Port view

Was supposed to visit the Dare House today for a meeting. With the ODI between Australia and India happening at Chennai today, the traffic arrangements would have meant a roundabout route and having to spend more time on the road than usual.

Luckily, we agreed to have the meeting over video-conference. Which meant that I could not look out of the windows of the Dare House to the Chennai Port today. This photo from a couple of years ago, from the terrace of Dare House, will have to substitute!

Means of transport

One of the yards of the Port of Chennai. Of course it is a sea-port, which is why you can get to see a boat and a ship in this picture. Because some of the berths are just behind the Chennai Beach suburban railway station, you can see a passenger train passing by every once in a way. The port has a railway track running inside for goods trains; and there is one waiting here. There are also the container trucks bringing in the goods to be shipped out

Apart from all these, there is a batch of passenger cars in the yard, waiting to be loaded on to ships. From this distance, I'm unable to make out if they are made by Ford, or by Hyundai - or is there any other car making plant in Chennai that ships out its products through the Port?

That's the limit

If you remember, the site of today's Dare House was, in 1758, the site from where Comte de Lally shelled Fort St George with his cannons. Today, it is not possible to see the Fort from there; but 250 years ago the only structures between the cannons and the Fort were the dwellings of the first 'Blacks Town' that had come up outside the north wall of the Fort. The cannons therefore had a pretty clear view of the Fort and pounded it with their fire. It is likely that the British were unable to retaliate - the Fort's guns, having to fire through the embrasures would have sent the cannonballs just over the houses of the Town, maybe even hitting some of the taller structures. That would have put them at a considerable disadvantage against the field cannons of the French, which could carve a parabola over the Town and into the Fort.

At least that seems to be the reason why the British decided to clear the area around the immediate vicinity of the Fort; it was now a major prize and had to be made unassailable. So, an esplanade was created, extending up to the point(s?) where de Lally's cannons were based (Sure, they did not account for technological advances...) and the new Blacks Town was created beyond those limits. A survey in 1772 fixed the boundaries of the esplanade by raising six obelisks, each rising about 20 feet high.

Only one remains; maintained by the Murugappa Group, it is painted in the same colour scheme as Dare House is; that is one reason why the passer-by will miss the inscription on the granite slab at its base, saying "Boundary of the Esplande, 1st January 1773"!

(click on picture to enlarge - the inscription can then be seen)

A bit of France?

Having posted a few pictures taken from the top of this building (the docks, Esplanade and the High Court), it is time that I revealed the building itself. So here is a shot of Dare House, the corporate headquarters of the Murugappa Group, one of India's oldest and most respected business houses. There was a time 250 years ago, when the French under Thomas Artur, comte de Lally, apparently camped at this site. That was during the siege of Madras in 1758, when the site was used as a base to mount cannon attacks on Fort St. George. But that's not the reason why the location is named 'Parry's Corner'. And it is not a corrupted spelling of the French capital city, either.

The story of Thomas Parry and his businesses, most notably in partenership with John William Dare, and how those businesses came to the family of Dewan Bahadur AM Murugappa Chettiar is far too rich and fascinating to be contained in this post - so I'm not even going to try. While Thomas Parry's name lives on in the name of one of the companies of the Murugappa Group, his partner is remembered in this building.

But all this history does not stop several people from referring to the junction of NSC Bose Road and Rajaji Salai as 'Paris Corner' - or sometimes even insisting that it is 'Paree Corner'!