From Madras to Chennai

St Thomas Mount, the residence of the scary, larger-than-life, red-faced Tommies of my father’s generation, was in my time a place where Anglo-Indians with names like Alistair and Denzil lived and sent in their requests to Radio Ceylon’s ‘Listener’s Choice’. Their preferences were for Cliff Richards and Englelbert Humperdinck. The Thousand Lights Mosque built by the Prince of Arcot was and is a reminder of the creative presence of Mohammedan nobility and commoners in the city. Till not so long ago, most of the land in south Madras belonged to the descendants of two Shia courtiers in the Nawab’s retinue. The Khaleeli and Isfahani families have left their names on countless title deeds in the yellowing files of Ripon Building, the grand Indo-Saracenic structure, which houses the city corporation offices.

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.

... contd.