Vanakkam, 2009!

Raised hands, with palms joined in greeting - the traditional gesture that goes with saying 'Vanakkam' in Tamil Nadu, (or 'Namaskaram' / 'Namaste' in other parts of India). On the Marina beach, this marble representation of the greeting welcomes the sunrise every day, as it will tomorrow, too - one of the first spots of Chennai city to see the sun rising in the New Year.

Here's wishing everyone around the world a happy, prosperous, peaceful, healthy and fulfilling time in 2009!

As old as the hills

This is one business that began as a sort of 'mail-order' trading and then went on to become one of the best known department stores of the Bangalore-Madras circuit. The mail-order part of it was incidental. In the early days of the postal system in India, the postmen were called "runners" - some of them traversed a route so long that the postmen must have had to run nonstop to do it all in one day. One such route was the Mettupalayam-Coonoor-Ooty trip. Sometime at the turn of the 19th century, the 'runner' on this route was Muthusamy Mudaliar. Earlier runners had no dobut fulfilled the requests from the houses on the hillsides to bring butter and other dairy products up from Mettupalayam, but Muthusamy Mudaliar went a step further and opened shop at Charles Villa, Coonoor, in 1905.

With the demand for products like butter being greater from British households (the Indians presumably churned their own), the first plains location for Nilgiri's Dairy Farm was Bangalore, in 1939. By 1945, the store had expanded under Muthusamy's son Chenniappan and was offering a range of products, including ice-creams and confectionery, apart from the flagship dairy and bakery products. With a pasteurising plant in Erode, it was not too difficult to service both Bangalore and Madras, so in the 1960s, Nilgiri's products began to be sold by the Madras Farm Agencies. It would be another two decades before the first full fledged Nilgiri's store was opened in Madras, in 1981.

That store on Radhakrishnan Salai still remains the only Niligiri's run operation in Chennai, along with the Nilgiri's Nest hotel; the other stores in the city are all franchises. Actis, a PE firm took a 51% stake in Niligiri's two years ago to help the chain expand from its current 30-odd stores (in 2006) to about 500 stores by 2011. Not bad for a runner's business-on-the-side!

Riverside park

This is one of the grand ideas of Chennai that has been shaping up for a while. Billed as the first ever eco-tourism project in the state, the core of the idea is to restore the ecological balance of the Adayar creek and estuary area. The river itself has been considerably polluted; in many places, unchecked growth of slums has taken over the river's course, choking it still further. The Adyar Poonga hopes to showcase the potential of the river as a dynamic ecosystem, at least in the 'last mile' of its course.

While that may not be technically correct - the Poonga will be fed by a canal that runs off from the river just where Adyar joins the sea (does that make it a creek?) and will therefore be impacted by the coastal tides, too. In any case, once it is done, the Poonga will have restored this diverse ecosystem, which will in turn motivate similar projects along the Adayar's course, or along other rivers. But the scope of the Poonga is vast, by the standards of conservation projects in Chennai; the first phase, which is the public face of the Poonga, expected to be completed by December 2010, will cover about 58 acres, which is roughly a sixth of the 358 acres around the creek/estuary to be covered under the Ecological Restoration Programme.

For now, all you can see is some very basic information on the flora and fauna of the region; at this time of the year, there are quite a few migratory waterbirds that are nesting on an island just inside. With an opening time of 10 am, the Poonga's promise of visiting a forest and getting back to Chennai by breakfast time seems a tad out of reach just yet!

The man himself

With so many instant celebrities around these days, the term 'living legend' has been much abused. In the case of Shri S.Rajam, however, it is the most apt description of the man, because any other attempt to describe him only serves to narrow the definition. He is a painter, but more than a painter; a singer, yet more than a singer; composer, writer, teacher, researcher, a man of many parts, each of which would be a fulfilling life by itself. Yet, going into his 90s, Rajam shows no sign of slowing down. The voice may not hold out for a full concert today, but it is still clear enough to hold down the listener. The eyes sparkle with life, with the joy of being; they are sharp enough to discern, without spectacles, the subtle shades that he colours his paintings in. The energy that he radiates will liven up even the most weary pessimist.

With teachers like Ariyakudi Ramanujam Iyer, Papanasam Sivan and Madurai Mani Iyer, Rajam's musical talent blossomed early; at thirteen, he began giving public performances. By the time he finished school, he had not only given several stage performances but had also acted in three movies - the first being 'Seetha Kalyanam', produced by Prabhat Studios of Pune (R.V.Shantaram, one of the founders of Prabhat, was trying to offset the losses incurred by the first Indian colour film, Sairandhri and offered produce a Tamizh film with the same sets and props). Rajam played Rama and his sister Jayalakshmi played the role of Seetha - this casting offended many and they strongly castigated the father, Sundaram Iyer, for allowing his children to play the roles of husband and wife! (Incidentally, that movie also had Sundaram Iyer acting as Janaka, while two more of his children, Saraswathi and Balachander, acted as Urmila and as a child musician in Ravana's court, respectively)

Maybe that was a factor in Rajam moving onto art; he joined the Government of Madras School of Arts and Crafts. With his immense talent, he completed the six year course in four years. He developed his own style, blending his love of music with classical art to give visual form to musical notes, picturing the flow of several ragas and of course, countless portraits of Carnatic music composers and Tamizh poet-saints across the ages. That his work is still very much in demand is evident from the stack of semi-finished paintings on his table!

Listen to Shri Rajam talk about life in those days or watch him sketching in a notebook.

A picture of the trinity

Everybody knows of the Trinity. No, not the ones of religion, but those of Carnatic music. And if you know of them, I'll bet that even as you read this, you will be seeing them sitting together, Dikshitar with his veena, Thyagarajar and Syama Sastri with their tamburus, the former facing us and the latter showing us his left profile. I'm sure I've won the bet, for that's how most of us, especially those who haven't read up on Carnatic music to any great extent, have known of this trinity. Even on the (separate) postage stamps released to honour these individuals, the images of Muthuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastri are exactly the same as you'd see on the pictures of the Trinity.

So why is Thyagaraja different? Part of the reason could be due to the growing influence of a versatile gentleman named Rajam. In 1961, when Thyagaraja's stamp was released, he was around 42 years old; while he was well-respected for his music and his art, the latter hadn't reached that stage of universal recognition where everyone knows the painting but has no clue as to the artist! By 1976, when Dikshitar was accorded the honour of a postage stamp, the image was the one that Rajam was also basing his work upon, for that meant quick recognition. In 1985, when the stamp on Syama Sastri was being prepared, Rajam's painting was used as the basis for the stamp (but credit was apparently not given). The story goes that an unknown artist had begun work on a portrait of Sastri, but could only complete it till the neck before composer's death. It was Rajam who gave it a body and, in the 1940s, brought together the three greats when the Music Academy commissioned him to paint the Trinity.

Since then, Rajam has made literally hundreds of the Trinity paintings; last week, when some of us had a chance to visit him at home, he showed us a pile of the same paintings that he was working on, among others. As he sketched an outline for us, it was indeed an honour to see the image of the Trinity coming into shape before our eyes!

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.

Stopped clock

If it hadn't been for a small dial on the map, it would have been easy to go past this clock tower without realizing its existence. Unlike the ones on White's Road or at the end of Radhakrishnan Salai, this one is along the side of the road rather than at an island in the centre. In that aspect, it is more like the one at Doveton, though the latter has its own little island patch. Lacking any such build-up around it, this clock tower stands at the corner of Tiruvottiyur High Road and Sannithi Street, looking rather unkempt and forlorn.

Unkempt it is, alright. The three clock towers that have been written about earlier were all showing the correct time, even if the one at Doveton could have done with a coat of paint. This one seems to have had a recent paint job done on it, but that does not make up for the lack of functionality. Each face shows a different time; before anyone makes a claim that this clock tower shows international times, let me add that the clock has stopped running, too.

All told, the excitement of seeing the dial on the roadmap wore off very quickly. This is not one of the old world clock towers; the foundation stone at its base was in Tamizh, though the letters are indecipherable. From what can be seen, one would guess this tower to be about 30 to 40 years old; with the older ones working fine, age cannot be an excuse for its almost complete neglect!