There is no way to verify a claim that Abel Joshua Higginbotham was offloaded on the Madras roads by an irate captain who discovered him to be a stowaway on his ship. Given the later indications of Abel Joshua being a man of education and refinement, it is somewhat unlikely that the stowaway story is entirely true: maybe it was only made up to heighten the romance of a penniless youth seeking his fortune in India, because that seems to be how he began, as librarian in the Wesleyan Book Depository. When that venture was in danger of shutting down, Higginbotham bought up the business, renamed it after himself, and began operating from a site close to this building.Though the building displays the year 1844, it is somewhat misleading. 1844 was indeed when Higginbotham's was established, making it the oldest bookstore in India. But this building itself came up only 60 years later, to commemorate the firm's diamond jubilee. Beginning life as a kind of catalogue-book-store (tell us the book you want, we'll find it for you), reflecting its founder's librarian origins, Higginbotham's ventured into printing and publishing too, before coming back to its knitting and staying with retailing books. Sometime in the early part of the 20th century, Abel's son C.H.Higginbotham took over the business and expanded its reach all over south India, by setting up bookstores at almost every station on the South Indian Railway. These bookstores can still be seen, making Higginbotham's a familiar name to millions outside Madras. This 105-year old building was renovated in the late 1980s; that renovation retained much of the original detailing, including the sweeping staircase that takes you to the first floor. The firm's current owners, the Amalgamations Group (remember Simpson's) are quite conscious of the building's heritage. That's good reason to believe you can come back next century and see this legacy still standing proud on Mount Road!
There was indeed a time when there were a couple of redoubts along Mount Road, to protect the travellers from vagabonds and highwaymen. Those days went out at least a century ago and over time, the redoubts have also been forgotten. While they look reasonably real enough, it is a fair bet these guns haven't seen active service. What do you think?
Except for those 'No Parking' signs, the rest of the stuff is for sale. You can choose to create a temple in your own dwelling with these, or you can use them as props. That's your choice, of course!
Weekend mornings normally see large queues in front of the highly fragmented meat shops like this one, where one can pick up as little as 100 g of meat, literally fresh off the block. There are obviously several hundreds of such shops in Chennai, some of them opening only on select days - and each of them manages to get by with its niche clientele. The weekends are busy days for obvious reasons; with almost no school allowing students to bring in non-vegetarian food, children can only enjoy that at home - and in many households, that means during lunch time.The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has prescribed minimum standards for intake of food varieties based on the Recommended Daily Allowance for different minerals and essential nutirents. The debate on the correlation between consumption and the extent of RDA met rages on, but in the absence of any other standard measure, consumption figures are used for determining nutritional standards across the country.The ICMR has recommended that per-capita consumption of meat should be 0.75 kg / month; no state in India is anywhere close to that figure. At 0.35 kg / month, however, the consumption of meat in urban areas of Tamil Nadu is the second highest in the country, behind Jammu & Kashmir (way behind - J&K comes in at 0.56 kg/m). The figure in rural areas is much less, and the ranking drops sharply: stretching that a little bit, it might be true that Chennai has the highest consumption of meat in any city in the country!
If this picture makes you drool, you are a true Madrasi. Even though it is nothing more than boiled peanuts and a few strips of semi-ripe mangoes, the memories that a Madrasi associates with the thenga-manga-pattani-sundal are far too numerous to mention. Unlike the earlier jhal-mudi seller, this vendor is slightly more traditional. Only that he is at Eliots Beach and not at the Marina, the birthplace of the sundal. And no, you won't be successful at getting a true Madrasi to think that sundal could have been thought of anyplace else!
The forecourt is on similar lines to that of the Casino, but this one pre-dates the Casino by quite a few years. Unlike the Casino, the 'Electric Theatre', built by Reginald Eyre and Warwick Major had a very short run; it screened its first silent film in 1913 and fell silent for the last time in 1915. It is said that its drapes were in blue and red, tricked out with silver stars. Major and Eyre did not pay too much attention to the social aspects of going to the movies; the foyer was very narrow, with almost the entire building being used up as the screening hall. It appears this plan left very little space for the patrons to mingle and critique the film.That alone may not have been the cause for the 'Electric Theatre' to close shop. Maybe the name did not lend itself to a feeling of joy - and that must have been sharply accentuated when 'Gaiety' opened in 1914, just behind the Electric Theatre. Major and Eyre did try to make up - was it they who pioneered the concept of differential pricing, for they created 5 classes of seating, including one for women in the purdah, sheltered from the others. Well, the division could more likely have been to reflect the society's caste system at that time, so that might have been a gambit to recover from an early error of mingled seats. But you can't fault them for bringing in the best caterer in Madras at the time - that's right, the Hotel d'Angelis - to run an open air bar and cafe in the garden besides the building.None of it seemed to help the partners keep the business going. In 1915, they sold the building to the Government, to be developed as the Mount Road Main Post Office. Luckily, the Post Office has retained the building in its original shape and style - and you can even go in to get a double dose of history, looking at the old postage stamps and then looking up to see if you can spot the place where the electric lamp used for projection, which gave the theatre its name, was placed!
...are back!Sharp, concentrated but thankfully very brief, these showers are a by-product of the South West monsoon. They bring down the temperature, hold up everyone on the streets; if you're wise you will not leave the strorefront you're holed up in. Chennai residents will know these showers last only a few minutes so it is worth waiting it out rather than get drenched and look foolish for the rest of the day.There're still a couple of months to go before Chennai's monsoon sets in, but any Chennai resident will be glad to have showers of this kind every day - the heat is still ruling at fairly high levels!
Early morning, by the side of a road just outside Chennai. Farmers here continue to use these tools - the hoe and the ploughshare - for their small landholdings. The oxen were taking a break from the ploughing, grazing nearby.The city will catch up with them very soon. Too soon.
New Delhi is often touted as having had the first amusement park - Appu Ghar - in the country, but Chennai can stake a reasonably valid claim to that fame, too. I shall keep the story of VGP's Golden Beach for another day, but it did give rise to many other such amusement parks in the city. Several of them have gone under, but there are still about three or four which continue to draw in the crowds. Queen's Land (in whatever way it is spelt, they're themselves not sure of it) is a fairly recent entrant, having opened only in 2004. It has a great first mover advantage in location, being on the NH4 - most of the others are on the East Coast Road. One can see the cable cars from the road a short while before seeing the park's signboard; it is quite tempting to stop the vehicle and get on to a couple of rides - though I don't think too many people do that. Planned visits are more the norm than not.I've never been to this park, but I have been rather amused by their website, which says "...it is a place really worth spending your valuable time with. Every one will accept the fact being the valuable money that is being spent by our valuable visitors had fetched more value."
For a bunch of kids who grew up in the Madras of the '70s and early '80s, New Century Book House was a place where one could get some excellent books. The only condition was that one should not be too choosy about the author or the characters, for almost all the books at NCBH were translations of Russian works. I should say 'Soviet' works, for those were the days when India's 'non-alignment' meant a special friendship with the USSR: the books from the Soviet lands must have been heavily subsidized, for none of them cost more than Rs.10. Even in those days, it was quite a bargain.And so there was a huge collection built up. 'Tales from the North Sea', Tolstoy's 'Stories for Children', 'The Fire Bird' - these are some of the books that I can see on my shelf even today, as I write this. There were others, very many that are packed away in cartons because they have become dog-eared over several years of being read by different generations. Names such as Vanya, Kostya, Shurik, Lyka and Nyura became very familiar from all the stories they appeared in. But it was not all 'story-books'; Vygodsky's 'Mathematical Handbook' was a completely different perspective from what the schools taught us. Ya. Perelman's 'Mathematics can be Fun' is still captivating enough for my son to pore over. USSR has been gone a long time now and the 'special friendship' has moved shores. The NCBH too does not stock those Soviet titles any more. I hope they are doing well, but they have moved across the road from where their rather roomy bookshop used to be, to a slightly hole-in-the-wall location - the only bright thing appears to be their signboard!
A few weeks ago, the smooth surface of the Jawaharlal Nehru Road was broken up and this barricade came around it. That is the first visible indication of the Chennai Metro project having begun in earnest. Expected to take six years to complete, the project is estimated at over USD 3 billion. Though they say the first phase - from Teynampet to the airport - will be operational by 2011, there is no sign of any work having begun at either of those ends!
It has been almost three years since Chennai's police force was gifted these prowl cars by Hyundai Motors. Until then, the standard vehicle for the police was the Willys Jeep, or something similar. But somehow, the abiding image of cops seems to be one associated with red-white-blue lights, a low sedan with snazzy decals screeching up to the scene of action and the Chennai Metropolitan Police was nowhere in the picture on this one. In fact, with the introduction of these sedans in 2006, the CMP reportedly became the first police department in the country to use sedans.One hundred of these were provided to the city's police force; 72 were given to the law-and-order wing, 25 to the traffic police and the rest were retained for the chief minister's convoy. They were supposed to be driven by officers of the rank of at least sub-inspector - but I suspect that the novelty having worn off, the sub-inspectors would rather have someone else drive the car these days while they call out the warnings on their hailers!
Seen on a building on Walajah Road. Yes, it looked pretty bad, and it didn't seem like there were any occupants. But some boards were there, so not sure if they were tenants refusing to vacate, or just those who left in so much of a hurry as to not take their boards with them.Or is the threat of imminent demolition just a trick to get those tenants out?
Oh yes, I just have to show off that word - it means "the curve assumed by a cord of uniform density and cross section that is perfectly flexible but not capable of being stretched and that hangs freely from two fixed points". Apparently, the definition for that kind of a curve has also been adapted to describe the Overhead Line Equipment (OHLE) that is used to power trains running on electricity - as the ones on Chennai's suburban lines are. This is a stretch of the railway tracks just across the road from the airport; it is a rather straight stretch, which is fairly common on the Tambaram - Beach line. The catenaries are hung out from points on the crossbar; the whole arrangement looked like a series of goal posts - was tempted to show them all receeding into the distance, fitting inside each other, but it didn't seem like a good idea to stand in between the tracks trying to get a 'perfect picture', so I just settled for this one.There was something I noticed then, something that continues to intrigue me: what are those rolls of - wire mesh? I mean the green things tucked inside the crossbar, on its left. It can be seen in every one of the crossbars. Does anyone have any idea what that is for?
If one were to turn left into Mount Road from Walajah Road, the angle of the junction will bring to view this it-might-have-been-grand-once-upon-a-time kind of building. The location of the building, at the dog-leg where Blackers Road turns off from Mount Road, may not seem to be a great one today, but in the late 19th century, it would certainly catch the eye of anyone going down to St Thomas' Mount from the Fort. But Giacomo d'Angeli wasn't thinking about location or anything like that when he came to Madras from his native Corsica Messina in 1880. All he wanted was a place to set up his catering service, "Maison Francaise". It was a most likely a novelty intially, a Corsican Messinan 'Mess Contractor' providing catering services under the supervision of a French chef. Business was good enough for d'Angeli to stick to it for over twenty years; he then got a lucky break when Lord Ampthill, governor of Madras from 1900 to 1906 insisted that all his parties would be exclusively catered to by d'Angeli. That break set Giacomo on the road to prosperity; in 1906, he opened the Hotel d'Angeli's in this triangle-shaped building, with its east windows and the first floor verandah looking out on to Mount Road. In time, Hotel d'Angeli's became the place to be in; many innovations were brought to Madras by good old Giacomo - elevators, running hot water, electric fans, cold storage, billiard rooms - all these luxuries brought in patrons by the droves, even after Giacomo sold out the business to the Bosottos sometime in the 1920s 1930. The Bosottos themselves got out of the hotel business in the 1940s and since then, Hotel d'Angeli's began to go downhill, until it was converted into an office complex - without any major changes - in the late 1960s. Today, a large Bata showroom occupies the ground floor, where the lobby and tea-room used to be. The rest of the building is little cared for and seems to have turned away with a vengeance from its days of glamour. There does not seem to be any record of what Giacomo d'Angeli did after selling his hotel; he would have been around sixty at that time and no one seems to have any idea of where he went after the Bosottos took over his hotel. But search for "d'Angeli" on Google today and you will find a host of catering-related results in the first page, ranging from Naples, FL, USA to Singapore. Maybe there is something more to the d'Angeli name, after all!
After putting up this post, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Giacomo d'Angeli's great grandson, Jefferies Evans had read it and had pointed out a couple of errors. I have been guilty of not correctling them until now - that's the explanation for the strikethroughs!
What kind? I have no idea. Just thought they looked good, when I saw them at Neelankarai, just off the East Coast Road. The plant was rather unkempt; but the flowers lift up your spirit with their sheer freshness - what more can you ask for on a hot day, under the blazing sun at Neelankarai!
Well, it is not exactly the setting for a play, but it just gives you a sense of what the Museum Theatre looks like inside. It is quite a steep drop from the doors to the stage, giving you a sense of being in an amphitheatre of olden days. A big difference is that the hall is not really semi-circular, but more a deep horseshoe. It was built more for vocal expositions than for theatrics, which is probably why it was okay to have seats at 90-degree angle to the stage. In today's times, someone in that seat would miss out on almost every expression the actors convey, so there are always two wedges of empty seats along the sides. The 'pit' is not really as well defined as the one in the Music Academy; in fact, it is non-existent, if I'm right. Now that I think about it, I realize I have no idea where the production crew, which would normally be in the pit, sits in this theatre. The space in front of the stage is filled with seats, almost up to the footlights. There are about a hundred seats there and those are the pricey ones; if you've opted for a cheaper ticket, the best thing to do is to rush in when the doors open and take your place somewhere just behind a railing which separates the 'front-benchers' from the rest.For this event, there were no tickets - it was a quiz competition and everyone was trying hard to get into the front, so as to not miss a single pixel of the questions being projected - and during the break, one member of each team seems to have stayed behind to guard the hard-earned seating!
If this photo had been taken a few hours later, it would have been full of people. But at noon, there is really no reason for anyone to be crowding at the gates of Chennai's only drive-in theatre, considering that the first show is seven hours away. With the city's expansion, what was once a difficult-to-reach destination is now close enough for people to actually go and watch a movie out there. Despite that, Prarthana doesn't seem to be getting the bigger movies, having to make do with second-rung films or ones that are on their second wind. It has been quite a while since I've been to a movie here, but memories of doing so are quite pleasant - except for the scramble to get into the gates. That's a test of patience and it takes a lot to curb roadrage when you see someone cut in front of you after you've crawled for about 20 minutes to cover the last half-kilometre to the gates. Inside, there is enough space; though I don't remember the actual capacity, I'm sure there's enough space for at least 75 cars - that's quite a lot of people, not including the 100 or so who, having come on their two wheelers, can sit at the back.The complex also has a regular theatre - Aradhana. That's something I didn't know until very recently - haven't heard of anyone going all the way to Prarthana and then deciding not to do the drive-in bit!
It is about 90 feet tall, squarish and stands all by itself a little away from the gopuram of the Kapaleeshwarar temple. And no, it does not have any ramps leading up to it, so it cannot be a multi-level car park, can it?It is actually the parking spot for a single vehicle. A single vehicle which is used once - or maybe twice - a year. That vehicle is the chariot, the ther which is used to take the main deity in a procession around the temple on the important festival days. This is a common enough practice in many of Tamil Nadu's temples - and the chariots are mostly parked in a thatched shed, close to the temple gates. At the Kapaleeshwarar temple, the chariot itself has become a venerated item over the years; that is probably the reason why it has been locked up in its own garage, where it can stay away from the eyes - and the hands - of devotees, emerging grandly on the day when it has to show itself off in all its glory!
Chennai does have its fair share of high end hair stylists, but the city obviously has enough population to keep a large number of 'hair dressing saloons' in business. Many of these saloons have upgraded themselves - they're air-conditioned, have a variety of scissors (that's big deal, considering most of them used to have just a blunt shear to hack at my schoolboy hair) and offer you full-service; hair colouring to pedicure with all kinds of beautification in between.I'm old enough to have seen - yet, young enough to have not used :) - the itinerant barbers stropping their razors under trees by the roadsides of suburban Madras. They too, offered full service, with a 'head-massage' rounding off the shave and a haircut that most customers desired. Now, here's a shop that stays true to its roadside heritage - there is no door, just 3 walls blocking off a space by the pavement. The plastic chairs for waiting customers are on the pavement itself, as is the asbestos sunshade over them. All you have to do is to step off the pavement, and plonk right into the barber's chair!
