School gate

This was early on a Saturday morning in May. Just after 7 AM. It was not the earliness of the hour. It was May, the season of school holidays and the reason for this space being largely vehicle-free. 

For the gate you see over there is the entrance to the Chettinad Vidyashram, one of Chennai's sought-after schools. It was founded much after my school days were over, so I am not able to bring up a school-boy's perspective of the kind of school it was. But I remember hearing about how it encouraged a whole lot of activities, within and outside the curriculum. There were horse-riding classes as well, probably channelling the connection the Chettinad royals have with turf clubs. The one thing that stood out about this school was that it had a large number of students (and staff, too) - almost in 5-digits, though I have not been able to validate that. 

The other aspect that is striking about the school is that it does not seem to be overly concerned about preparing students for the typical career paths (at least among its comparator schools) of engineering and medicine. The school does have special coaching streams for the IIT-JEEs and the NEET, but it seems more happy to let the children discover what they are good at and follow that lead. So much so that a list of the school's notable alumni has a larger proportion of actors, musicians and sportspeople than usual. Maybe that's the best indicator of the school's motto: "The Golden Mean" being put into practice!

 

All-round education

It might not sound like a big thing today, to have a society that is focused on educating boys and girls alike, but set up at a time when girls' access to formal education was minimal, this was a path-breaking effort. But P.S. Sivaswami Ayyar was such a path-breaking man. He started off with establishing a school for boys in his hometown at Tirukattupalli in Thanjavur, but he very quickly also established (rather, rescued) a girls' school in Madras, naming it after his wife. 

His 125th birth anniversary was celebrated in 1989 with the founding of a co-educational school that bears his name: Sir Sivaswami Kalalaya Senior Secondary School in Mylapore. A couple of years later, the Sir Sivaswami Kalalaya Higher Secondary School was also established in Mylapore.

Make that four. The society that he set up, The National Boys and Girls Education Society, which runs the three schools has set up The Radha Swamy Centre of Excellence in Mandaveli last year. This Centre is intended to offer experiential learning facilities to the students of the three schools, including their study of the performing arts, high performance training for table-tennis, special coaching for competitive exams and also a centre for Indic games. Which means this playfield in Mylapore will continue to be the place for the students to hone their skills in outdoor sports!

Music, not arms

The Doveton Group of schools in Chennai has under its management 8 schools in the city. The most famous among them is arguably the Doveton Corrie School for Boys in Vepery (though it is not called by that name any longer, if I am correct). The oldest school in this group goes back to 1855, but today, we are looking at a school that began in the centenary year of the Doveton Group of Schools.

In 1955, the Group purchased this piece of land in Choolai from one Howard Oakley. Of Oakley, I have not been able to find much, other than that he was the Patron of the Madras Amateur Photographers Society in 1932, reviving it after the post-War years. Anyway, Oakley seems to have disappeared from Madras after this sale and a Doveton Nursery began functioning here on July 15, 1955. For a long while, it was coasting along, taking in young children in the nursery and kindergarten, going on to include primary schooling as well. It may well be a feeder school to the others in the Doveton Group. It was in 2001 that, for some reason, the name of the school was changed to include Oakley. Today it functions as the Doveton Oakley Nursery and Primary School. 

One of the major activities here seems to be music. In And that brings us to the logo. When I first looked at it as I passed by, I thought it was some kind of cannon; given that John Doveton, the founder of the Group, was a distinguished military officer, the logo did not seem out of place. It was only after discovering the musical bent of this school that I took a closer look at the logo. And realised that clarinets and cymbals might well be mistaken for charging cannons!

Window wall

We have some idea of what would happen if walls had ears. But what if they had windows? I am talking specifically about the outer walls of a building, the ones that separate the spaces inside and outside. 

Here is an example. This wall is on General Collins Road, Vepery. And it is not a merchant's house or anybody's residence. This belongs to the Presentation Convent. 

I wonder how it would feel for the girls inside class to look out of the window and see the 'free world' outside - or, more likely, to be cooped up inside with the windows shut and imagine what is happening outside through all the noises that would certainly seep in!

 

Behind the wall

The Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd (the Sisters of the Good Shepherd) was founded in 1835 by St. Mary Euphrasia, (born Rose Virginie Pelletier) who believed that education should bring out the best in every aspect of humans. In the 33 years between her founding the Congregation and her death, St. Mary managed to also establish 110 convents in 35 countries, which has now expanded to 72 countries.

The Sisters set up their schools in many places. One such was in Madras, almost 100 years ago. Given that the Nungambakkam area was not a crowded space, it is possible that the school continues to operate from the same space it was founded in. For some time, it must have been a co-educational school; in the 1920s, there would not have been enough girls going to school to make it viable. By the 1960s/70s, however, Good Shepherd had become a girls-only school. We used to go past the school's walls on the way to our school, quite a distance away. Those days, the walls seemed to be 100-foot high, but I guess they'd have at best been 20-foot tall. At that height, it was impossible to find out what was going on behind those high walls. On the few occasions when we were allowed permission to enter Good Shepherd, it seemed to be the same as our school. But we were sure there was more hidden.

Not any longer, I guess. Going past the Good Shepherd a couple of months ago (the walls are considerable shorter than they then were), I found I could look right through to the grounds of the school. That relentless Chennai Metro has taken over a portion of the school grounds; the Sterling Road station on the proposed Purple Line (Madhavaram to SIPCOT) is to be built underground here. Thankfully for the children of the Good Shepherd school, their playground has been spared; one of the smaller buildings on the edge has been brought down. The girls can continue to enjoy their playtime - I'm sure the walls will come up again, soon!

Means, marks

At almost every T-junction in the city, there will be some form of Vinayagar looking out towards the road / path which forms the stem of the T. Someone once told me that it is because having this kind of junction invites trouble / evil eye / whatever coming straight down to the junction of the T and having a powerful deity there will frustrate the evilness barrelling down in a straight line. And who better than Vinayagar, the destroyer of obstacles?

This one is near the Bala Vidya Mandir in Adayar. Most of the 'muchandi Vinayagar's, as the icons at such junctions are called are just an alcove on the wall. This is obviously much more well developed. As I was passing by this morning, I noticed a young lad in his school uniform praying very deeply; apart from being Vinayagar, this is also Ganapathi, the divine amanuensis, so it is good for schoolkids to have Him on their side when they're facing exams. 

But because it was a schoolboy, I mis-read the name of this deity. The red board says it is "Marga Sahaya Vinayagar" or the one who helps you on your path, the means to your end. I was quick to read it as being the students' friend: "Mark-a Sahaya Vinayagar" - the one who helps you get marks! 

Mind your language

This is a throwback to the 1960s, or if you remember your history, to the 1930s. The first anti-Hindi agitations in Madras happened in 1937, when the provincial government of the Madras Presidency decided to make Hindi a compulsory subject in the schools. As long as the government was run by the Indian National Congress (with Rajaji as the Premier of Madras), the policy remained in place, and the agitations against it continued without a break until 1940. After  the provincial governments resigned in 1939, protesting against Britain declaring war on behalf of India, the compulsory Hindi teaching policy was withdrawn. 

The Constitution of India had set out a 15-year period during which English would be one of the Official Languages of the Union of India; a period during which Hindi would be strengthened to become the sole such language. As that 15-year deadline approached, there were protests in several non-Hindi speaking states, but none had the vehemence of protests in Madras. And so, despite the Official Languages Act of 1963 indicating that English may continue to be used for an indefinite period, the protests against Hindi continued. More about that for another day.

Recent attempts at making Hindi acceptable across all non-Hindi-speaking states have been met with suspicion. And so this slogan on a bridge in Chennai; I hope that the politicians are sensible enough to understand that we as a nation have thrived because of our diversity!

 

 

Valentine foundation

115 years ago, an act of love by the Maharanee of Rewa, was set in stone in Mylapore. Although it was actually founded almost half-a-century earlier, in 1869 by the Maharaja of Vizianagaram, the school was probably going through a tough period in the early part of the 20th century. Or maybe it was just that they wanted to expand the school and make the founder anonymous. Maybe it was just to formalise an arrangement that was started in 1869. 

Whatever the reason may have been, this foundation stone is 115 years old today. I don't think they would have celebrated Valentine's Day in those times (nor did they seek out cows to hug on this day, I don't think so). 

But gifts of love of this kind should be more than welcome even today!

Model school?

In 1742, Johann Philipp Fabricius, a German missionary, arrived in Madras from Tranquebar. Fabricius was the head of the Danish Tranquebar Mission, a Lutheran congregation and he moved to Madras to provide for the Lutherans of Vepery. It was this man who managed to obtain a printing press - which was seized from de Lally's Pondicherry in 1761 - from Governor Pigot after assuring him that the government's printing requirements would be given a higher priority than the Mission's.

Fabricius contributed significantly to the Mission in Madras. He translated a German version of the Bible into Tamizh, besides a Tamizh-English lexicon. For all those contributions, his name was bestowed, in 1898, upon the Lutheran Mission Middle School that had been set up in 1849. From then on called the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Fabricius School, it arguably most famous alumnus is R.K. Narayan, who joined it as a 6-year old in 1912. 

Narayan does not seem to have had much fun in this school, though. In his book Swami and Friends, Narayan has the boy-hero attending the Albert Mission School at Malgudi. Swami, however, gets to do things that Narayan would not have dared to: questioning the Scripture Master's scoffing of Hindu deities, or throwing the Headmaster's cane out of the window when it was threatening to come down for a couple of the juiciest. But let us not forget that Swami was a 10-year old doing all this, while Narayan had to deal with such instances much earlier in his life!

Track, field

Because today is the 120th anniversary of the modern Olympic games, here is a picture of a Chennai landmark that was instrumental in the birth of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA). Although India did not feature in the 1896 games at Athens, there was an 'Indian' who participated in the 1900 games in Paris. And then, for a generation, the Olympic games were of no consequence to the natives of India. It was in 1920 that Sir Dorabji Tata rushed in a team to the Olympic games at Antwerp - four athletes and two wrestlers. Thanks to that effort, Sir Dorabji was inducted into the International Olympic Committee. As a member of the IOC, Sir Dorabji made sure the selections for the 1924 Paris Olympic games were properly conducted, through the first Inter-State Athletic Meet at Delhi. 

The technical inputs for conducting the events was provided by Dr.A.G.Noehren who was then the Director of the YMCA. Thanks to the YMCA's School of Physical Education in Madras, Dr. Noehren knew what went into selecting athletes. The 1924 team had 8 athletes - and three of them were from Madras. It is likely that all of them trained at the Y's School of Physical Education, which has since become the College of Physical Education, with its campus at Nandanam.

The Chennai connection with the Olympics continues. One of the medal winners at the 2012 London games  - Gagan Narang - was born in Chennai, though he was a Hyderabad resident when he won the medal. Interestingly, the current President of the IOA, N. Ramachandran, is a Chennai resident. Maybe this year's Olympic games in Rio will see some medals coming to this city!

Driving school

The back roads of residential Indira Nagar in Adyar are usually traffic-free. They are therefore ideal for those getting on to a two-wheeler for first-time. A nearby driving school takes advantage of its location by having its students ride - or even start off by pushing the two-wheelers along these paths.

All that is nice, but one wishes that the instructor does better than to park his bike right in the middle of the crossroads!

Buddha

The seated Buddha greets you at the entrance to the buildings of the Great Lakes Institute of Management in Manamai. Are symbols associated with the Buddha ubiquitous across educational institutions? Or B-Schools? I know one which has a "Bodhi Tree" on campus!

Quiztime, again

Saturday afternoon, and it was probably the last big event of this year's Madras Week celebrations. The Murugappa Madras Quotient Quiz for school kids was held on the 6th. The Sir Mutha Venkat Subba Rao Concert Hall was packed - teams from over 250 schools took part in the quiz. 

The kids seemed to be having a good time. That's one of the enthusiastic team captains jumping up to get the answer sheet for her team!

The teacher's place

This stately bungalow sits away from the road, being both aloof and in the middle of the bustle at the same time. Much like its most famous occupant, who entered politics rather late in life, and was not too closely associated with any particular political movement. And yet, he was a significant enough politician to be made the first Vice-President of the Republic of India.

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, philosopher, teacher, statesman and the first Vice-President of the Republic of India rose from humble origins to become the first citizen of India. He is one of the two Presidents of the country who did not come through a political party or through the political system. Radhakrishnan's stature as a scholar of philosophy propelled him to several awards and appointments, including the Bharat Ratna. His birthday, September 5, is celebrated as Teacher's Day.

Dr. Radhakrishnan bought this property in Madras during his tenure as the Vice Chancellor of the Benares Hindu University, in the early 1940s. When his term ended, Dr. Radhakrishnan came back to this house, where he finished his masterful commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, which was published in 1948. But he didn't stay here long. With India becoming a Republic on January 26, 1950, Dr. Radhakrishnan was chosen to be the first Vice President and then went on to become the second President of the country. He returned here in 1967, and lived here until he passed away in 1975. The road - until then called Edward-Elliots Road - was renamed Radhakrishnan Salai in his honour. And yet, there are several Chennaiites who are surprised to learn that this was where the man lived!

Rust and ruin

These gateposts mark what was once upon a time an entrance to the palace of the Maharaja of Cochin. While the post on the right shows the Maharaja's ownership with the words "The Cochin House", the one on the left bears a plaque saying "Tullock's Gardens". They would have been put up when the Maharaja bought the property from Tullock, whoever he was.

The property was itself part of a much larger expanse, that of Dr. James Anderson. Over time, it seems to have been acquired by someone named Halliburton, for a map in 1822 marks it as such. A few years later, in 1837, another map names it Tullock's Gardens, or, as  Henry Davidson Love, writing about this, says ,"Tulloch's Gardens". Was it a printer's devil in Love's work (for the gatepost very clearly shows the 'k' in the name)? Or, was it a stonecutter's devil, with the mason mishearing the last letter?

Whatever that be, little evidence of Tullock or the Maharaja remains today. A small part has been given to the Asan Memorial Association. Kerala Tourism has set up a hotel in one corner of the property. However, most of the Maharaja's property is today used for housing policemen, with those quarters having been constructed many decades ago. They are not all rust, but certainly given an appearance of being a ruin - or getting there very soon!

Rust and ruin around the world can be very aesthetic, if photographed by the CDP bloggers. Go over here and check it out for yourselves!

Nucleus of a garden

This house and grounds have not changed since the time I first saw them as a school-kid, over 30 years ago. But in the 220 years or so since Dr. James Anderson built his house, the property has undergone several changes - and a lot of shrinkage. Dr. Anderson landed up in Madras in 1761, having completed his MD from Edinburgh, looking for a fortune in the territory of Fort St George. It took him a few years to be appointed as the Company's Assistant Surgeon at the Fort; that was in 1765 and over the next couple of decades, he rose to become the Physician General at Fort St George.

Dr. Anderson was keenly interested in botany. He set up the first botanical gardens in India, a 2-acre plot in Saidapet. That was not merely a hobby; the garden, more specifically called a nopalry, was intended to rear cochineal insects, whose secretions of carminic acid were the basic ingredient for carmine dye (used today in lipsticks and food colouring). These insects are native to South America, which meant that Spain controlled much of the carmine market; a situation unacceptable to the East India Company, which is why Dr. Anderson's nopalry was funded by them. The nopal cacti (g. Opuntia) are the cochineals' preferred hosts and with the nopalry, the East India Company was (probably) able to break the Spanish monopoly. 

With that, Dr. Anderson was as close to royalty within the East India Company. It was therefore no surprise that he was given a 110-acre grant of land in Nungambakkam. That grant covered the land between the Nungambakkam edge of the long tank - what today is Pycroft's Gardens - and extended all the way to the banks of the Cooum. (I am being a bit fanciful here, as I haven't really looked at any map from those years!). It was in these gardens, that Dr. Anderson built his second botanical garden - this time to grow mulberry bushes and silkworms. This was not as successful as the nopalry had been. Very early in the 19th century, Edward Clive (the 2nd Baron Clive) then Governor of Madras, had all the mulberry and silkworms packed off to Mysore - a move that over time led to Mysore being the home of sericulture research in India.

After Dr. Anderson's death in 1809, Anderson's Gardens was fragmented and acquired by various Company notables. This house, named after the man, on the road named after him, became part of the estates of the State Bank of India. Today, it lies in poor condition, used as dumping ground for the bank's furniture. A sad state of affairs for this house - to be overrun by worms and insects other than the ones its original owner grew!

For other school-kids who passed that way with me: No. Cochineal insects had nothing to with Cochin House being just a couple of hundred metres away.

School in the middle

As one of the earliest planned settlements of the city of Madras, during the 1730s, the designers of Chintadripet had thought of several amenities, including deities from the "old" city of Madras, for the convenience of its residents. However, they do not seem to have paid much attention to education - in the formal sense, as we know it now. It is not as if such schools were unknown; the 'Madras System of Education' was exported back to England from St George's School in the century before Chintadripet was a gleam on the banks of the Cooum. 

The oldest school in the Chintadripet areas is the 170 year old Chintadripet Higher Secondary School. This one in the picture is of a much more recent vintage. In the late 1940s, there was a need to expand one of the existing schools run by the Kalyanam Chetty family (who had funded it). It was then that Rao Bahadur Ganapathi Pillai, a Councillor of the Corporation of Madras, came forward and offered his property to house the school. He had only one condition: that the building should never be demolished. 

The construction of the times being quite solid, the building remains in fairly good condition. Even though it is crowded by its neighbours, the Chintadripet Middle School continues to run from this building - named "Ganapathi Buildings" after its benefactor!

Early schooling

In 1857, Lady Sybilla Harris, wife of Lord Harris, the Governor of Madras, made a donation of £1,500 to start a school exclusively for Muslims. The recipient of this donation was the Church Missions Society; a seemingly odd decision, but it somehow went through initially. However, it ran into rough weather soon. Lord Harris declared the the "...Christian cause shall no longer be kept in the background, but put forth before the people...". That was proof enough of its proselytic intent and several Muslim and Hindu residents petitioned the Secretary of State for India in London, Lord Stanley, asking for the school to be closed.

That petition did not result in any action. The school, named Harris High School for Muslims, continued to function in Triplicane. But the locals went ahead and ostracised the students and their families. A fatwa was issued to excommunicate the school's supporters. Somehow the school struggled on. The arrival of Edward Sell as the school's principal in 1865 probably cooled tempers for a bit. Sell was only 26, but already had a reputation for his Islamic scholarship and was able to steer the school through until 1881, when he stepped down. 

For several years after that, it seemed to be more an issue of egos; the CMS continued to struggle with running the school. It was only in the 1920s that they began thinking about closing it down. It was then that the Muslim Educational Association of South India (MEASI) stepped in and took over the management of the school. The first thing they did was to rename it. Unlike its contemporary in Royapettah, the Muslim Higher Secondary School in Triplicane makes sure it has nothing to remember its founders by!

Special agency school

In May 1872, Lord Hobart took over as Governor of Madras. Lady Hobart and he were convinced that the best way for impoverished Muslim families to improve their lot was to accept Western education. To this end, Lord Hobart established the 'special agency' system, whereby schools were to be established especially for Muslims. Spurred by the new Governor's enthusiasm, a school for girls was set up at Royapettah. The enthusiasm was infectious and within a short time, the school had outgrown its first location and had to encroach on to the grounds nearby. 

Humayun Jah Bahadur, a descendent of Tipu Sultan, came forward and gave over Shah Sawar Jung Bagh, his property on Whites Road to house the school. Lady Hobart herself chipped in with a personal donation of Rs.18,000 to the school. Her support for this institution would have helped it take great strides ahead; unfortunately, that was not to be. Lord Hobart died quite suddenly in 1875 and his widow had to return to England.

The school went ahead, however. Having started off as a primary school, it was very quickly raised to high school status. Hindustani and Tamizh were added to the curriculum, in addition to Urdu and English. Well into the 20th century, around 1945, these premises were home to a women's college, with 75% of seats reserved for Muslim women. Though the college was shifted out (and its administration changed hands) later, the school still functions from its Whites Road premises. Run by the state government, the Lord and Lady who helped set it up are remembered in its name - the Government Hobart Higher Secondary School for Muslim Girls!

Well placed

Of course there is little that one can teach Kotler about the importance of Positioning. Even then, it was a bit of surprise to find a copy of his textbook on "Marketing Management" in a bucket of to-be-washed clothes. Stranger so because around the area this was found, there is no management institute. Nor was there anyone around to claim ownership of this book, or the clothes. 

Maybe it is the caretaker of the Kodanda Ramar temple opposite who is storing his worldly possessions here. Must be a man of learning - and discernement!