Relic of The Seven Years' War

As one of the earliest possessions of the British in the Orient, Madras served as a base camp for several military manoeuvres; mainly within the peninsula, but every once in a while, across the seas into Ceylon, Burma, Malaya or even beyond. Once such trans-oceanic adventure happened as a part of the Seven Years' War; though the main cause of the war was Austria's desire to get back Silesia from Prussia, the European powers - especially the British - were quick to figure out that it was as important to establish ascendancy in the colonies as well as on the continent. That belief saw a lot of imporance being attached to theatres in North America and in Asia.

In Asia, almost of the action was centred in India. Battles at Palashi (Plassey, 1757) and Vandavasi (Wandiwash, 1761), were the most significant of these, reducing France's capabilities and establishing the British as the leading power in India. With the victory at Vandavasi still fresh, the British troops were itching for more action and they got it when a fleet under Admiral Samuel Cornish and a 3000-strong land force under Colonel William Draper were ordered to take Manila, in the Philippines, then under Spanish rule. The troops reached Manila after almost two months at sea and yet managed to land unopposed at Manila Bay, within a few kilometres of the city. The Governor of Manila, who was apprently unaware of the course of the war in Europe was taken aback when called upon to surrender; under-estimating the strength of the attacking force he chose to fight with his 2000-strong garrison. Despite the fatigues of the sea-journey, Draper's forces overran Manila within 10 days and the Governor surrendered, offering a payment of £ 4 million as ransom for the city. It is not clear if this amount was ever paid, but Manila remained under British occupation for over a year before being returned to Spain under the 1763 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Seven Years' War.

Draper returned to India, with William Pitt the Elder referring to him as "Manila's gallant conqueror". But Draper felt he had been denied his just rewards from that conquest; his claims made him an object of mockery. Maybe he brought back this cannon - and a few others, today seen at the Government Museum, Chennai - as part of his victory spoils, but maybe they were confiscated from him when he got back to Madras!

Silk shop

These days, it is easy to forget that Madras came into being because of cloth and weaving. A strong argument that Francis Day made for setting up a 'factory' at (what was to become) Fort St George was "excellent long Cloath and better cheape by 20 per cent than anywhere else" could be had from close by; and among the earliest settlements (if not actually the first one) that were made by the founders was a colony of weavers, out to the west of Fort St George. That colony, originally called chinna thari pettai (the place of small looms) is what is called Chindadripet today.

These days, it is not the long 'cloath' that visitors to Chennai want to take back with them, but something much less coarse and more elegant. Being just 70-odd kilometers away, the silk weavers of Kanchipuram had long ago hitched their star to Madras, at least for selling their products. In 1911/12, when King George V visited Madras, the weavers of Kanchipuram chose a certain Nalli Chinnasami Chetty to present the king a specially woven Kanchipuram Silk Saree. Chinnasami Chetty crafted a special border for this saree, naming it the 'Durbar Pet' (Coronation Border), because the King was visiting India for that reason. It is likely that Chinnasami Chetty was a trend-setter among the Kanchi weavers, for he was also one of the early adopters of chemical dyes manufactured by Geigy.

Keeping with that spirit of experimentation, Chinnasami was one of the first weavers to set up a sales outlet in Madras, eighty years ago. This store at Panagal Park came up much later, in 1951. But when a visitor to Chennai wants to go silk saree shopping, this is the place that he (yes, even 'he') or she thinks of. Nalli is no longer the only weaver to have an outlet in Madras; but with everyone else setting up their stores within shouting distance of this one, Nalli's pre-eminence in the silk saree business is pretty obvious!

The Eater's Digest - 6

When it first started off in Chennai a few years ago, it had the 'Madurai' tag to it and was called 'Madurai Murugan Idli', following in the footsteps of the all-time famous Madurai Muniyandi Vilas. The similarity ends there. Murugan is all about tiffin items, whereas Muniyandi is all about heavy duty food; where Murugan is completely vegetarian, Muniyandi cannot be appeased without meat; and now, where Murugan has sought to play down the Madurai connection and become part of the Chennai mainstream, Muniyandi will never think of stooping to such levels. Maybe Murugan Idli is more Madras than Madurai these days. Their website lists five locations in Chennai and only three in Madurai.

Anyone walking into Murugan Idli expecting several varieties of idli is bound to be disappointed. They only have the regular soft idli, but several varieties of vadas, dosas and uthappams. Dreams of Kanchipuram idli, rava idli, ghee idli, idli upma, or even the miniature '14 idlis' are missing completely. There is idli and then there are the other tiffin items. It wouldn't be so bad if there was some level of consistency to the texture and the taste of the idli; sometimes it is hot to the point of being sticky and at other times it just melts in one's mouth. About inter-location variances, the less said the better. There is always a niggling doubt if all the outlets are run by the same management - except for the steel receptacles to hold the flimsy plastic water cups in place, there is little else that's common to them.

But when they get it right (and they very often do), the idli is just ambrosia. That's when one understands that all the others are just pretenders, there can only be one idli, as some of the purists say!

Sangamam highlight

A friend had his Facebook status message last Wednesday saying that he was "...surprised at the number of perisus out on Venktanarayana Road at 1 am". That's saying a lot about the pull of the Chennai Sangamam, or at least those events where people were part of the festival itself. Last Tuesday was when the Sangamam lived up to its tagline of being a 'street festival'. It does take a leap of faith - and several deep breaths - before shutting off traffic from a road such as Venkatanarayana Road; that it was the start of the Pongal holiday definitely helped.

It was certainly a wonderful evening; the performances at Natesan Park were only part of the show, because much more was happening on the road itself. The performers went up and down the road, allowing onlookers to join in and shake a leg to the karagam or the paraiyattam, or to pace the beats of the panchavadhyam if they so wished. And then, all along one side of the road were the food counters. Chefs from almost every hotel in the city worth its name - the Park and Chola Sheratons, Taj Coromandel, The Park, Radisson, GRT, Raintree - and several from other parts of the state, were dishing out various cuisines of Tamil Nadu, both current and historical. Some of the more exotic - or at least exotic-sounding - stuff (like jil jil jigardanda) was sold out within a couple of hours.

The street fest lasted until about 2 am; of course the street was brilliantly lit and packed for most of the time from 7 pm till well past midnight. And yes, it was not just the youngsters, but also the perisus (big ones, literally, but indicating the senior-citizen category) who were rocking this street party!

Gardens by the river

In the late 18th century, there was a proposal to plant a hedge to mark the limits of the city of Madras. Even though the proposal did not come to fruition, enough work was done on it to leave behind a record of the city's limits as they were in 1775. In those years, much of the city's development was to the north of Fort St George, because the larger trading posts of the British East India Company were in that direction. The northern boundaries were therefore regularly surveyed and updated, but to the south, the spread of the city was designated by rather arbitrary lines. It must have been natural for traders, with their newly earned wealth, to look for spacious real estate to the southern ends of the city, rather than to the crowded areas of 'White' and 'Black' Towns to the north of the Fort. The river Adayar thus became a natural boundary for real estate development by the nouveau riche of the 18th century; the 'hedge survey' of 1775 formalized the status of the Adayar river as the southern boundary of Madras city.

Right at the edge came up spacious garden houses. One of these was built by George Augustus Underwood, a former colonel in the Madras Corps of Engineers. Underwood had gone on to become a trader after leaving the services of the East India Company and had done very well for himself. His family however, was not too keen on the romance of the East and so after his death, the wonderful garden house he built, with steps leading to the Adayar river (maybe there was a boat house there, too), passed on to his creditors. In time, Underwood Gardens came into the possession of the Presidency Bank of Madras, when the bank was formed in 1843. In 1921, the Presidency Banks of Madras, Bengal and Bombay were amalgamated to form the Imperial Bank, which later became the State Bank of India (SBI).

Many of the neighbouring garden houses have been razed; Underwood Gardens still remains, as the residence of SBI's Chief General Manager (South Zone). Parts of the grounds have been given over to other goverment agencies and there is talk that Underwood Gardens is also due for 'modernization' - hopefully it will be done without destroying the old world charm of this garden house!

Chariot in town

Temple chariots have a long history in India. The most well known is the chariot procession of Lord Jagannath at Puri, even though many who use the word 'juggernaut' may not readily connect the word to the temple chariot. It was therefore natural for Ganapathi Sthapati to look to such chariots for inspiration when he was given the task of designing a memorial for Tiruvalluvar, a great poet-saint of Tamil Nadu. His chariot of choice was from within the state, from the town of Tiruvarur, where the chariot festival has been conducted annually for hundreds of years.

The chariot is but at an end of Valluvar Kottam, as the memorial is called. A life size statue of Tiruvalluvar sits in the 101-ft tall chariot and looks to the east, over the roof of a large hall. The hall itself has a capacity to seat about 4000 people, though it is not used for such sit-down performances. The pillars around the periphery of the hall carry verses from Tirukkural, Valluvar's tour-de-force which sets out tenets for virtuous living.

Somehow, Valluvar Kottam has not been able to make it to many of 'must-see-places-in-Chennai' lists. Even in those that it does appear, it just has a passing mention, almost as if hoping "well, it is so large, there must be something to it". Having been around for 32 years, it has become one more of those everyone knows where it is, but no one has been there kind of places. That's a pity, because there is no other monument in the city that can rival the sheer size of Valluvar Kottam!

You've been booked!

The Chennai Book Fair is an annual event that is now in its 32nd edition. Since 1977, it has been run by the BAPASI - the Booksellers And Publishers Association of South India. In its first year, it was held in December and somewhere down the road, the fair was shifted to the Jan/Feb time frame, because December was almost exclusively given over to the 'music season'. Over the past few years, the number of visitors to the fair has exploded; in 1977, there were 22 stalls - 20 for English and 2 for Tamizh - and about 27,000 people visited them. In its 32nd year, there are about 600 stalls -the majority of them Tamizh publishers - and BAPASI expects about a million visitors during the ten days of the fair.

Maybe it is the effect of the global meltdown and the Satyam imbroglio; the number of computer or IT related titles seems to have dropped drastically. And yet, there are about 500,000 titles on display, not including the non-book stuff like audiobooks, CDs, etc. which are also available. The crowd of course is fairly thick, which means one cannot dart from side to side unlike the chamois of the Alps (to paraphrase Wodehouse), but must be content to go with the flow. But that's something the Chennai book lover has learnt to live with at the book fair over the past three or four years; folks these days do multiple trips - surely no one can browse through 600 stalls in just a day or two.

Seeing all this, the National Book Trust (NBT) must be chafing at its lack of staying power. The NBT does run the largest book fair in the country, the New Delhi World Book Fair (last year's show had 23 countries, over 2500 stalls and over 1.5 million titles on display), but they must be miffed at not having stayed the course at Chennai, after organizing the first ever Book Fair in Madras as early as 1970!

If it is Pongal in Chennai...

Well, once upon a long time ago, it used to be "...it must be the Chepauk test!". Though only 9 of the 20 official tests played at the Chepauk from 1934 to 1988 - and none of the 10 tests since - have been held between January 11 and January 18, many believe it is a tradition that Chepauk has 'always' hosted a test match during the second week of January. The weather is good - a nip in the air, cool mornings, bright sunshine, gentle breeze - everything that makes for a glorious day of cricket. And of course, with at least 3 consecutive days - Pongal, Tiruvalluvar Day and Uzhavar Tirunaal (Farmers Day) - usually being declared government holidays, chances of a good 'gate' are pretty high for any event that happens during this time, because the city dwellers would be looking for any kind of entertainment during these days.

That's because Pongal is a festival of the villages, one that celebrates the first harvest of a new season. Beginning on the last day of Margazhi, the festival goes on to the third day of Thai. The first day, Bhogi, is for cleaning up; the second - the actual Thai Pongal - to worship nature, especially the sun; the third, Mattu Pongal, to celebrate the livestock that made the harvest possible. The last day, Kaanum Pongal, is set aside to visit friends and relatives and to exchange the bounties of the harvest. What does the city dweller have to do with many of these? Cleaning up during Bhogi and propitiating the Gods on Pongal day can be done, but the rest? So the city dweller must be entertained, while the villages celebrate.

For the past couple of years, entertainment has been the Chennai Sangamam, a street festival during Pongal, showcasing traditional music, dances and cultural performances. Run by Tamil Maiyam, it has become quite popular in just 3 years of its existence, thanks to the generous support provided by the state government. Hopefully the Sangamam will transcend political divides and continue to be a grand event in the years to come!

Blood must circulate

By one estimate, India needs about 10 million units (1 unit = 450 ml) of blood for transfusion every year; considering that the USA uses up around 14 million units annually, the figure for India is possibly much higher. Most of the requirement in the USA is met through voluntary collections, but in India, they contribute less than 50%. Though the figure for Tamil Nadu is higher, at 82%, voluntary blood donation is still something that many people have misconceptions about: they are therefore rather apprehensive about going to a blood bank to donate blood.

Across Chennai, there are about 40 blood banks, government run and private, that together collect about a quarter of a million units of blood annually. Even allowing for weekends and bank holidays, that's roughly 25 units every day at each blood bank; in a city of about 7 million people, less than 5% donate blood in a year. With the demand for blood far outstripping supply, it is a challenge to encourage blood donation. To make it easy for potential donors, several agencies have created mobile blood banks to go around the city, taking the message of blood donation to the people. The pattern is more or less the same - a multimedia show about how blood donation is useful and even healthy for the donor, register the volunteers, do a basic screen and collect a unit of blood. The vehicles must get each day's collection back to the bank, because they only have the collection and storage facilities on board. The high-tech work of screening and storing the blood still happens at centralised locations.

The shape and the overall look of this collection vehicle of the Lions Blood Bank is probably intended to give the process a completely high tech feel!


If you were looking for blood banks in Chennai, this site has useful information

Let there be light

Street lamps have been around in Madras for more than 200 years. The early lamps were oil-fed, and the luminaires had to be designed in a way that allowed the wick to burn steadily, braving the prevailing winds if not stormy conditions. That must have been a large consideration when the lamps were first installed in 1785, because most of Madras' elite lived near the Marina - or at least close enough for the strong sea-breeze causing lamps to go out, if not properly protected.

For the first 75 years or so after their introduction, there were only 200 functioning street lamps in Madras city. But in the next 50 years, as the city grew, the number of street lamps increased over 30-fold. When the first electric lamps were introducted in Madras in 1910, there were 6,500 oil lamps all over the city. One can imagine that it would have led to a certain amount of hue and cry, with the City Lamplighters' Union (had it existed) protesting the new technology depriving members of their livelihood. Maybe the lamplighters were told that even though they needn't use their long-poled wicks to light the street lamps, they still had a job to do in maintaining the new electric lamps, too. For a long while, therefore even electric lamp-posts (like the one in the picture) continued to have the crossbars as a rest for the lamplighter's ladder.

Today, the Corporation of Chennai spends Rs.1.6 crores every month to maintain the 120,007 street lights all over the city (that's what they say!). That number includes lamps like this one, inside the Independence Day Park, which appears to be there more for reasons of antiquity than its functionality!

Love all!

Chennai has had a reasonably strong presence on the sports map of India. As with many other areas of human endeavor, sports in Chennai is also fairly eclectic; cricket does rule the roost, but there have been stars in motor racing, squash, carrom and table tennis, besides. While many of Chennai's star sportspersons have been relatively unknown (mainly because their disciplines haven't been able to compete with cricket), the city's tennis legacy is truly legendary. From Ramanathan Krishnan who was the first Indian to get to the Wimbledon semi-finals, his son Ramesh, Vijay Amritraj who was the 'A' in the 1970s ABC of tennis ('B' and 'C' being Borg and Connors), to Mahesh Bhupathi, tennis and Chennai has been a winning combination for decades.

With that kind of a heritage, it was natural that the first ever ATP tour event in India was hosted by Chennai (or was it still Madras, then?) in 1996. With ITC as the title sponsor, it was known as the Gold Flake Open for the first 6 years; in 2002, the Tata Group took over the title sponsorship and the event was known as the Tata Open until 2005, when a consortium of title sponsors with the Government of Tamil Nadu supporting them took over the event sponsorship for 5 years. Since then, it has been called the Chennai Open; it is part of the ATP World Tour 250 Series, so called because the champion gets 250 rankings points. It is a tournament that Rafael Nadal hasn't been able to win - he came in second last year, the only time he played - and one that has also humbled players like Boris Becker (in 1997) and Yevgeny Kafelnikov (in 2000). But it has also been a happy hunting ground for top 10 players like Patrick Rafter (in 1998) and Carlos Moya (the only one to successfully defend his Chennai Open title, in 2005).

Moya was defeated in the quarter-finals this year, beaten 6-4, 5-7, 6-4 by Somdev Devvarman. The latter went on to become the first Indian to reach the final of the Chennai Open. He didn't win it, though, losing 4-6, 6-7(3) to Marin Cilic a short while ago. Hopefully, Somdev's run this year will inspire a new sponsor (or set of sponsors) to make sure the only ATP tournament in India continues to stay in Chennai for a while longer!

All the King's men

If you've been reading this regularly - or if you know your Chennai history - you will remember that the French under LaBourdonnais had captured Fort St George in 1746. In 1749, the French diplomats swapped Madras for Cape Breton, but the French garrison continued their attempts to capture Madras. Until LaBourdonnais, the British had not taken the French threat seriously, but after having been handed back Fort St George, they were in no mood to repeat their mistake and began to reinforce the battlements around.

At the same time, they began to expand the military force that was stationed in the Fort. Earlier intended as a trading location, the Fort now began to take on the nature of a military-commercial enterprise. With a greater number of soldiers coming in, there was a need to billet them properly; it was not possible for the houses in the Fort to be given over to them, nor was it feasible to build new houses for all of them. The solution was this: a vast building, covering over 10,000 square metres. The first to use it was the King's Regiment and so it came to be known as the King's Barracks, even though there is nothing regal about the building. Extremely plain and functional, it served its purpose of soldiers' housing for two centuries.

Today, it is still used by the army, largely as the canteen and cafeteria. Some of the living quarters are also in use, but large parts of the building are in poor repair and unfit for occupation.

Not again!

Barely six months after the last fuel scarcity scare, the next one has struck. Thanks to simultaneous strikes - by truckers, demanding reduction of the price of diesel, among other things, and by officers of the public sector oil companies demanding higher pay - and other things - the country has been teetering on the verge of a shut-down. 'Conservative' Chennai seems to have been less inconvenienced than other cities, not because of any favours shown to it, but because sensible responses have kicked in early. Many office goers have either switched to public transport or have been car-pooling over the past couple of days. Some rationing of petrol had kicked in even on Wednesday.

It appears that the oil-officers' strike will end later tonight; the army is reportedly on standby to step in with the logistics of fuel distribution. But until it happens, we're all left scratching our heads!

Pay your way

In the early- and mid-80s, one went to 'Mahabs' through the road that got out of the city just after Tiruvanmiyur. It had no name in particular, it was just the best way to go to Mahabalipuram, or Mamallapuram as it was getting to be known as. Tiruvanmiyur was as far as the city reached, and once past the Marudeeswarar Temple, it was fun to go past all those little fishing - or trading - villages along the coast: Kotivakkam, Palavakkam, Neelankarai, Injambakkam, Uthandi, Muthukadu and Kovalam, on to Mahabalipuram. It was a nice route to go through, even if the road itself wasn't much more than a series of village-to-village tar strips and it became popular enough for the 'proper' road to Mahabalipuram came to be called the Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR, now recently renamed Rajiv Gandhi Salai). With popularity came traffic and the village roads were not equipped to handle the volumes; even buses to Pondicherry forsook the OMR for the drive by the beaches. By the mid-90s, there was hardly any road left.

It was in 1998 that the whole stretch from Chennai to Cuddalore, through Pondicherry, was taken under the newly set up Tamil Nadu Road Development Company Ltd (TNRDC) and named the East Coast Road (ECR). The TNRDC probably did not worry about upkeep of the road when it first built it; it was only in 2000 that they were given the mandate of maintaining the road also. Even in the intervening two years, the ECR had degenerated, simply because nobody had cared about its upkeep. After another year of repairs and upgradations, the TNRDC began its toll collections on the ECR from March 24, 2002.

I haven't heard too many cribs about the toll rates, mainly because 2-wheelers are exempt from the toll. Of course, if you are only going to the Ragas Dental College, which is just on the other side of this toll plaza, you would certainly crib about paying Rs.45 for a return trip of about 200 metres!

A hollow memorial

If it hadn't been for the Mahatma, Babasaheb Ambedkar could have been the undisputed voice of the downtrodden. He was for creating separate electorates for the 'untouchables', a move that Gandhi opposed vehemently. The British, sensing an opportunity to splinter the freedom movement, went ahead and announced the creation of such electorates. The Congress however managed to bring Ambedkar around to accepting 'reserved seats'. Despite such run-ins with the senior members of the Congress, Ambedkar was appointed by independent India's first government to Chair the Constitution Drafting Committee - a task that he completed with a great deal of distinction.

This Mani Mandapam, or memorial, to Dr. Ambedkar was inaugurated in June 2000. It remains empty most of the time, with little inside the dome besides a few photographs of Ambedkar with some of his contemporary reformist leaders in Tamil Nadu. There is nothing inside which brings out the breadth of the man's thoughts and actions. In that sense, it is less of a memorial but more of a meeting place, where those who claim his legacy come to hold forth a few times every year.

Flying tiger

Nothing very Chennai specific about this one; this butterfly is known as the Plain Tiger (Danaus chrysippus) or the Common Tiger through most of Asia; it is also fairly widespread through most of Africa. The Africans, having never seen tigers, call it the African Monarch.

Even though it is quite common - or rather, because it is - the Plain Tiger was the model for one of the oldest artistic representations of a butterfly. That was about 3500 years ago, in Thebes, as part of the detail on a fresco in the tomb of Nebamun (you can see the painting here - click on the image on the bottom left and then click on the man's kilt to magnify). Torben Larsen, a renowned entomologist, writes in his book 'Butterflies of Egypt', "...it is somewhat ironic that the oldest painting of a butterfly should be from Egypt, one of the poorest habitats for butterflies anywhere in the world".

In Chennai, though, this butterfly is quite common; maybe the 3500 year association with humans is the reason why this one in the Adyar Poonga allowed me to get really close to take a picture!

Stranded containers

Though the first marine container landed in India in 1973 at the Cochin Port, the first container terminals took some time to come into being. Until 1988, the Indian Railways had the maximum experience in container shipment operations, so when the Container Corporation of India (ConCor) was established, almost all its employees were drawn from the Railways. The railways had by then set up a few inland container depots, but full fledged container terminals came into being only after ConCor was set up. The Chennai Container Terminal's website claims that it is the oldest container terminal in India: there is not enough data to back up this claim, but there doesn't seem to be any counter claim either.

The Chennai Container Terminal is located inside the Port of Chennai itself and since 2001, has been managed by DP World (the original licence was awarded to P&O Ports, which was taken over by DP World in 2006). Business - as measured by throughput - has grown almost threefold over the past 6 years; oddly enough, this measure is only approximate, for the volume of cargo in containers is measured by a something called Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEUs). A standard TEU is the capacity equivalent of a 20' x 8' container, without considering the height, which could either be 4'3" or 9'; and then there is the 45' long container, which is considered as equivalent to 2 TEUs!

Whatever the actual volume may be, the containers at the Chennai Container Terminal began piling up portside during the last week of 2008. The container truck operators, who had to move these to the forwarding and transhipment stations at Tondiarpet and from there to other parts of India, mostly by the northbound roads from Chennai, refused to do so until the roads of North Chennai were relaid!

Beautified lamps

The Marina has periodically gone through beautification drives; the current drive is one of the more comprehensive efforts, involving cleaning up the beach and providing amenities for beach-goers. One of the side effects has been that the completely out of place deer have been removed (and that by itself adds to the beauty of the beach). The drive was supposed to be completed by the end of January 2009; there has been some frentic activity of late, so at least someone is trying.

The change of the street lights along Kamarajar Salai is also part of the beautification, it would appear. Maybe they'll get around to the other side of the road in a few days, but until then, the mismatched lamps offer a differnt kind of symmetry!

For public good

For more than 25 years now, the state government has been dictating liquor preferences of the people of Tamil Nadu. Before 1983, the state had been tinkering with prohibition, moving back and forth from total bans to partial restrictions. In fact, during the 1970s, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat were the only states in India that had had total prohibition; Gujarat, as Mahatma Gandhi's homestate, still continues to drink under a cloak. Tamil Nadu was burdened by the legacy of the Mahatma's daughter-in-law's father (is there an English equivalent for sammandhi?), Rajaji who railed against the evils of drink. It took someone with the stature of a demi-god to lift prohibition and that too with a tear-filled request to mothers in the state to forgive him for doing so.

So came into being on May 17, 1983, the Tamilnadu State Marketing Corporation (TASMAC) as the exclusive wholesale supplier of liquor - other than the indigenous toddy and arrack - across the state. Since then, the whole system of procurement of liquor has been carried out inside a black box; most of the purchase is from in-state production facilities, 6 for spirits and 3 for beer. In 2003, TASMAC went a step further and took over the entire retail distribution network also, and shops with their bright signages gave way to these government green boards. The idea was to ensure there is no revenue leakage from 'above-MRP sales'; though the website gives the pricelist, the markup of a rupee or two is still made at the retail end. The TASMAC website also says that certain products are "procured through import from other states" - and therein lies the nub: everyone cribs about those import processes not being transparent, fair and equitable. The result - a thriving grey market, catering to those who want brands of their choice, rather than what comes to hand as the retailer puts out an arm to the shelves.

There are also very many who are perfectly happy with the retailer's choice for their 'cuttings' of a morning to help them get through the day; though the official timings are from 10 am to 11 pm, many of the shops open as early as 6 o'clock. This one, though seems to be one that follows the official timings!

Reclaiming the land

About fifteen years ago, a friend and I were sitting late into the night on the beach - rather, on a ledge of sand that passed for a beach - at Tiruvottiyur. After a while, we noticed that the soil of the ledge under us was crumbling; the coastline of India, as my friend put it, was changing before our eyes! Within a year of that evening, the sea had gobbled up about 300 metres of beach, caved in part of the Ennore Expressway and then washed off another 100 metres or so of the land on the other side of the road. Though sea erosion had for long been a problem in North Madras, this rapid re-drawing of the coastline hastened action to stop further loss of the land.

Residents of Tiruvottiyur have always contended that it was the construction of the Jawahar Dock at the Port of Madras in 1964 that marked the beginning of their woes and that it was exacerbated by the Bharati Dock coming up in 1970. It is likely that these docks contributed to a minor change in the pattern of sea-currents and their effects. Normally, the currents would change their direction roughly every half-year therby alternating between erosion and accretion along the beaches. With a localised disturbance around the port, the effects were imbalanced along the coast to the north, resulting in the erosion. One estimate has it that almost 350 acres of land in Tiruvottiyur - another says 2800 acres along the Royapuram-Tiruvottiyur stretch - has been lost since 1970.

Since the late '70s, there have been several recommendations and some action on protecting the shoreline. Boulders along the shore, rubble-mound seawalls and several other measures have been tried, modified and tried again. The one measure that seems to have had reasonable success is the construction of groynes - there are 9 of them, of varying lengths, along the coast from Royapuram to Ennore. This is the second one (the first can also been seen in the distance), just north of Royapuram Fishing Harbour. All told, the groynes have helped to reclaim about 20 acres of land since they were built in 2004 - there's a long way to go before the sea gives up all that it has taken!

All the best!

In these times of sabre-rattling, it is worth considering that war might impose quiet, but peace has to come from within.

The theme for today is 'Best photo of 2008'; for quality of photography, this one is among my worst, but finding a statue of the Buddha in the OTA was a startling moment.

To Peace! And a very happy New Year to everyone!!

The best of the best from other City-Daily-Photobloggers can be seen by clicking here.

Vanakkam, 2009!

Raised hands, with palms joined in greeting - the traditional gesture that goes with saying 'Vanakkam' in Tamil Nadu, (or 'Namaskaram' / 'Namaste' in other parts of India). On the Marina beach, this marble representation of the greeting welcomes the sunrise every day, as it will tomorrow, too - one of the first spots of Chennai city to see the sun rising in the New Year.

Here's wishing everyone around the world a happy, prosperous, peaceful, healthy and fulfilling time in 2009!

As old as the hills

This is one business that began as a sort of 'mail-order' trading and then went on to become one of the best known department stores of the Bangalore-Madras circuit. The mail-order part of it was incidental. In the early days of the postal system in India, the postmen were called "runners" - some of them traversed a route so long that the postmen must have had to run nonstop to do it all in one day. One such route was the Mettupalayam-Coonoor-Ooty trip. Sometime at the turn of the 19th century, the 'runner' on this route was Muthusamy Mudaliar. Earlier runners had no dobut fulfilled the requests from the houses on the hillsides to bring butter and other dairy products up from Mettupalayam, but Muthusamy Mudaliar went a step further and opened shop at Charles Villa, Coonoor, in 1905.

With the demand for products like butter being greater from British households (the Indians presumably churned their own), the first plains location for Nilgiri's Dairy Farm was Bangalore, in 1939. By 1945, the store had expanded under Muthusamy's son Chenniappan and was offering a range of products, including ice-creams and confectionery, apart from the flagship dairy and bakery products. With a pasteurising plant in Erode, it was not too difficult to service both Bangalore and Madras, so in the 1960s, Nilgiri's products began to be sold by the Madras Farm Agencies. It would be another two decades before the first full fledged Nilgiri's store was opened in Madras, in 1981.

That store on Radhakrishnan Salai still remains the only Niligiri's run operation in Chennai, along with the Nilgiri's Nest hotel; the other stores in the city are all franchises. Actis, a PE firm took a 51% stake in Niligiri's two years ago to help the chain expand from its current 30-odd stores (in 2006) to about 500 stores by 2011. Not bad for a runner's business-on-the-side!

Riverside park

This is one of the grand ideas of Chennai that has been shaping up for a while. Billed as the first ever eco-tourism project in the state, the core of the idea is to restore the ecological balance of the Adayar creek and estuary area. The river itself has been considerably polluted; in many places, unchecked growth of slums has taken over the river's course, choking it still further. The Adyar Poonga hopes to showcase the potential of the river as a dynamic ecosystem, at least in the 'last mile' of its course.

While that may not be technically correct - the Poonga will be fed by a canal that runs off from the river just where Adyar joins the sea (does that make it a creek?) and will therefore be impacted by the coastal tides, too. In any case, once it is done, the Poonga will have restored this diverse ecosystem, which will in turn motivate similar projects along the Adayar's course, or along other rivers. But the scope of the Poonga is vast, by the standards of conservation projects in Chennai; the first phase, which is the public face of the Poonga, expected to be completed by December 2010, will cover about 58 acres, which is roughly a sixth of the 358 acres around the creek/estuary to be covered under the Ecological Restoration Programme.

For now, all you can see is some very basic information on the flora and fauna of the region; at this time of the year, there are quite a few migratory waterbirds that are nesting on an island just inside. With an opening time of 10 am, the Poonga's promise of visiting a forest and getting back to Chennai by breakfast time seems a tad out of reach just yet!

The man himself

With so many instant celebrities around these days, the term 'living legend' has been much abused. In the case of Shri S.Rajam, however, it is the most apt description of the man, because any other attempt to describe him only serves to narrow the definition. He is a painter, but more than a painter; a singer, yet more than a singer; composer, writer, teacher, researcher, a man of many parts, each of which would be a fulfilling life by itself. Yet, going into his 90s, Rajam shows no sign of slowing down. The voice may not hold out for a full concert today, but it is still clear enough to hold down the listener. The eyes sparkle with life, with the joy of being; they are sharp enough to discern, without spectacles, the subtle shades that he colours his paintings in. The energy that he radiates will liven up even the most weary pessimist.

With teachers like Ariyakudi Ramanujam Iyer, Papanasam Sivan and Madurai Mani Iyer, Rajam's musical talent blossomed early; at thirteen, he began giving public performances. By the time he finished school, he had not only given several stage performances but had also acted in three movies - the first being 'Seetha Kalyanam', produced by Prabhat Studios of Pune (R.V.Shantaram, one of the founders of Prabhat, was trying to offset the losses incurred by the first Indian colour film, Sairandhri and offered produce a Tamizh film with the same sets and props). Rajam played Rama and his sister Jayalakshmi played the role of Seetha - this casting offended many and they strongly castigated the father, Sundaram Iyer, for allowing his children to play the roles of husband and wife! (Incidentally, that movie also had Sundaram Iyer acting as Janaka, while two more of his children, Saraswathi and Balachander, acted as Urmila and as a child musician in Ravana's court, respectively)

Maybe that was a factor in Rajam moving onto art; he joined the Government of Madras School of Arts and Crafts. With his immense talent, he completed the six year course in four years. He developed his own style, blending his love of music with classical art to give visual form to musical notes, picturing the flow of several ragas and of course, countless portraits of Carnatic music composers and Tamizh poet-saints across the ages. That his work is still very much in demand is evident from the stack of semi-finished paintings on his table!

Listen to Shri Rajam talk about life in those days or watch him sketching in a notebook.

A picture of the trinity

Everybody knows of the Trinity. No, not the ones of religion, but those of Carnatic music. And if you know of them, I'll bet that even as you read this, you will be seeing them sitting together, Dikshitar with his veena, Thyagarajar and Syama Sastri with their tamburus, the former facing us and the latter showing us his left profile. I'm sure I've won the bet, for that's how most of us, especially those who haven't read up on Carnatic music to any great extent, have known of this trinity. Even on the (separate) postage stamps released to honour these individuals, the images of Muthuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastri are exactly the same as you'd see on the pictures of the Trinity.

So why is Thyagaraja different? Part of the reason could be due to the growing influence of a versatile gentleman named Rajam. In 1961, when Thyagaraja's stamp was released, he was around 42 years old; while he was well-respected for his music and his art, the latter hadn't reached that stage of universal recognition where everyone knows the painting but has no clue as to the artist! By 1976, when Dikshitar was accorded the honour of a postage stamp, the image was the one that Rajam was also basing his work upon, for that meant quick recognition. In 1985, when the stamp on Syama Sastri was being prepared, Rajam's painting was used as the basis for the stamp (but credit was apparently not given). The story goes that an unknown artist had begun work on a portrait of Sastri, but could only complete it till the neck before composer's death. It was Rajam who gave it a body and, in the 1940s, brought together the three greats when the Music Academy commissioned him to paint the Trinity.

Since then, Rajam has made literally hundreds of the Trinity paintings; last week, when some of us had a chance to visit him at home, he showed us a pile of the same paintings that he was working on, among others. As he sketched an outline for us, it was indeed an honour to see the image of the Trinity coming into shape before our eyes!

Administrative block

The District Collector is arguably the most powerful government official in any district of India. The position was instituted by the British and was in many instances the de-facto ruler of the district; so his (for a long time - the first district collector was appointed sometime in the 1770s, but a woman in that position did not happen until the late 1900s) office not only reflected the awe-inspiring nature of his duties but also the prosperity of the district under his control. Considering that Madras was one of the earliest parts of the country to come under the control of the British, it is reasonable to expect that the Collectorate offices are housed in a building befitting that legacy.

But for some reason, the Madras Collectorate was a more workmanlike office; the first building exclusively for the District Collector of Madras was one that was constructed almost a century earlier; it had been built in 1793 for the use of merchants who could not be accommodated inside Fort St George. It was only after some renovations in 1817, when the Supreme Court of Madras moved to it, that the building was named 'Bentinck's Building'. It continued to house the Presidency High Court, after the Supreme Court of Madras was abolished in 1862. In 1892, after the Courts vacated Bentinck's Building to move to their own complex that the building took on the mantle of the Collectorate. It was used as such until the mid-1980s, when they vacated the building for it to be pulled down. The decision to demolish the building was taken in the mid-1970s, but the vanguard of Chennai's heritage movement managed to stave off the act for well over a decade. Once the Collectorate moved out, the building was literally left to rot. However, it didn't cooperate and after about five years of waiting for it to collapse, the official machinery took on that task itself - at it took them more than a year to do it, such was the solidity of Bentinck's Building. The only part of the old complex they left undisturbed was the last cupola that held the wandering statue of Lord Cornwallis.

In its place came up this rather unimaginative and uninspiring block. Even naming it after Comrade M.Singaravelar, that doyen of India's labour movement, has done little to create any feeling of awe, it just looks like an administrative block!


A picture of Bentinck's building can be seen on the Chennai Collectorate webpage.

Stopped clock

If it hadn't been for a small dial on the map, it would have been easy to go past this clock tower without realizing its existence. Unlike the ones on White's Road or at the end of Radhakrishnan Salai, this one is along the side of the road rather than at an island in the centre. In that aspect, it is more like the one at Doveton, though the latter has its own little island patch. Lacking any such build-up around it, this clock tower stands at the corner of Tiruvottiyur High Road and Sannithi Street, looking rather unkempt and forlorn.

Unkempt it is, alright. The three clock towers that have been written about earlier were all showing the correct time, even if the one at Doveton could have done with a coat of paint. This one seems to have had a recent paint job done on it, but that does not make up for the lack of functionality. Each face shows a different time; before anyone makes a claim that this clock tower shows international times, let me add that the clock has stopped running, too.

All told, the excitement of seeing the dial on the roadmap wore off very quickly. This is not one of the old world clock towers; the foundation stone at its base was in Tamizh, though the letters are indecipherable. From what can be seen, one would guess this tower to be about 30 to 40 years old; with the older ones working fine, age cannot be an excuse for its almost complete neglect!

The Eater's Digest - 5

The area around Gemini Circle is teeming with offices. Many of the office complexes here were built at a time when cafeterias in offices was an unheard-of concept. Chances are the employees wouldn't have liked it, too, because they were used to bringing lunch in their tiffin carriers; an all purpose 'lunch room', which doubled up as storage space and many a time as a nice snooze spot was all they asked for, so the multiple storeys of the tiffin carriers could be spread around and maybe a communal lunch had with the colleagues.

As the pace of the workaday increased, lunch from home became a rare luxury; add to that the Parsn Manere coming up as an office complex for small businesses, many of them were just half the size of a lunch room anyway. That's when there was an explosion of lunch options within half-a-kilometre radius of the Gemini Circle. They included roadside vendors, lunch deliveries, dinky little vehicles with candy-stripe awnings that would drive up, park and unfold their wares at lunch time only. Many of those options, especially the step-out-of-office-to-eat ones, died out quickly. Palimar is one of the survivors from that era of the 1980s.

Of course, the food is not what it used to be. Somehow Palimar seemed to be always opening another restaurant somewhere else; those would be good for a while, but would then shut down rather quickly. With so much of attention focussed on the new locations, the quality at the 'original' Palimar has kept on its downward track, more's the pity!

Are you daft?

Waking up at 4.30 am after a pleasantly mellow Saturday evening does merit the question being asked. With an 85 km drive ahead, and a desire to complete it before 6.30 am, it isn't advisable to sleep for much longer. What's with the drive, you ask? Well, that's how far away the Vedanthangal (does it actually mean "hunter's pause" - vedan + thangal?) bird sanctuary is. It is a 'seasonal sanctuary', if there can be such a term, attracting birds during the northern winter, between October and February. Though 'sanctuary' is a rather grand term - there is just a large lake dotted with barringtonia and a clump of bamboos, with a walkway along its southern shore - Vedanthangal is a historic example of environment protection.

Long years ago, the villagers of Vedanthangal were intrigued by the huge number of birds that visited them year after year, just after the monsoons. Not fully understanding their migratory patterns, the villagers protected them still, for they realized that the water in the tank was enriched by the birds' droppings, thereby providing natural fertilizer for their fields. Thus, when the British arrived at this location in the early 20th century, drawn by abundant quarry for their game shoots, the villagers protested and made sure the hunters didn't return after the first season. Others did, most notably R.S.P.Bates, who pieced together evidence to show that heronries existed in Vedanthangal as far back as 1798. Thanks to their efforts, the area became India's first bird sanctuary in 1895. More recently, some scholars have postulated that Vedanthangal's history dates back thousands of years; let's just say that the villagers have always known and appreciated the role played by their winter visitors.

The southern edge of the lake, as I've said, is a walkway, built on a high bund bordering the lake. At its easternmost end, the bund falls off and you see this - imagine building a wall to keep the waters in the lake!

The birds of Vedanthangal are too beautiful for my dinky camera to do justice to them. Charlie's blog post on Vedanthangal, at http://10000birds.com/, has some great pictures; the ones I did take are on this Picasa page.

Morning light

The morning sun striking the aluminum & glass sheathed building gives it a golden sheen. This building - belonging to Cap Gemini, through its acquisition of Kanbay - has been constructed on a site where there was an old shed going by the name of Goschen Home.

Haven't been able to find any reference to that building anywhere. It used to house the office of the DIG of Police; but that was quite a while earlier, almost 12 years ago. The demolition of Goschen Home does not seem to have troubled anyone in Chennai!

Tomorrow's recreational space

It is rather difficult to believe that this used to be a decent, tarred road; expecting anyone to believe this stretch of pits and bumps is called Mambalam High Road is asking for the near impossible. Long ago, when the Kodambakkam bridge was yet to be built, Mambalam High Road was a connect from the Periya Gate there to the Chinna Gate at Rangarajapuram. Vehicles would try to beat the system by rushing across to the Chinna Gate, hoping to take advantage of an earlier opening or a later closing of the gate. Ever since the bridge came up, Usman Road took over the function of being the main traffic channel and Mambalam High Road sunk to a low.

Things can only get better for it, one hopes. With a subway under construction at the Chinna Gate, this road will end up being one that just runs along, without taking you anywhere. If it comes to that, I wonder how all this space would be used!

Graveyard trip

According to legend, old elephants instinctively move to their final resting place when they recognize their time on the planet is running out. At one level it seems to be plausible. After all, if eons of creation have implanted the urge to run upstream to spawn (and then die) - as in salmon - or to come to the same beaches year after year - as in the turtle arribada - the reverse may be true in the case of elephants? Certainly writers like H.Rider Haggard (King Solomon's Mines) and Edgar Rice Burroughs (the Tarzan series) and the Lion King movies (and musical) helped in building up the legend that the gentle giants make their way to a common place to - curl up and die.

Cut to the city life. Where do buses go when their useful life is over? Sure, there must be some wrecking yards somewhere that cut, rip, and tear apart the pipes, cast iron and sheet metal that make up the elephants of the city. The images that come to mind of such yards are all from Hollywood movies. I cannot remember having seen a similar yard anywhere in Chennai. But once the scale is recalibrated, it seems likely they are all over the place. More likely that the scrap dealers go to the condemned buses and reduce them to pieces of metal with just a couple of oxy-acetylene torches, than have all the outdated buses come to one place.

There is probably one place, somewhere near Porur, where I've seen a couple of bus 'skeletons' standing around. Seeing this going in the same general direction, I guess that's where the bus graveyard is. Does anyone know for sure?

Lifeline

It is tempting to think that with Rainwater Harvesting having been mandated for both new constructions as well as for existing buildings, the problem of Chennai's water supply has been adequately addressed. The move has surely helped in improving the water table (apart from adding one more strand to the red tape of seeking an approval to construct a building), but there are still large areas of the city that have to cope with limited availability of clean water for cooking and drinking. It is estimated that Chennai and its suburbs currently need about 1.5 billion litres of water a day, a figure that is expected to touch 2 billion in the next 12 years. The gap between demand and locally produced supply is almost 50%; water from the Krishna river, in Andhra Pradesh has been of immense help in narrowing that gap down. And thanks to the good monsoons of the past few years, the gap is even lesser, now.

At the turn of the millenium however, Chennai was completely dry. The Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (Metrowater) was simply unable to pump water out of the ground. Various ideas were put forward, including proposals for a giant de-salination plant feeding on the Bay of Bengal. Through all that hot air that circulated, the only means of getting water across to the city was the fleet of tankers that were owned or leased by the Metrowater. Traversing the city from their filling points at various locations in the 16 Metrowater zones, the tankers tried to meet the water needs of the city dwellers; but the long lines of colourful plastic pots, queueing up for the tanker to arrive, just did not seem to be shortening. Today, some of those proposals are being, or have been, implemented. The desalination plants are being built, even if on a less grandiose scale than was originally proposed.

But until those plans are implemented, tankers (like the one in the picture, coming out of the Mylapore - Nandanam distribution point) will remain the lifeline to a majority of Chennai's citizens!

What's that, again

Given the general chaos around the place where bridges are being built, the 'Go Slow' sign is a bit superfluous, one would think.

Unless of course, it is a comment on the nature of the bridge work that's in progress...

Take your pick!

The patriarch

Founded in 1928, The Music Academy was conceptualized as an institution to promote the study, practice and performance of Carnatic music around the area of its birth. The idea arose at the All India Music Conference of 1927. Now the All India Music Conference itself began as a sideshow of the Indian National Congress' annual sessions, so when it was Chennai's turn to host the Congress session, S.Sathyamurthy wanted the Music Conference also to be conducted with it. At the end of the Conference, one of the resolutions that were passed was a request to "organise a Music Academy in Madras for the purpose of improving and encouraging Indian Music and to consider the various problems concerning the theory and practice of Indian Music". Probably this was the influence of a paper presented by Mr. Ramachandran, titled "The Need for an Academy of Music".

Formally, The Music Academy came into being on August 18, 1928, when it was inaugurated by CP Ramaswamy Aiyer. Dr. U.Rama Rau was its Founder-President and so, the office of the Academy began functioning out of his dispensary at 323, Thambu Chetty Street. Mandated to hold annual music conferences and other music conferences whenever convenient, the newly formed academy always struggled to find suitable venues. The first few conferences (annual or otherwise) were held at various parts of Chennai: behind the Ripon Building; at 'Funnels', on General Patters Road, at Woodlands, Royapettah, at the University's Senate House and even at Dr. Rama Rau's dispensary. Tired of such itinerant conferences, TT Krishnamachari and Kasturi Srinivasan worked hard to come up with this permanent complex for the Academy, and are remembered through the names of the auditoria in the complex.

Somewhat surprisingly, it took seven years fom the time the foundation stone was laid by Jawaharlal Nehru to the day when Sri Jayachamaraja Wodeyar declared it open. Thankfully, the time taken seems to have been worth it!

Match the flower

The theme seems to be 'Let them have any colour, as long as it is not black'. Going on the East Coast Road recently, I happened to see several stacks of these kind of flowerpots along the road. Great idea to match these indoor planters with the colours of flowers that grow in them!