Free school

I have not been able to find out who exactly TP Ramasamy Pillai was, but he seems to have been quite generous to the cause of education. He must have lived on General Collins Road, for there is a house on the road with his name on the gatepost. The house itself is set back from the road, and the large gates open into a driveway up to the house. Rather foreboding, it seemed to me.

The gates of this building are nothing like that; these are smaller, and much more inviting, the way a school ought to be. These are the gates to the Sree Thiruvoteeswarar Free High School, which is run by a Trust of the same name. That Trust was endowed by Ramasamy Pillai. and the school provides fee education to a rather limited number of students. Going by some of the websites aggregating such information, the school has anything from 15 to 37 students enrolled in classes 6 to 12. Those sites also say that the number of teachers range from 2 to 6. That no doubt gives the school a fairly decent teacher:pupil ratio, but with only two (or three) classrooms in the school, how would they accommodate so many grades?

Be that as it may, one hopes that the school, supposedly established in 1947, is able to hold its own in the years ahead!

Trophy house

Going along Raja Muthiah Road - earlier known as Sydenhams Road - you find yourself going past the Ripon Building on your left and then, as you continue northwards, you begin to get glimpses of the Jawarhal Nehru Stadium. Almost all sports are possible in this stadium, with its indoor and outdoor facilities. It also houses the offices of almost all sports associations in the state.

It is therefore not surprising that on the opposite side of the road, one gets to see several 'trophy houses'. With the stadium hosting several competitive events at different levels - you could also have your intra-company sports festival here - there is a demand for some kind of recognition for the winners. Cups, trophies, shields or plaques, the vendors along Raja Muthiah Road will be able to give you what you want. 

This building however seems to have taken the idea of trophy house a bit further; rather than the usual depiction of a godly figure - Krishna, Lakshmi or Murugan are the more commonly seen ones - the builder of this house seems to be celebrating sporting success. From its style, I would guess that it pre-dates the stadium - but then, Periamet has been the home of the South Indian Athletic Association for quite a long while, and maybe this house is paying tribute to that tradition, such as it is!

Big man

We have seen this man before. Here. He sits in the middle of the Peoples' Park, lording it over the grounds. This is the statue of Diwan Bahadur R. Subbayya Naidu, CIE who was Commissioner of the Corporation of Madras between 1937-40. 

Though there is not much that I have been able to find about his tenure. He seems to have been a civil servant dedicated to the Empire rather than to the people. An announcement in the Straits Times of Singapore on January 21, 1937, informs us that Subbayya Naidu was a former Agent of the Government of India in British Malaya - he certainly did get around. 

Until 2008, this statue, like the others in the park was all uniformly white. Whoever came up with this colour scheme probably thought of this man as a blue-blooded sahib!

Local mosque

Surely there is a more formal name for this mosque than just calling it Periamet Mosque. That's the locality where it is and so that is what it is called. Set up by leather traders sometime in the mid-19th century, the mosque has gone through a couple of rounds of restoration. 

Best is that you don't try to address it by its formal name, even if there is one. Chances are, nobody will know what you are talking about!