The recent news that one more light railway line, this one near Calcutta, was closing down had me thinking of a question for quizzers: What was the first railway line in India? Most quizzers, I’m sure, would have said Bombay to Thane, a few might have said Madras (Royapuram) to Arcot. But both answers would have been wrong; both were passenger railway lines, the former the first, the latter the second. The first railway line to be laid in India was in 1837, near the Chintadripet bridge. But it seems to have been done more for exhibition purposes than for any kind of traffic.
The first line laid for any kind of use was based on a proposal by Capt. A.P. Cotton (or was it A.T. Cotton, later the great dam builder?) that had suggested a line from Red Hills to the stone quarries near Little Mount would result in considerable savings in transporting material from the quarries. This line was opened in December 1837 and must be considered the country’s first railway line. But depending as it did on wind power, regular service could not be assured and the Red Hills Railway called it a day.
Once regular railway services became operational in India, several light railways were established to become feeder services. The first in South India was the Kulasekarapatnam Light Railway (KLR) which was built to serve as a goods-cum-passenger service by Parry’s which had even earlier been thinking on a much bigger scale of a Cuddalore-Vriddachalam-Salem service. The KLR, inaugurated in 1915, ran 27 miles from Parry’s Kulasekarapatnam jaggery factory to Tiruchendur. The service ground to a halt in 1940 and its track was contributed as scrap to the war effort.
The wagons for the KLR were ordered from a German engineering company headquartered in Calcutta and represented in the South by Parry’s. In 1909, Parry’s had tried to get Orenstein and Koppel, light railway specialists, interested in its Cuddalore-Salem project, but if the German firm didn’t want to be a partner it was prepared to be a supplier. Unfortunately for O&K, the Great War led to it being sold as ‘enemy property’ and Parry’s acquired it. With the acquisition came the wagons Parry’s had ordered for the KLR and which were on the high seas. Parry’s eventually got the wagons, but made a small fortune meanwhile selling all that O&K had in stock. Parry’s then established a Railway Engineering Department to handle what at the time was a successful business, light railway construction. The Department after the War became Parry Engineering Ltd and long continued as a company that went through several ups and downs. O&K, resuscitated after the War, proved a formidable rival; on the other hand, the Cawnpore Railway Station was one of Parry’s triumphs. But all that’s another story.
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What’s in a name?
Was Chamier’s Road named after Chami Iyer, asks R.S. Nathan. Not as far as I can gather. Chamier’s Road is the road that was once the northern boundary of what was the Adyar Club which in 1963 became the Madras Club in a much abbreviated acreage.
What became the Adyar Club property had first been developed from 1790 by George Moubray, the Accountant-General, who was granted 105 acres of land here, between what became known as Chamier’s Road and the Adyar River, north-south, and the beginning of Greenway’s Road and the road to Kotturpuram, east-west. Here Moubray built a palatial mansion, Moubray’s Cupola , the first significant house on the northern bank of the Adyar. Moubray’s Road (now T.T.K. Road) leading to it is therefore likely to have been the first road in the area to have been named, probably around 1791-92. Chamier’s Road, in the circumstances, would have got its name after this.
The Chamier of this period arrived in Madras in the 1770s as John Deschamps and took the name Chamier by which an uncle of his in the city was known. John Chamier became Chief Secretary in 1803 but whether he lived in Moubray’s Cupola is not known. He could well have, though, because before Moubray left India in 1792 he sold the property, and the house went, first, into the hands of Francis Lautour, and then into those of John de Monte, who both rented it to the Council in Fort St. George for one senior official after another. Certainly it is unlikely that it was named after John Chamier’s son Henry who was Chief Secretary in 1832 and was the first President of the Madras Club, founded that year in the heart of town, far from Chamier’s Road, in property bounded by Mount Road, Patullo’s Road, White’s Road and General Patter’s and Wood’s Roads. With Moubray’s Road already in place, it is not unlikely that the road crossing it might have been named Chamier’s Road if the Chief Secretary had spent some years in Moubray’s Cupola .
There is, however, another possibility. In an 1822 map, there is marked a garden house property just east of Moubray’s Cupola , and this is recorded as being the property of Jacob Nazar Shawmier. The property of this successful Armenian merchant was in 1837 called Gambier’s Garden , a name that existed well into the 20th Century. Now, should what was called Chamier’s Road till recently (it is now Pasumpon Muthuramalinga Thevar Road) have been called Shawmier’s Road? With it recorded that Chamier’s Road was “developed from a cart-track between 1798 and 1816,” a fair bet would be that it was named after John Chamier who would have been living in Moubray’s Cupola , a residence worthy of a Chief Secretary. Shawmier was a later arrival on the scene. As for Chami Iyer, I doubt Brahmin residence in a place so far from Mylapore and in what, at the time, was essentially wilderness.
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A wedding with a literary touch
It was nice to be remembered nearly 18 months after we last met and it was nicer still to meet again at one of the most charming weddings I’ve been to in many a year. Almost the first to welcome you were Reihem and Nikita, setting the tone for the informality of an occasion that was going to be different, a difference ensured by Reihem’s parents, Rathin and Ellie, and her sister Susan, not to mention Reihem himself and his sister Nazra.
Amethyst’s narrow hall was filled with the hundred or so it would hold and the few more peeped in through the doorways, all entranced by the beautiful floral decorations and the origami cut-outs till Reihem and Nikita strolled in in silken simplicity, following in the wake of a rather out-of-place Sub-Registrar and her retinue.
Rathin began the proceedings welcoming the guests as much as the Special Marriages Act that sanctified the marriage of a Bengali-Malayali son and, if I heard it right, a Jain daughter-in-law-to-be, both Madrasis to the core, the families of Rathin and the Mehras having settled in Madras from the first days of Partition. Rathin introduced them all to relatives and friends, the Sub-Registrar took a few moments to watch closely the signing of the registers, rings and thick jasmine garlands were exchanged, and the magnificent kuthuvilakku was lit by the couple. Even as the Sub-Registrar hurried out, the first of four readings, giving the literary touch only two sisters who were Professors of English and a family of serious readers could bring to a wedding instead of a sermon.
There was Rilke advising, “The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of their solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust.” Richard Bach pointed out, “No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we’re safe in our own paradise… Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life.” An Apache Marriage Blessing urged them, “Now you are two persons, but there is only one life before (you). Go now to your dwelling place to enter into the days of your life together. And may your days be good and long upon the earth.” And James Dillet Freeman wished, “May you have happiness, and may you find it making one another happy. May you have love, and may you find it loving one another.”
And as the readings of some length ended, the soaring voice of Andrea Bocelli singing Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria’ in the original Latin engulfed the room. Even as Reihem and Nikita started mingling with the guests, the wedding cake was remembered and cut. And then Mark Kahn, Reihem’s business head, offered the toast — and befitting Reihem’s Old Testament name, the congratulations, blessings and the toast were in Hebrew. It was on, then, to the rice wine and the 14 different kinds of wedding cake Reihem’s family had spent weeks making — Ammachi’s was best – and dinner under the fairy lights. Was this a new India we were seeing, moments of quiet happiness rather different from the loudness of the big bash weddings we’ve been seeing for a while now?
