The records indicate that the city owes many buildings, bridges and layouts to the far-sighted Armenian merchant-prince Coja Petrus Uscan. My ophthalmologist in Chicago was the one who told me that the first Armenian newspaper was published from Madras. So much for the by-lanes of history!

The city is not in denial about its British connection. Munro’s statue still stands next to Island Grounds. It was Sir Thomas Munro, Governor of Madras Presidency, who first in the Baara-mahals (literally “Land of Twelve Fortresses”, modern Salem District) and then elsewhere laid the foundations of an imperial dispensation more benign and less rapacious than in Bengal or the United Provinces.

Madras is also about cricket, not just international matches (I saw Gary Sobers score a brilliant 97 there), but also of humble league matches where some of us who did not play went to cheer and keep score. College days are special in retrospect. For me, Loyola was liberating in multiple ways. Francis and Raja, Srinivasan and Simon, Swaminathan, Bechtloff and Govindarajan opened up enchanted worlds. And of course, the college was full of brilliant persons, many of whom have gone on to heights of achievement.

With age, consciously or otherwise, one has a tendency to embrace the long-lost umbilicus and reach out to what must pass for roots. Carnatic music surely represents an aural throwback to amniotic seas. It is hard when one’s siblings can recognise a raaga from the first few notes of the aalapana. I confess that I cheat. I have a crib sheet that tells me the raagas of well-known compositions and I work backwards. I am completely at sea during the aalapanas although (given the vigorous shaking of my head) my neighbours in the auditorium will hardly guess this. Once the composition starts, my knowledge base is relatively secure. Of course, I knew all along that this was Kamboji or Brindaavana Saaranga.

... contd.