Indo-German effort

In the fervour of the post-independence era, each of the 5 (at that time) IITs was set up with help from a different soverign nation. It so happened that Madras got the benefit of West Germany's bounty. As a result, here's a road sign that acknowledges the linkage.

Stretching it a bit, I'm willing to bet that Chennai is the only city in India that has so many streets named after foreign cities / localities: Delhi might have its share of personalities, but Chennai, I'm sure is ahead by a long shot - everyone knows Ho Chi Minh of the Delhi Marg, but who remembers the Orme in Orme's Road of Madras?

Bonn, of course, is different. Within the gates of the IIT Madras, going down Bonn Avenue has a charm that can't be replicated anywhere else!

Spotlight on Gandhi

Okay, so today is one of the days when this statue is dusted, washed, garlanded and generally decked out for people to come by and pay their respects. Maybe it was not a good idea to declare the day of the Mahatma's assassination as Martyrs' Day; the entire focus remains on the leader alone and memories of all the other freedom fighters, especially the thousands of nameless and faceless patriots, are pushed to the margins. On this day, almost everyone vies to demonstrate their faith in the Mahatma, and at prime time, too. There are the fringe elements, who would use the attention to either denounce the Man, or to publicise their pet cause. The police have wisely declared that any kind of gathering around the statue for more than a few minutes is prohibited and on days like this there is a small posse sitting in the shade of the statue to make sure there is no mischief afoot.

The statue itself was one of the earliest on the Marina, if not the first. Created by the versatile Devi Prasad Roy Chowdhury, it depicts Gandhi marching to Dandi to begin the Salt Satyagraha. The wide Marina in the background provides a calm counterpoint to the purposeful stride of this statue; surely, one of the more common images of Gandhi, say, spinning his charka calmly would have blended with the serenity of the beach and might even have been lost in it. The stride to the north is again symbolic; he is aiming for Fort St George, the fount of British rule in India. Even in bronze, he seems to be charging to throw them off again.

Maybe it was a good idea to declare January 30 as Martyrs' Day, after all. Any day so chosen would have been some lesser light's birthday; and then that bunch of supporters would have played up his contributions. Gandhiji can afford to share the limelight on this day - if only people would allow him to!

Theatre time

It is a rather strange amalgam that can be found within the grounds of the Government Museum Complex at Egmore. Of course, there is good reason to place the Art Gallery and the Museum together. But why would anyone want to throw a library into the mix? And having done that, to further spice it up by having a theatre included? Surely, there are good answers to these; in the meantime, we will take another look at a building that despite not being the first theatre in Chennai, is the city's premier stage today.

The Museum Theatre was inaugurated in 1896, but has its roots in the late 18th century Public Assembly Rooms which were functioning on the same site as far back as 1789. Theatrical entertainment in those days were on the lines of Greek plays; tragedies, possibly not unlike the family tear-jerker TV soaps of today. By 1830, however, the Rooms were hardly used and the Government stepped in to purchase them, in order to house the Collector's cutcherry (no, it has nothing to do with dicing fruit, but indicates a concert!). With a few additions, that building grew into the Museum Theatre of today.

Watching a play here is quite an experience. Firstly, one needs to get in quickly or risk being condemned to the side - wing - seats from where the stage can be viewed only at a 70-degree angle. Of course, the option of buying pricier tickets and taking one's place in the rectangle just in front of the stage is always open. Another reason for leaping and charging into the theatre (apart from one's interest in drama) is that the seats are not numbered, so it is first-come-first-served. The acoustics are excellent and the stage is well proportioned and provided for; it is said that the roof over the stage has grooves through which cannonballs were rolled to simulate the effect of thunder - that must have shaken the audience in their seats! Together with the ambience, one will leave with the senses sated.

The experience does not end there, if one was watching the last show of the day. As the audience comes out, it notices that the lights all over the museum complex are switched off; the museum security has locked the complex down for the night and it is now an eerie challenge to get to the vehicle and find that solitary gate through which the outside world can be accessed!

Life, in couplets

Inside every bus in Chennai - maybe throughout the state itself - is painted one of Tiruvalluvar's couplets. Having said that, it must also be added quickly that there is still some confusion over who this man was. The largely accepted version is that he lived in the 1st century BC, approximately 30 years before the birth of Christ. It is likely that he was born in or near Mylapore, but moved to the city of Madurai because the Pandian kings were great patrons of the fine arts, and a poet could not but be thrilled by the jocund company he was sure to find there. It is possible that his move to Madurai was occasioned by the need to give his magnum opus a much wider audience.

And the Kural (Voice) that he wrote has been the defining work of Tiruvalluvar; over time, the prefix Thiru, denoting sanctity, has been added to the work. It is as close as the predominantly atheist political partymen of Tamilnadu can get to the word of God; indeed, Thirukkural has been variously called 'Poiyyamozhi' (the word that does not lie) and Deiva Nool (God's book). Valluvar wrote about almost every aspect of the human condition, breaking it up into Aram (virtue), Porul (wealth) and Inbam (pleasure). With 10 couplets in each chapter, Tiruvalluvar gives over 38 chapters to Aram, 70 to Porul and 25 to Inbam. With 1330 couplets, it is quite easy to find a kural to describe any situation a person would find himself in, even today. And so the Thirukkural is used extensively; the couplets have been quoted in every opening and budget speech of the Tamilnadu Legislative Assembly and whenever the Union Finance Minister has been from Tamil Nadu, during the Union Budget also. Valluvar's birth year is also considered the start of the current era in the Tamzh calenders.

With so much riding on him, it is not surprising that he has been given a bigger, exclusive memorial space in Chennai, away from the hustle and bustle of the Marina!

Justice leader

Any talk about non-Brahmin movements in south India would usually place EV Ramasamy as being at the forefront of the movement. Periyar, as EVR was known, was certainly a tall leader of the non-Brahmin (and later, Dravidian) movement, but in the politics of eroding Brahmin domination, Sir Pitty Theagaraya Chetty was a generation ahead of him. The South Indian Liberal Federation was founded by Sir Theagaraya and Dr. T.M.Nair in 1917 as a body to actively promote the representation of non-Brahmins in civic and political bodies of the time. The Federation brought out a newspaper titled 'Justice', with Dr. Nair as its editor, and thus came to be known as the 'Justice Party'. Dr. Nair continued to serve as the editor until he died in 1919, involving himself in editorial and advocacy matters, leaving Sir Theagaraya Chetty to look after the organizational and political affairs.

Sir Theagaraya thus became the first President of the Justice Party, a post he held until his death in 1925. He had entered politics quite early, and served as a member of the Corporation of Madras from 1882 until 1923. As the head of the Justice Party, he led it to a thumping victory in the Presidency elections of 1920. When invited to form the government, he listened to an inner voice which told him that he was too old and his health too frail for him to be an effective Chief Minister. In any case, he was at that time the non-official President of the Corporation of Madras, the first person to hold this post. Through all this, his struggle was aimed at bringing down Brahmin domination, rather than that of the British. He must have been a staunch supporter of Britain's continued rule of India, for he was one of those awarded the title 'Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India'.

This statue, in front of Ripon Building, does not show the 'Star of India' unlike another statue of Sir Theagaraya Chetty. But then, the latter is inside the Panagal Park, bang in the middle of the locality that is named after him!

The mall that wasn't

For an old timer - a Madrasi - if I dare say it, of my generation, there was only one mall to hang out in during school years. Spencer's was for the oldies and was too forbidding to even contemplate 'hanging out'. So it was this place; by the standards of today's malls, Fountain Plaza would be declared a danger zone and contemporary mall designers would not hesitate to lay into anyone who insists on calling Fountain Plaza a 'mall'. However, nothing they say or do can deny Fountain Plaza (FP)'s place in Chennai's shopping history. It was the place to go for those who were too pretentious - or too far away - to visit Ranganathan Street for its bargains. FP had three long rows, with shops on either side, all of them opening out into an open air eatery: food court, if you will. While the first two rows were given over to rather reasonably sized outlets, the 'side street' was far narrower and the shops resembled rat-holes more than sales counters.

FP had its own charm. Madras has always been accused, rather unfairly, of being a city where no one understands Hindi. Anyone who has shopped at FP will not bear witness for such claims. That was one of the places in Chennai where Tamizh seemed to be a foreign language; and so it was exotic, to shop for north Indian fashions, gaze at the Hindi movie posters and video casettes and finally treat oneself to a 'chaat item' at Ajnabee. If you were not the shopping type, you could just walk into Jimmy's and clunk down 50p coin after 50p coin trying to outlast the Space Invaders, win at Race Car or any other such arcade game as took your fancy. In short, it was Ranganathan Street in Hindi, with a dash of the US of A thrown in at random.

On a recent Sunday, FP seemed a ghost of what it was a generation ago. Most shops had changed - and worse, were closed on Sunday. The eatery was empty. A couple of cars rolled into the parking lot, and rolled out again, bemused drivers trying to find a place that they passed by twenty years ago!

Quieter music

After all the energetic music of yesterday, a quieter music for today. The organ at St Mary's Church, in Fort St George. More explanations will be filled in later!

Spent the whole day taking part in the Chennai Bird Race 2009; therefore this post is being written in pieces! What follows was written a while after posting the photo!

The church was completed in 1680, and it got its first organ seven years later. I am not sure if it is 'early' or 'late' for a church to get an organ seven years after its opening, but it was more by accident than by design that St. Mary's came by its first organ. In 1687, Curtana, an East Indiaman under Capt. Anthony Weltden was lying in the Madras Roads, in all likelihood on the way to the port of Mergui in Siam to deliver a message from King James II, ordering all Englishmen in the Siamese service to leave at once, ahead of military action against Siam. The Curtana must have had in its cargo a chuch organ, which was of little use in the martial mission it was undertaking. Capt. Walden offered to sell it to the Fort Council for 70 pagodas; the Council, recognizing that the organ was worth much more, decided to buy it for St. Mary's Church. It was a good bargain, for the instrument was well used - and probably well loved by the congregation, too, for the French took it away with them to Pondicherry after they occupied Fort St George in 1746 and Sir Eyre Coote went to the trouble of bringing it back to Madras in 1761 after defeating the French at Vandavasi.

It appears that St Mary's did not have an organ in the interim. The Curtana's organ was probably badly damaged during its transits to and from Pondicherry, so there was much back and forth between Madras and England on the matter of procuring a new organ, paying for the cost of the organ and for its shipping - the churchwardens were willing to pay the £300 price for the organ, but wanted the government to arrange for free passage for an organist to come to Madras. It is assumed that the government let this request remain in limbo and thus there was no organ playing in Madras for a long while. It was in 1859 that the church got its next organ, donated by Sir Adam Hay, in memory of his son, Capt. John Hay. Towards the end of the 19th century, the church commissioned William Hill & Son, of London to build an organ; and so, in 1894 the first organ, made exclusively for it was installed at St. Mary's.

That one has now lasted for 114 years; it has obviously had several restorations, the most recent one was by Cristopher Gray, completed in 2007. It is said that when Dr. Richard Marlow, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge played at the re-inauguration of the organ in 2007, St. Mary's Church was packed like never before!