, I learnt that 'Chennai Live 104.8 FM' was trying to break new ground. Launched in July 2008, the channel belongs to the Muthoot Group and has been billed as 'India's first Talk Radio FM station'. I'm not sure about that, but inviting me as a guest is definitely proof of their desire to target the "evolved, intelligent Chennaite" . Therefore one didn't have to think too hard before accepting - I do like the sound of my voice and chances of being kicked out of the studio within the 30 minutes I had been given seemed slim. So there I was at 9.30 on Monday morning, sitting across the table and talking to a couple of very high-enthu people who looked like they'd be bouncing around if not for all the equipment that kept them tethered to the table.

Except for the headphones and having to break the conversation for some ads / filler songs, it was no different from, say, a conference call. Krishna and Bhavana kept the flow going, questioning without being combative and making sure that things didn't get too serious - the talk was about 'New Age Managers' and given the gloom all around, we could have easily become mournful - but the two RJs didn't let that happen. Great work, guys; you can be sure that I'll be tuning into 104.8 more often, now!

One more of those

There was a time when traffic on GN Chetty Road was a nightmare, but ever since they began building this flyover on it, traffic seems to have thinned out a lot. Maybe that could also be because Thirumalai Pillai Road was made a one-way street, emptying out from GN Chetty Road, about the same time. So was it all that was needed to be done to relieve the traffic congestion?

This photograph was taken a couple of months ago and it looks like it will take at least two more months before this flyover is opened to traffic. Will this flyover also go the way of the one on Usman Road? One hopes not; GN Chetty Road used to have a fair amount of tree cover at this spot. Almost all of it has been stripped away to make space for the flyover and the carriageways on its sides. At that time, there was some consolation in believing that the flyover would help make life better. It would be worse than criminal if it turns out that the solution to the traffic problem lay elsewhere.

And if that does happen, I wonder what the old man in this story (? Fact??) would feel. Or has he been devastated enough, already?

There was one, once

Continuing a bit on the theme of street names, I have to strike closer home. Cenotaph Road, near my apartment, is a short road connecting Mount Road to Kotturpuram. It is very likely that not too many people know what 'cenotaph' means - it is one of those exact words that is used very rarely. I don't think I've heard of it anywhere but with reference to the road in Chennai and in P.B.Shelley's poem 'The Cloud'. Unlike Shelley's Cloud, Lord Cornwallis must be silently fuming at what has become of his Cenotaph in Madras.

When it was first set up, the Cenotaph marked a significant limit of Mount Road, if not its far end altogether. The Cenotaph was a cupola housing a 14-foot high statue of Lord Cornwallis and it was set in the centre of an oval garden. This marked the outer limit of an evening's ride or drive out from Fort St George. For the residents of the Fort, it was a good way to pretend they were in London and the Cenotaph Park was Hyde Park, where they could spend the evening and get back to the Fort before it became really dark. In the 1800s, Cenotaph Road was merely one of the spurs from this park, going down to the Adayar river. Over a couple of centuries, Cenotaph Road became well known, but the Cenotaph itself has been scattered around. The statue of Cornwallis is now in the Fort Museum and it's last cupola, in the photograph, is at the entrance to Fort St George.

Of the cupola that was the centrepiece of the Cenotaph Park, there is no trace. Separated from its shelter, Cornwallis' statue is hidden away inside the Museum. And Cenotaph Road carries on, with just a faint memory of an empty tomb that once stood there!

To please the powers

Naming streets is probably the best way to keep memories of public figures - or events - fresh in the minds of a city's residents. All too often, however, the street name is all that remains in the public eye and the history behind the naming is forgotten (see Eric's comment here!). On top of that, the government at some time in the '70s decided that in the name of secularism, all caste references on street names should be done away with. And so we had some queer situations - Dr.Nair Road officially became Doctor Road, clubbing the co-founder of the Justice Party (from which both the DMK and the AIADMK are descended) with several others; Rangachari Road, Ranga Pillai Road and Ranga Chetty Road all became Ranga Road. Of course, many of those name changes were unable to take hold and several quietly went back to the names they were originally known by.

The politics - and sycophancy - of naming streets is not new to Chennai, though. It has been around ever since the city was born. If you don't believe me, check out the name of streets inside Fort St George; while names like York Street or Charles & James Street honoured the history of the throne of England, special care was taken to ensure a nod to the then reigning house. The House of Hanover already had the fashionable Hanover Square (and Hanover Street) in London named after it; the expatriates in the new city of Madrasapatnam went a step further - they combined both to name this street, ensuring subservience and fashion rolled into one, perhaps!

Seeing is believing

It is rather ironical that if you come here on account of the raison d'être of this institution, you may not be inclined to gaze upon its wonderful heritage buildings. However, you can take consolation in the fact that, given its record, this institution will enable you to do so when you leave its grounds after completing your course of treatment. That's kind of reflected in the motto of the Regional Institute of Ophthalmology and Government Ophthalmic Hospital: "To make the unseen - seen".

While Chennai is justifiably proud of its modern eyecare facilities, the RIOGOH can take especial pride in being the fount of them all. When it was established in 1819, the Madras Eye Infirmary was the second specialized ophthalmic hospital in the world, the first being Moorfields in London, which was opened in 1805. The Madras Eye Infirmary grew, and after being housed out of a couple of temporary facilities moved into these buildings on Marshalls Road in 1884. The first time I went in there was in 1981, when a friend had an accident that badly damaged his eye and the next time was a couple of weeks ago, to take some photographs for the blog.

On my first visit, I was too young - and in too much of a panic mode - to appreciate the heritage of this insititution. I will be back here very soon, for the Elliot's Museum of Ophthalmology seems to be something worth visiting!

Do you know?

Do you know what is special about today? I am sure there cannot be anyone reading this who does not know that today is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's 139th birth anniversary. Thanks to a slightly wacky film a couple of years ago, the Mahatma made a rather unforeseen return to the public - especially the younger public - eye. For those born a couple of generations after the Mahatma's passing away, Gandhi Jayanthi meant a national holiday, one on which the liquor stores remained closed and even the five star hotels wouldn't serve you alcohol unless you were a non-Indian with an all-India liquor permit or something of the sort.

Today is also the day on which a national ban on smoking in public places comes into effect. As is usual with so many pieces of legislation, implementation can be tricky - and some state governments have already let the Union Health Ministry know that they will not be able to implement this ban. While it is a good thing overall, the ban notification has some slightly wonky ideas (like empowering a boss to fine a subordinate violating the ban!); one hopes that the zeal to implement it in Chennai lasts for a really long, long while.

Alright, so you knew what was special about the day. Now, do you know what is special about this picture? Okay, I'm away from Chennai and 'making do' with the few photos that I have.... yet, this road has a very close connect with Mahatma Gandhi.... can you guess what that is?

Tailoring to your lines

Sometime ago, a writer in 'The Guardian' wrote that "Syed Bawkher.... must be the best tailor in Asia". That is debatable, surely; I can think of far worse all-expenses-paid assignments than hopping around Asia looking for the perfect suit. In fact, there was a time when it was the general opinion that the best tailors in the world were in Hong Kong. This was due to a large expatriate population there, who claimed they could get better suits in the colony than what came out of Saville Row. True or not, it generated enough word-of-mouth for Hong Kong to be seriously considered a tailoring hot-spot of the world. Soon enough, there was a profusion of 'Hong Kong' tailors in Chennai, including many who had no option but to add the words to their names to survive.

Survival became tougher as off-the-shelf trousers and shirts came to be more freely available; many tailors turned to jobbing for the readymade brands. Some sought out niches - movie costumes, school uniforms, only churidars - and managed to remain afloat. But largely, the whole business of trousers, shirts and suits moved to the readymade segment and custom - rather, 'bespoke' - tailoring began to carry with it a tag of exclusivity and extravagance. But the worry that a bad tailor would spoil the wonderful material has always been a hurdle to experimenting.

While that worry can be put to rest, Syed Bawkher will certainly be expensive; I remember a friend telling me that he paid the price of a decent branded suit just for the tailoring at Syed Bawkher's - the whole affair cost him nearly five times the price of an off-the-shelf suit. He became a convert (in spirit), for now he yearns to have an excuse to get another suit from Syed Bawkhers. In that, he joins me - getting one from them has been a desire for a long time and will probably remain just a desire longer still.

You probably know the deal - the first of each month is 'Theme Day' for the City Daily Photo bloggers. To see how the 164 blogs interpret the theme for October, please visit the CDP Portal.

PS: De-registered from the Theme Day for October, because I wasn't sure if I'd have an appropriate picture archived... guess I should have stayed on!