Tuck in

A little behind the Music Academy, on TTK Road, this eatery has been a haunt for the displaced Malayalee ever since it opened about 30 years ago. I think it is a slight exaggeration to call it a restaurant, for it is a very basic operation. Tables, chairs, steel plates - maybe a few plain china plates as well - the waiters dressed as they please, no uniforms here, it gets to be about as authentic a Kerala experience as possible.

There are some outfits that try to keep up with their early clientele, growing old - 'evolving', if you will - with them. And then there are others that try to stay young, staying with their original reputation, forever attracting a new generation of patrons. That approach runs the risk of being branded 'downmarket', especially if the new generation considers their offerings too old-fashioned.

Kalpaka has probably got its act down well; their menu is just the standard, solid, regular fare, things that the Malayalee has been used to for maybe a couple of centuries. Aapam, the Kerala porotta, and the Kerala Syrian Beef Fry. These are comfort foods for the non-resident Keralite and there is still a regular inflow of them into the city, keeping Kalpaka in business - and true to its coconut oil roots!

Cooum Kong

That's the only way to describe this creature depicted on the roof of a temple by the Cooum. For all its incongruity, it looks humanoid enough to scare away some intruders!

Collapsed

The II Draft of the Master Plan for Chennai envisioned cycle rickshaws as a viable mode of para-transit, shuttling between residential areas and the collection points for the larger modes of transport. But that plan seems to be a fairly long way from being put into action. The cycle rickshaws seem to be where they were many years ago; not a single new rickshaw seems to have hit the streets. 

But they haven't gone away entirely, either. In some parts of the city - near the Central Station, around the streets of George Town, and towards the end of Mount Road, near Chintadripet - they are still quite common modes of transport. 

This one, however, does not seem to be in a hurry to go anywhere. Its owner/driver was sitting nearby, not a care in the world. The rickshaw doesn't seem to be damaged or having been hauled in for maintenance. Maybe it is just taking a break!

Square arch

This was raised in 2012 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Tamil Nadu legislature. It was earlier the Madras state and somehow it was felt necessary to mark the transition of the name of the state with this structure. 

It is called an arch, but its outline defies the definition. 

For better or worse, it is going to remain on the Kamaraj Salai for a while, so let us enjoy it while it is around!

Remembrance

It has been a hundred years since the Great War began. Being a part of the British Empire at the time, India was drawn into the war, without too much of a say in the matter. Notionally a volunteer force, the Indian Army was pitched into several battles; with them were the armies of several princely states and European volunteers. The total number of troops from India was over a million. Almost four-fifths of them were sent to Middle East Asia, with the rest going to France and to Africa. 

Over 60,000 soldiers from India lost their lives in the Great War. The founding nucleus of the Indian Army, the Madras Regiment, had its fair share of causalities. The city decided to honour the fallen with a memorial at the south-west end of Fort St George. The space that was known as "Cupid's Bow" until then was cleared up and an open, circular stone pavilion was built. On the western side, the circle is marked with the years 1914 and 1918.

This pillar, in the centre of the circle, was a later addition, after World War II. The years are repeated here. Around the circle, each section commemorates a battlefield where soldiers from Madras Presidency laid down their lives. Some of the names are no longer in common use: Mesopotamia, for example. Some others:  well, they have become so enmeshed with fighting that one reads them with weariness - for example, Gaza. This memorial to the fallen soldiers of the Madras Presidency has been modified to reflect some of independent India's wars. Let us hope that there will not be reasons to keep updating this memorial!

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!

A different view

The road along the Cooum just after the Napier Bridge leads to the establishments of the Coast Guard, the Navy - the INS Adyar - and the CISF. Also along the road are residential quarters for officers of the Chennai Port. With so many government establishments along the way, signs and barriers - not to mention the odd security guard as well - make one nervous about pulling out a camera anywhere on that stretch.

But the view from the end of the road gives you a fair approximation of what the Madras coast must have looked like in olden days. The sandy beach runs south for a fair distance. The buildings of the University of Madras, government offices along the coast, the TV tower and the multi-super-speciality hospital in the distance... that's quite an unusual view if you are not a resident of the naval quarters.

The Cooum was still - as it is most of the time - and therefore looking deceptively calm. It was reflective of the lazy Sunday morning that it was!

Prison gate

It is now over 5 years since the Madras Central Jail was demolished, making way for the new block of the Madras Medical College there. For the last few years of its existence, the Jail at Park Town had no inmates, all of them having been moved to the sprawling campus of the new, model prison complex at Puzhal. The earlier Central Jail in Chennai had about 11 acres of space; the suburban train track ran right next to it. The noise of traffic would not have been very far, either. 

The Puzhal complex is far bigger. For starters, it is not one prison, but three. The complex houses the Chennai Central Prisons I and II, each with a capacity of 1250 inmates. Then there is the Special Prison for Women, which can hold 500 women prisoners. All these are spread out over an area of 212 acres, almost in the middle of nowhere. At least, when the prison started functioning, there were not many other establishment on that stretch of the NH5, about 25km out of Chennai. 

Even now, there are not too many reasons to stop at Puzhal. The locality has a population of about 30,000, most of who seem to be living just across the highway from the prison gate. From the highway, the entrance looks quite neat, with arches above the gate not quite indicating what lies within. The prisoners here surely get a greater sense of loneliness than in the crowded Chennai facility earlier!

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!

Old building

With the nationalization of the life insurance business, the LIC of India became a monopoly. With that also came the assets of several of the life insurance companies that were doing business in India - almost 250 of them. 

Many of those companies had long histories. Among the oldest was the Oriental Life Insurance Company of Calcutta, which had been started in Calcutta in 1818. With its nationalisation, their buildings were also taken over by the LIC. That's how this lovely building, at the corner of Armenian Street and Errabalu Chetty Street came to have that sign in front, looking quite out of place with the rest of the facade. 

It is often held up as an example of Art Deco in Madras; of course it is from that period, the 1920s, but somehow I think the architect / builder slipped in some Jaipuri-Jaina touches as well. The jalli of the uppermost balcony is, in my mind a giveaway - what do you think?

Ships at rest

When you are stuck for ideas, Chennai has a great solution. Go to the beach. Since it is not the sand there that clears your mind, I went to another place by the sea.

The Port of Chennai is 139 years old this year, going by the foundation stone. Or maybe even older, if you take into account previous attempts at building a harbour on this unforgiving seashore. Whichever way, it has seen it all.

Wonder if anyone has made any watercolours of it!

Memorial to a poet

The Bharathi Ilakkiya Mandram is one of the innumerable groups that celebrate the life and works of Mahakavi Subramania Bharathi. Bharathi was one of modern India's greatest poets, a firebrand nationalist who considered prejudices as great an enemy as the British. His poems were therefore as much exhortations against the imperial rule as they were against social practices which marginalized women. 

Born at Ettayapuram, educated at Tirunelveli, widely travelled across India, Bharathi's involvement with the freedom movement was in the company of the more strident nationalists like Tilak and Chidambaram Pillai. That brought the British police on him and he moved to Pondicherry, then under French occupation. He came back to British India in 1918, was arrested and imprisoned. Though he was released within a couple of weeks, he had to sign an undertaking that he would show his works to the DIG of police before publishing them. Obviously, this cramped his style considerably and the stress led to his health breaking down.

His last years were spent in Triplicane. Living in a house near the Parthasarathy temple, he regularly visited there, and got into the habit of feeding Lavanya, the temple elephant. One day, in a spirit of playfulness, Lavanya knocked him down; already frail, this blow was quite debilitating to the poet. He survived for a few more months, house-bound. After he died in 1921, he was never forgotten, but rarely celebrated, either, for a long time. The owners of the house he lived in at Triplicane, were loath to turn it into any kind of memorial. It was only in 1993 that the Bharathi Ilakkiya Mandram succeeded in having the government take over the building and turn it into the Mahakavi Subramania Bharathi Memorial House, making it one more memorial to the poet in his home state.  Among the many pieces of memorabilia here is a two line letter, blessing the opening of the memorial at his birthplace in 1947, from Mahatma Gandhi - written in Tamizh!

What's new?

It is not fair to expect a 'Tea House' to be open in the morning, which is when this picture was taken. The Novelty Tea House is not a pretentious newcomer to the world of eating out in Chennai; it is an establishment that is being run by the third generation in the business currently. 

Chandrakant Moolchand Shah was probably frustrated trying to find some north Indian snacks in the early '50s. He channeled that frustration into setting up a stall. There seem to have been no grand plans initially; it was just a 'tea stall', but clearly, the desire was to be different, hence 'Novelty'. Sowcarpet, where the first stall was, welcomed it. Over 50 years, the stall grew into a 'House', but remained within the north Madras area. It was only over the last 4 or 5 years that they have opened out to other parts of the city.

This one on Radhakrishnan Salai is, I believe, the most recent of the three locations. When open, it is usually chock-a-block with those itching to have a dahi-poori or four with their cuppa tea, or maybe a faluda. Once inside, it is easy to imagine you are away from Chennai - there is so much of Hindi in the air that English and Tamizh sound intrusive. But that is only to be expected at an establishment which claims to have introduced the pav-bhaji to Madras!

Big man

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

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

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

School in the middle

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

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

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

Headgear man

It is sunny in Chennai and these fans would come in handy to beat the heat. And you don't have to always fan yourself; they can protect you from the sun as well!

Old and new

A curious blend of architectural styles on Radhakrishnan Salai. Which one do you think looks better?

River and sea

That's another view of the Adyar river going out into the Bay of Bengal. You can see the green expanse of the Theosophical Society on the south bank, and with a bit of imagination, the 'broken bridge' across the mouth of the river.

That spit of land in the middle of the estuary has a few office buildings, a hotel, an apartment complex, and a building that starred in Mission Impossible:4. Can you spot it?

No prizes for guessing where I am! 

Dealers' associaton

In 1926, a few businessmen involved in the motor vehicles trade in Madras decided that they needed to get together to make common cause. The lead was taken by Sir Alexander MacDougall of Simpson's, the leading automaker of the time in the city. With him were H.E. Gow of George Oakes, F.G. Luker of Addisons, F.D. Growchery of Fiat and Kabardhars (Senior and Junior) of Patel & Company. Their founding day was April 23rd and they named their association the Madras Motor Vehicle and Motor Cycle Importers Association.

Within three years, they had to change their name. Motor Vehicles and Allied Merchants Association represented a broader spectrum of businesses than just vehicle importers. In 1938, they were registered as a joint stock company, Motor Vehicles and Allied Industries Association. As the apex body of the automobile trade - including the ancillary ecosystems - the MVAIA has been recognized as a consultative body by the state and central governments. 

In 1964, the MVAIA went a step ahead and became one of the co-founders of the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA). The FADA seems to be quite active, going by their website. The MVAIA does carry out a lot of activities, but it is quite difficult to find specific details about them. Now that is not surprising, given that even their headquarters is so nondescript!

The lady's gardens

Entering the People's Park through its southern gate, you get to see this statue - of Venus, is it? - behaving as if you are an unexpected visitor. It is quite a rarity, for it is not usual to see a bare-breasted sculpture in Chennai, outside of a few temples, in such a public location. Is this the lady of what was once called My Ladye's Garden? Most likely not, for this statue, and a few others around this park were probably set up in the 1930s, at least 70 years after the park was opened to the public. The impetus for this park was provided by Sir Charles Trevelyan, Governor of Madras between 1859-60, who was clear that the middle class of Madras needed a large, open space for recreation and entertainment. 

My Ladye's Garden was only one part of the People's Park; the entire park covered nearly 120 acres of space. A dozen lakes dotted the park, with boating facilities in at least one of them. Madras' first zoo, which was located on the grounds of the museum, moved here, taking up a sizeable chunk of the grounds. The zoo expanded over the years, adding a cheetah here, a few deer there, a couple of tigers and so on. Until it moved to the Aringar Anna Zoological Park in the mid 1980s, this was where Madras' citizens would come to see wild animals. 

Over the years, the People's Park has been nibbled away. Space for the Victoria Public Hall was allocated. The Ripon Building took up a section. The South Indian Athletic Association was given space for a pavilion and grounds. The Moore Market was accommodated. The Railways expanded, and chewed up some more space. Lily Pond Complex, that replaced Moore Market took up its share. And then the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium came up, along with the indoor sports complex, reducing the People's Park to the My Ladye's Garden. Go too quickly on Sydenham's Road and you might miss the gate to the park. While it still remains a large - and well used - lung for this part of the city, it is certainly a comedown for the feature that defined the area, which continues to be known as Park Town!