Landmark on the left

It started life as a small shop south of the 'periya gate' - the gated railway crossing between Kodambakkam and Nungambakkam - in 1952. Buildings did not go beyond the ground floor then and S. Chandrasekaran thought a small shop, with a sign over the entrance would suffice for the business he wanted to run. But he must also have been a thoughtful man, and probably one who was a little more learned than his contemporaries. 

He did not go with the norm of naming his store "Sekar Dresses" or "Sekar Clothing". In choosing the word 'Emporium' to go with his name, he was signalling his ambition to expand. Within a couple of decades, it did expand. More storeys were added to the building and it filled out a little more. For all the variety that Ranganathan Street, or Pondy Bazaar, across the Kodambakkam Bridge (the railroad was now traversed by a bridge, rather than a gate) had to offer, Sekar Emporium was the place to shop for residents of Kodambakkam and further south. 

It has grown to be a true emporium, offering much more than just textiles or dress materials. Cloth remains the mainstay, but the firm has branched off into groceries and consumer durables as well. All of those are around this building where it all started. The Sekar brand has not expanded geographically; with the third generation of the family now managing the business, they well might now. However, having stayed at this spot for over 70-years, it has outlived even the Liberty Cinema as the landmark for directions to Kodambakkam and beyond!

 

Moved

At the departure terminal of Anna International Airport, Chennai. Why would they need this kind of a message? 

Anyway, this is probably the only thing about Chennai that I cannot even begin to defend - our airport - so I will go with any explanation that is given!

Granny told mother...

The stuff was concocted by William Woodward, a pharmacist in England, sometime in the 1850s. For some reason, the mix of sodium bicarbonate, dill oil, sugar water and a bit of alcohol became a runaway hit with the babies and by 1876 it was so popular that Bill decided to register "Woodward's Gripe Water" as a trademark. His advertising at that time was based on the message that "Granny told mother and mother told me" - a theme that will be familiar to Indians from the TVC that was popular in the 1980s

In India, the brand is licensed by TTK & Company, which is headquartered in Chennai. I was sure this one had gone the way of many other old brands - does any baby even want gripe water any more, when all she has to do is to focus on her mother's iPhone? - when I saw this in a store. Somehow, the solitary bottle of gripe water only served to reinforce the point that the market for gripe water has evaporated. 

Can't help feeling that once this one goes off the shelf, the brand will be done for!

Icecream on my mind

Would love to have some of that now. Too bad it would have closed for the day by this time!

What the Dickens!

That is quite an unusual way to name a store selling silks. Okay, it doesn't restrict itself to just silks, what with the display of an innerwear brand on its shutters. That still doesn't give us any reasons for the store's name. 

Let us just guess that the founder-owner is a fan of Dickens!

Heavenly

This address, on 89, Radhakrishnan Salai, was once the residence of a judge of the Madras High Court. PN Ramaswami Iyer and his wife Rajam lived here. The house they owned here was named "Vinnagar". Loosely translated, it means the "place in the skies". 

The building that has come up in its place reflects a lot of the clouds, but can it ever be the place in the skies?

Really?

This building was one of the most visible faces of the Nilgiri's Dairy Farm - a business that was begun in 1905 when Muthuswamy Mudaliar, a dak runner, opened a shop at Charles Villa, Coonoor. Muthuswamy was probably servicing requests from the families up on the hills to bring up butter and similar products from the plains and he felt he could do better than to carry such stuff piecemeal. 

In 2006, after the business had completed a century, the PE firm Actis took a majority stake in Nilgiri's and franchised the brand. At that time, this store on Radhakrishnan Salai was the only one being run directly by the first family. Sometime last year, Prabhu Ramachandran, Muthuswamy's  great-grandson took this property back from Actis, through the Blue Hills Group, an investment company with interests in diverse businesses.

So now, the family of the founder do not have the rights to the Nilgiri's brand. The Blue Hills Group has bought, apart from this store, a few of the other stores as well. Having done so, they have brought a clutch of brands into their new chain. Many of them are new, and even seem to be homegrown in Chennai. But there is one large sign announcing this to be the "Waitrose London Supermarket" - though it seems quite different from that famous London supermarket!

Takeaway store

That is the theme for the month, but what is a store if it is not to take things away from? This one in West Mambalam doesn't stop with the usual coconut biscuits, murukku and peanut candy, but lets you know that it offers food for thought as well.

Though, with that spelling, one would be taking a big chance on what is going to be actually taken here!

First of the month, it is the Theme Day again. Head over to the collection of theme day pictures from CDP bloggers around the world!

Market model

In the evening of May 30, 1985, the city of Madras heard about a fire near the Central Station. By the next morning, the fire, supposedly set off by an electrical fault, had completely gutted an 85-year old icon of the city. More than 20 fire engines, including Simon Snorkel, had battled the blaze, but the combination of paper, cloth, vinyl and plastic made sure that the building was beyond salvage. Thus ended Moore Market, the go-to place for old books, records, clothes, pet supplies, exotic meats and pretty much everything that anyone in Madras might have a fancy for. 

In the closing years of the 19th century, an organized market for groceries, meats and other items was a dire need for the city's European (and westernized) residents. An earlier market, on Popham's Broadway, had been long marked down as being unsanitary, but no concrete action on an alternate had been taken. Enter Sir George Montgomerie John Moore, who had taken over as President of the Corporation of Madras in 1886. Though he had begun addressing this requirement in the early days of his term, the selection of a suitable site - which turned out to be a corner of the Peoples' Park near the Central Station - and clearing it up (there was a thriving Gujili Bajaar (okay, Guzili Bazaar), a grey market of second-hand, counterfeit and purloined goods operating there) took a while and it was only in 1898 that the foundation stone was laid.

Sir George was clear that apart from its functional requirements, the new market should aesthetically blend its architecture with its neighbours, Central Station to the east and Victoria Public Hall to the west. The architect chosen was R.E.Ellis and the market was built by A. Subramania Iyer. In 1890, the Governor of Madras, Sir Arthur Havelock opened the Moore Market for trade. Over the course of the 20th century, the Moore Market served the needs of a variety of Madras' citizenry, until other shopping options came up in the 1970s and 80s. Yet, Moore Market held on. The bookshops were a bibliophile's paradise and many other things beside. With that fire on a summer night, a part of Madras' soul was extinguished. 

There are many claimants to the name today. The Allikulam (அல்லி குளம் - Lily Pond) complex tries to pass off as today's Moore Market. There is a digital version somewhere. The Railways call their office complex (built where the market stood) the "Moore Market Complex (MMC)". But the original building can be seen in this faithful replica, right in the middle of the parking complex outside the Railways' MMC. The model is quite exquisite, but the way it is neglected forces one to thinking that it might meet the same fate as its original!

From bars to bazaars

Sometime since December last year, the gates at Puzhal Central Prison have seen a spike in the number of people milling around there. No, there was no rise in crime (or conviction) rates; it was just that a new store had opened inside the prison, with a counter to the outside world as well. That was the first outlet of the "Freedom Prison Bazaar". In the past six months, two other outlets have opened up, one at the CMDA Office in Egmore and this one, the newest, just ahead of the Saidapet Metropolitan Magistrates' Courts. 

This one came up three months ago and it stocks the entire range of 'Prison Products'. Tamil Nadu has 9 central prisons, three of which are in Chennai - Puzhal 1 and 2  and the Women's Prison, all in the Puzhal Campus. From soap making to music, there is a lot on offer for them to study. And recently, investments have been made in setting up a bakery (Puzhal), power looms (Coimbatore) and handmade paper units (all prisons). These are in addition to the facilities already available for shoemaking (Vellore), garments (Coimbatore) and soaps and detergents (Trichy) 

Traditionally, these products were used inside the prisons and probably within the Prison Department itself. Since last year, they have been made available to the public and the response seems to have been good enough for the department to consider expansion into the High Court and DMS complexes in the next few months. The profits from these stores would be distributed as a fifth each to the prisoners who worked to produce these, to the Prison Staff Welfare Fund and to the Government Account. The remaining 40% would be ploughed back to the 'business' through the Tamil Nadu Prison Department Manufacture of Goods Fund. So go ahead, give a helping hand to rehabilitate the prisoners!

Down. And out.

There were about 50 people in the store. More than half of them were in their tweens or teens. Of the remaining, almost nine-tenths were in their mid thirties, or younger. From the conversations, it seemed that almost everyone had moved into Chennai sometime in the past five years or so. The layout was different, too. That half of the store where books used to be displayed - the 'original' Landmark - was off bounds. There were no books there, anymore. Those left over fitted into six display racks. The toys, VCDs and game cartridges filled up the rest of the space. And the shoppers were busy raiding. 50% off, and that's got the bargain hunters in. 

The old timers were staying away. There was one other shopper who engaged the store manager in conversation. "I was here on the first day you opened, you know", he said. The manager nodded, with a semi-polite half-smile. Of course he wasn't there when it opened. That was a long time ago. The store manager must have been eligible for a half-ticket at Safire when Hemu Ramaiah set up this store. She made sure that once you get down the steps and past the door on the right, you could transport yourself to a different world - or worlds. It didn't feel like half-a-basement at all. One could sit there all day and browse - yes, browse. In the days before Netscape Navigator, Hemu's Landmark would take you all over the wide world. 

Landmark was then a break from the past, but now, a throwback to another era. No bookstore before it tolerated anyone - school and college kids the least of all - flipping through their books. And here was the staff practically shoving a book into your hands and telling you to take your time reading it. It is difficult to believe that for 19 of the 26 years it has been around, the store has been competing against the Internet. The memories of those first seven years were strong enough for many to turn up again and again at the first Landmark store, now spread across the entire basement of Apex Plaza. Indra Nooyi, it is said, used to make it a point to spend a couple of hours here every time she visited Madras/Chennai. She was only one of the many non-residents - Madrasis or otherwise - for whom the Nungambakkam Landmark was the place to visit. And browse. And browse.

The first time I bought a set of greeting cards from Landmark, I did not realize that I was taking the first step to losing the bookstore of my college days. Greeting cards were followed by other stationery items. Then came CDs. Toys. Games. Suddenly, books seemed to be an "also there" item. And then the Tatas bought the chain, in 2005. India's best bookstore, born of passion, boosted by the quiz, sustained by the loyalty of its Madras customers (who spread the word about it to their friends in Pune, Bengaluru and other places) had now completely transformed into a 'business'. The staff didn't know their books. (Or even music, or toys, for that matter). But they still let customers visitors browse through the books, and the Nungambakkam store was the best place to do that. 

Now it is gone. When the bargain hunters have cleared it out ("50% off!!" "Everything must go!!!"), I shall also be gone. I did not intend to walk into the store yesterday, but I did. And I picked up a few books, at random. I only had a vague idea of what I was doing, because memories of 26 years obscured the actions of the day. My eyes were moist; I could not look at the girl at the billing counter, who asked me if I had a loyalty card. "I am turning it in today", I thought. I suddenly felt very old. Good bye, Landmark. You've taken my youth with you.

What, who worry?

Well, there is nothing specifically Chennai about this, but I did see it in a Chennai store. It is an 'official' board game, with illustrations by the magazine's "usual gang of idiots". As children, those "idiots" were looked up to;  Sergio Aragonés, Dick DeBartolo, Al Jaffee, Mort Drucker, Dave Berg, Antonio Prohias... they were all adults writing to corrupt us children. 

This game itself is Monopoly with a twist. The first player to go bankrupt is the winner. It has several ways to lose money, including cards that allow you to lose $500 by jumping up, with a chance to lose $5,000 by remaining airborne for 37 seconds. All those losses will count for nothing if you end up getting up that $1,329,063 note. There is, however, only one way to win that note - can you guess what that is? (see below photo for the answer)

Wait - did I say this has no connect to Chennai? Maybe not, but where do you think those Mad ras-cals got all their ideas from?!

!uɐɯnǝu ˙ǝ pǝɹɟןɐ sı ǝɯɐu ɹnoʎ ɟı ʇı uıʍ noʎ

Read that

I can read English, but I had a bit of a difficult time figuring this one out. And yes, I know Tamizh as well, maybe that was what made it difficult. English letters in the Tamizh script - and yes, they look a bit like Tamizh letters as well - threw me off track.

This is just a garment firm announcing a range of their Chennai t-shirts. A blue one, that had "NYPD" in large letters, looked commonplace. But a closer look showed that NYPD is an acronym for a phrase often heard in Chennai. You can see what that is, here, but I think the prices are a bit too overboard for them!

Mobile advertising

At first glance, it seemed to be a rather wacky ironing operator, with a tongue-in-cheek description of his work. Of course, the iron used by such vendors are very hot, with most of them depending on charcoal inside the equipment to generate heat. But a second glance throws up the possibility that this person could be one of the amalgamated iron-men of Chennai, going by the localities listed on the bottom of the panel.

That's also a false lead, however. The penny drops, finally. HotMale is a Chennai based clothing brand; a private label that is trying to expand. It is owned by Arihant Retail, which started a store exclusively for menswear in T.Nagar and branded it HotMale. That was in 2002 and over the past decade, HotMale has expanded to Anna Nagar, Wannarapet and Triplicane. The one in Triplicane is the most recent, having been opened sometime in 2012. 

And this is certainly a good way to get the word around the locality, when a new clothing store has been launched. Gets attention from the right set of people, and it is contained in the same ecosystem - do you think they could have done anything more to have made the advertising better?

Chic house

In 1902, the company founded in 1879 by Alfred Hugh Harman changed its name to that of the town it was based in. The town council objected, saying that merely being the town's biggest employer did not mean the company could automatically take over the town's name. Their objects came to naught, and the Britannia Works Limited became Ilford Limited. In the early 20th century, India was still a large market for British companies. Circa 1915, the city of Madras had an Ilford Company, which was probably bringing in film rolls from the principal's factory at Ilford, Essex. 

There is not much more about the Madras company's history that I have been able to trace. Probably its fortunes rose and fell with its British parent, which, by the 1960s was owned by ICI and Ciba; the Ilford Co., Madras was bought out in 1977 by Saurabh Mehta, who was a distributor for Hindustan Photo Films. That purchase gave Saurabh the ownership of Ilford House, on Woods Road. The building had little going for it, architecturally or aesthetically, in keeping with its function as a storage house for medical X-ray film stock. By 1997, demand for such film had fallen dramatically and a large storage facility made no sense to Saurabh. Cannily enough, he found the perfect buyer; Fabindia, established in New Delhi in 1960, was expanding nationally and it needed space in Chennai. Saurabh realized that Fabindia would be the ideal tenant and struck a deal. 

It is quite counter-intuitive; Woods Road is narrow, crowded and further cramped by haphazard parking. It is not a shopping destination. Maybe that helped, because folks would then not be distracted with other outlets and would shop only at Fabindia. Even though the chain now has several other outlets in Chennai, it is only Ilford House which provides the 'heritage experience'! 

Hidden store

Walking around the Mada streets around the Kapaleeswarar temple in Mylapore, there is only one place to slake your thirst. The problem is, if you go looking for it, you are quite likely to be disappointed, for there is no indication that this store has anything capable of cooling you down. Even though the English lettering on the side indicates a 'Cool Drink Stall', the main Tamizh sign - and the display of its wares - point more towards an outlet for newspapers and magazines. 

The Kalathy store has been operating from the same location (the southern end of East Mada Street) for 87 years. When it began its operations in 1927, India was still a generation away from independence, ice was a rare - and precious - commodity and even the choice of magazines was limited. The store got by with selling home-made sweetmeats and cooling drinks, along with a lot of items needed for pujas, as well as those things needed for the devotees' material comforts. For a while in the 1960s and '70s, it was one of many stores that were selling the same things. But Kalathy outlasted them all with a killer app: their rose-milk. 

A glass of iced rose-milk here costs `12. But it is a monopoly, for none of the stores nearby have anything close to Kalathy's rose-milk. The drink takes you back to the days of playing in the dusty streets, and, clutching those 3 or 4 coins, getting a sticky toffee and the cool refresher that no mother could object to, not when it was essentially milk. Today, you can choose to have it by the glass, or if you like, you can buy a whole bottle of the essence for `80. But I am sure that I will not be able to blend the essence the way Kalathy does, to taste their signature product!

Crunchy snacks

No part of a city can claim to be a bastion of traditionalism unless it has some of the markers needed to prove it. No, not just curios or knick-knacks, but stuff that the owners / users / sellers do not consider anything other than real, everyday things, no matter how quaint it appears to outsiders. Getting into the Triplicane area, many Chennaiites would be completely at sea; even allowing for the antiquity of the temple and its environs, few would be prepared for such signs on what seems to be the door to a residence.

The sign clearly says that it is an appalam store. Vedas Appalams functions here at specific intervals of time in the morning and evening. Five-and-a-half hours of work split by an equally long siesta seems a wonderful way to get through the day. But then, how many appalams can you sell in an hour or five? To bad that it was a Sunday and the store was not going to open anyway. Any thoughts about asking the neighbours about appalams were frightened away by the words on the door: "If the door is closed, do not trouble any of the neighbours" - maybe I shall be back one day, to check these appalams out!

Brand launch

Was at a book launch this evening, at the Landmark store in Chennai Citi Centre. It wasn't one of your regular books - this was about how 'SuperStar' has evolved to be a brand and about what product brands can learn from the 'SuperStar'. Titled 'Grand Brand Rajini', it connects different aspects of the man to the field of Brand Management.

On stage (right) are the two authors, PC Bala Subramanian and Ram N. Ramakrishnan. With the mike is the chief guest, a star in his own right, is Balki, Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of Lowe Lintas (India). Balki was pointing out how 'SuperStar' has becoming a brand by staying true to himself and thereby true to what his 'consumers' expected from him. 

That view was echoed by the fourth person on stage - Lata Rajinikanth, who talked about how the 'SuperStar' was as a person. Anecdotes that only burnished the shine of the 'SuperStar'. With such a launch, I'm sure the book will be a grand success!

Mom 'n' pop

It is quite literally the corner shop. And it is one where the shopkeepers stay on the floor above their shop. To top it all, it is called 'Amma Naana', which translates as 'Mother and Father'. If there is one independent retailer who is not quaking at the thought of FDI in retail, it must be this store on Chamiers Road. 

Flashback to a little over 40 years ago. At the turn of the '70s, the shop in the corner was called Fairlands and was operating on rented premises. When they got the chance to occupy a much larget space just next door, Fairlands moved out of the 1200 sqft storefront they were using. The owners of the newly vacated storefront offered it to their son-in-law, V.R. Govindaswamy, who stocked it up with merchandise that would interest residents of the affluent Boat Club area, right behind the store. 

Over the past dozen years or so, Amma Naana has shown that it has hit the bulls-eye with that strategy. Boat Club attracted the professional expatriate who came in to Chennai in the late 90s, with large pockets and a taste for 'world class' products. Amma Naana stocked the brands they were familiar with, either from their home country or those that were known world over; brands that were unavailable in the regular market in India. Long before Starbucks made its India entry (last week), you could buy their Mocha Frappe - and other coffees - from Amma Naana. 

Amma Naana continues to remain independent and single-store. They continue to shut the store down on Sunday afternoons. And it continues to be the go-to place for the fresh-off-the-boat expat in Chennai, to get those familiar packages for her kitchen!

Closed shop

From the looks of it, this building has been locked up for years. And it is probably not going to open anytime soon. The coop it housed also seems to have moved on; in all likelihood, it is operating from a different address these days. Other signs - "Grocery"; "Tailoring" - on the outer walls give it quite an old-time feel and the dirt and dust around the doors confirmed their having remained shut for quite a while. Maybe there is some litigation around this particular building, for there doesn't seem to be any other reason for it to remain unused.

The X-331 Railway Employees Cooperative Stores Ltd appears to be functioning still, like I had said. Evidence is their inclusion - with a contemporary telephone number - in a list of member stores of the Chennai District Co-Operative Union. But then, that's a list which says "Talk Workers" for "Dock Workers" and "Basin Breech" for "Basin Bridge"!