The Chamiers and the Shawmiers

December 28, 2014 04:23 pm | Updated 04:23 pm IST

Corner in the Armenian Church. Photo: special arrangement

Corner in the Armenian Church. Photo: special arrangement

The thing about this column is that a simple query from a reader begins spiralling on its own like a thodarkathai , a serial, with a heap of other information tumbling out of the cupboard. Over the last week, the Chamiers (Miscellany, December 8) and the Shawmiers (Miscellany, December 8 and December 22) have had readers getting in touch with me several times.

Bharat Yeshwanth, who hasn’t been heard from for quite a while, has found an interesting connection between the Chamier family and a revered name in the southern Madras Presidency whose major contribution still remains in the headlines. As already mentioned, Chief Secretary John Chamier’s son was Henry Chamier, another Chief Secretary. Henry Chamier’s son Stephen was one of eleven children. And now comes the interesting connection. One of Stephen Henry Chamier’s daughters married John Pennycuick in Madras. That must have been when Pennycuick was getting Madras cricket to a start and long before his signal contribution, the Mullaiperiyar Dam, which continue to be in the public eye.

Another Chamier-related story was told me by Dr. Ravi. Apparently there is a “Chami Iyer’ living on Chamier’s Road at present. He is a Swaminatha Iyer, but ‘Chami’ to his friends!

As for the Shawmiers, they have been keeping Noel Fuller busy. As already mentioned, the graves of Aga Shawmier’s mother and his sister are under the porch of the Church on the Mount where St. Thomas is said to have been martyred. But the tombstones of Aga Shawmier himself and his wife are side by side in the Armenian Church in George Town in an alcove at the end of the south verandah of the Church called ‘Shawmier’s Corner’. In the Corner, on a wall, there is a plaque with Armenian lettering and a portrait of the Aga.

The positioning of the Shawmier tombstones in the Armenian Church raises an interesting question or two. The Church was consecrated in 1772 by the side of the Armenian cemetery which was in the grounds of the Shawmier family chapel. Questions, questions, questions. Was the Church a renovation of the chapel or was the chapel razed and the church built on its site or was the chapel elsewhere in these grounds? Perhaps the French Armenian researchers who were here for Madras Week will come up with some answers. More questions. Aga Shawmier’s wife died in 1765 before the Church was built and would have been buried in the cemetery. But the Aga died in 1797. Was he buried by his wife’s side in the cemetery and both tombstones later moved into the alcove or was he buried in the alcove and his wife’s tombstone moved there?

All the Shawmier tombstones bear the family crest, a juxtaposition of a pair of scissors, a measuring rule (both for textiles?), a pair of scales and weights (to weigh pearls?), an ink pot, and a quill for writing. Those representations leave it in no doubt that the Shawmiers were merchants.

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Announcing it differently

I recently seem to be getting invited to weddings where arrangements are being done a bit differently. In this instance, the wedding invitation that arrived by post bore a stamp of the couple, their names, Jai and Pallavi, printed below the picture of them together. Asking Pallavi’s mother what that was all about, Chitra told me that the Postal Department was offering personalised stamps and wondered how come I had not heard of it. Well, I’m usually behind the times, I told her, but so seem to be the circles I generally move in; no one had heard of these stamps. Whereupon Chitra proceeded to enlighten me.

But first she “just” had to tell me that the Philatelic Bureau on Mount Road had once been the city’s first custom-built cinema theatre, the Electric Theatre, before the Postal Department took it over. For many years, little attention had been paid to it by the Department till one fine day they decided to renovate the building and make it the Philatelic Bureau. Now, not only is the main part of the building well-kept, but its nearly all-woman services are offered not only efficiently but in a friendly manner. “It’s nice to see smiling faces in a Government Department when you seek help,” says Chitra. Former Postmaster-General Theodore Baskaran would be delighted with all she had to say; a heritage buff, he had been responsible for the restoration and the re-use of the building in an imaginative manner.

At the personalised stamp counter in the Bureau one morning, she was offered several options of regular post office Rs. 5 issues to choose from and she chose the Taj Mahal. Then she produced the photograph she wanted used and this was scanned and sent for printing. Rs. 15 was the charge per stamp set for a bulk order, including the Rs. 5 for the Postal Department’s sister stamp, in this case the Taj Mahal stamp. Including choosing, scanning, paying, receipting and a “Please come back at four in the evening, Madam,” the whole transaction took just half an hour, the efficiency impressive, and the chat, including cooing over the picture, a rare pleasantry in a Government institution. When Chitra went back in the evening, the greetings were warm, and the stamps were ready as promised. They came in sets of 12, the personalised stamps having been printed on a perforated sheet of Rs. 5 Taj Mahal stamps that had a blank space left next to each official stamp to accommodate “My Stamp”. Chitra may have been poorer by the cost but richer by the experience of friendly service and happier by the delighted reaction of numerous friends who called in to say “What a nice idea!”

The service has been around for a while now, I was later told, but so few seem to have heard of it. Perhaps the Postal Department should improve its marketing, especially when it has a good idea. Not ‘rocket science’ for an idea, but a way to get customers to know that there’s at least one corner in a Government institution where there’s something customer-friendly going on.

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When the postman knocked…

* It’s a bit of the past (Miscellany, July 29, 2013) and a bit of the present (Miscellany, November 21) that P.R. Somasundaram has put together in bringing fellow readers up-to-date on both. Though his reference was not to a Jew who had settled in Madras, but to a person no different from the expatriate Jews of today I had mentioned, he felt Prof. Wallace Fox who lived in Madras from 1956 to 1961 deserved recalling for his contributions to South India. Dr. Fox, who got married in the synagogue in Cochin — something I was not aware of — was the first Director of the Tuberculosis Chemotherapy Centre that he established in Chetpet. His studies on the outpatient treatment of patients was the basis of the National Tuberculosis Programme of India. But what I had not mentioned in 2013, he points out, were other major contributions by Dr. Fox, “the evolution of intermittent, instead of daily, treatment for tuberculosis and reducing the duration of treatment drastically, leading to the DOTS treatment recommended by WHO.” I also did not know that after retirement he was affected with Alzheimer’s. He died in 2010, remembered as “a dynamic personality, a hard taskmaster, but who made people enjoy their work and take pride in it.”

* It’s nice to see so much attention being paid by the Madras Press to heritage buildings in Pondicherry after the collapse of the Mairie, writes Jeanne Pinto, but why aren’t the same newspapers wondering aloud about what’s happening in Madras, namely the delay in completing the restoration of Ripon Building and the Town Hall (Victoria Public Hall) , the lack of attention to the deterioration in the restored Senate House building of the University of Madras, a decision on Gokhale Hall , and the failure to get started on restoring Khalsa Mahal, Humayun Mahal and protecting the rest of Chepauk Palace, the National Art Gallery and Victoria Hostel. What is the Heritage Conservation Committee doing, she asks. Does anyone know?

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And before I sign off today, a very happy and prosperous New Year to all my readers. May you continue to keep me on my toes with your contributions, queries and comments.

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