Madras miscellany: Celebrating your city

August 31, 2014 08:06 pm | Updated April 21, 2016 01:47 am IST

  Celebrating Madras Day at Vivanta by Taj-Connemara

Celebrating Madras Day at Vivanta by Taj-Connemara

Madras Day, Madras Week, Madras Fortnight, Madras Month. Call it what you will. And if you are a part of the post-1996 brigade, call it Chennai Day, Week, Fortnight, Month too. But celebrate your city. And that’s what thousands did last month, in a celebration bigger than ever. I was particularly delighted that His Excellency the Governor noted the celebrations and urged that heritage and history needed greater attention being paid to them. I was equally happy that His Worship the Mayor participated in another event and sounded the same note. And thoroughly enjoying the singing of a Subramania Bharati song by a Government official, who sprang it on them as a surprise, was a large audience at yet another event.

Indeed, the enthusiastic participation of the media, ranging from a very special issue by Frontline , a splendid keepsake, to supplements, daily pages, and TV channels and FM having a ball with the occasion made this year’s celebrations truly one of the city. Going beyond walks, and talks and quizzes, there were programmes ranging from street food and cookery demonstrations to Madras Bhasha and Madras Gana, from entrepreneurship and business to art and films, from discovering communities in areas of the city like St. Thomas’ Mount, Perambur, Anna Nagar and Royapuram.

Truly was this a celebration of the city and its people. But there was the odd bird who quibbled that it was a celebration of colonialism and should have been Sangam-oriented and Dravidian in content. Well, that was tried out a few years ago with governmental support and was as much enjoyed as what was happening last month, but appears to have faded out. Could it be because it was an organised activity dependent on funding and not a spontaneous voluntary celebration by people who love their city and not a host of ‘isms’? And that includes colonialism.

In fact, if anyone, like a certain Tourism Department official thinks that Madras that is Chennai is a colonial city and not a vibrant Indian city, he or she should be campaigning to move the capital out of Madras, leaving it to trade and commerce, and establishing it at the junction of Chola Nadu and Pandya Nadu as had once been suggested by people like your columnist and a former Chief Secretary, P. Sabanayagam, and which MGR almost did. They should also be urging that we do away with our present systems of education, medicare, engineering, governance and what not and bring back the gurukulam, ayurveda, manual, grand panchayat and other systems in place of what we have. When they begin thinking that’s not going to be possible, they’ll join those who love Madras in celebrating the city and not a host of isms. The more we celebrate the city, the more awareness there will be about it, and awareness will bring a commitment to making it a better city of today and not one of the pre-historic or medieval eras.

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Surprises a plenty

Doing the rounds of Madras Week events, your columnist continued to be surprised by happenings as well as by information that added to his knowledge of Madras that is Chennai.

* At an event at Vivanta by Taj Connemara, on Madras Day, August 22nd, General Manager Samrat Datta and Executive Chef V.K. Chandra Sekaran surprised everyone by initiating proceedings rolling out an imposing cake with Central Station welcoming all. And as the cake was cut, an overflowing ballroom burst into song, wishing both Madras and Chennai, according to the inclination of each, a Happy Birthday. To surprise the audience further, that other chronicler of the city, Sriram V., rolled out another cake and almost sang that he had not baked it. And then, there was that Bharatiar song one of speakers for the day opened his innings with, which, reading between the lines, indicated that we have a city that’s a treasure and that we must do everything to keep it that way. It was greeted with the loudest applause of the evening.

* I thought I knew quite a bit of Robert Chisholm, whom one reporter insisted on calling ‘Kishalom’ instead of ‘Chishum’, the architect responsible for many a 19th Century public building in Madras and Trivandrum, thereby making Indo-Saracenic architecture in all its variety renowned. But Sriram V. sprang a surprise on me when he related that Chisholm had been tried for manslaughter after he returned to England. Apparently the architect had had a 10-year-old son William who had diphtheria for a long time and Chisholm, who had become a Christian Scientist, a faith that does not believe in medical treatment, refused to allow a doctor to see the sick boy. When William died, Chisholm was tried but, despite the evidence against him, was acquitted on the manslaughter count though he was held guilty for the misdemeanour of neglecting the child, a decision meant as an example to others who might want to act in the same way because of their beliefs. The fact that Chisholm had around this time lost a son in France during the Great War may have also had something to do with the judge’s humane approach.

* During World War II, I discovered, at a film screening on his life, that Ellis Dungan, who changed the way of making Tamil films and created such masterpieces as Meera and Shakuntalai , became a photographer for the Government of India and made several wartime documentaries and news clips for the newsreels of the day. He was there when Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated and he filmed the funeral of Gandhiji for the Government, a newsreel said to be an outstanding bit of film-making.

* It was at a Rotary event for the Week that Krithika Bala brought the audience to its feet. Conducting a part-quiz, part-Karaoke and part-vocalist programme, she had the audience answering what the song about Madras/Chennai was that was associated with the scene she screened. Those giving correct answers found themselves joining her on the stage to follow her lead and then finding themselves left to it. And did those grey-heads have a great time as she urged them on to keep singing while the audience clapped, clapped, clapped! Great fun it was. And pure Madras gana.

* And real Chettiar cuisine got a boost when ‘Hot Breads’ Mahadevan organised three cookery demonstrations at three of his restaurants by three achi s. This was supplemented by cooks from The Bangala in Karaikudi serving up lunch and dinner at The Marina , where patrons queued up for seats. This enthusiasm for specialty food was matched only by those who walked with Sridhar Venkataraman on food trails that served up the specialties of areas like Purasawalkam and Sowcarpet. And not to be outdone, almost all the star hotels in the City added ‘Madras Specials’ to their menus. Who said all this was colonial?!

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E &O.A.

Dr. M. Krishnan writes that he had made a mistake when sending me information on Dr. K.G. Pandalay. He says that “Marthanda Varma was the son-in- law of K.G. Pandalay and not the other way around” and that he had erred while typing. 

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