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What symbolises Chennai?
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Think Chennai, and what strikes you — the city's landmarks, its tradition, culture or people?
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RICH MEDLEY From buildings, temples, cutcheries, filter coffee to crows, Chennai-ites came up with interesting answers when asked what characterised the city most
A long-timer knows. A new-comer spots it at once. Chennai's air blows history. There are areas that look frozen in time. Temples and festivals go back several eons. Arches and columns of Indo-Saracenic and Byzantine architecture whisk you to an exciting past. Shift your gaze, and the glinting glass of high-rises reflects an IT-enabled present. Roads, streets and by-lanes are choked with vehicles, stationary and speeding. Flowers smell, cigarettes smoke, voices shout, buses are ready to burst. Every house has a business, every shop, customers. The benign city, where only the lights went out at night, has not slept in five years.
Is Chennai losing its character? Can you point a finger and say, hey, that's what Chennai is all about? Can you claim with confidence, Chennai lives here, this is its soul?
Try Fort St. George, the fortified "walk-out" factory named after the patron saint of England. The General Hospital, the first organised hospital in the country. Kaliamman Kameswarar temple (Kalikambal) where Emperor Sivaji and Subramania Bharati worshipped. Or St. Thomas Mount with its 134 climbable steps.
Many firsts
It's the sense of accommodation, said a distinguished historian. Every one of the institutions that binds a city — civic, municipal, engineering, medical, military, mercantile, educational or literary — had its beginning in Madras. Sir Josiah Child set up the Corporation, the oldest municipal organisation in the country. Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg's first press at Vepery printed his Tamil Bible in 1715. The Seven Wells water scheme began supply in the 1770s, Madras Courier, the first journalistic publication came out in the 1780s. Government Survey School, the oldest engineering school outside Europe, the Agri-Horticultural Society, librarian Abel Joshua's chain of Higginbothams and Charles Todhunter's Teacher's Training College opened here. Trains chugged down the Chennai-Arcot railway line from Royapuram station in 1856, the first Suburban Electric Train Service started in 1931.
You could Dare say it's Thomas Parry's House, Nawab Wallajah mosque, Rajaji Hall, St. George's Cathedral with its 140 foot-high spire, Presidency College, Peter Orr's P. Orr and Sons under the three-faced clock tower built in 1873, Madras University, one of the oldest Universities in the country, Robert Chisholm's magnificent Senate House, Madras Museum, the 106-year-old Central Station, the Buckingham-Carnatic Mills or the three and a half kilometre-long Marina beach. Take a breath. It could be the Theosophical Society of Helena Blavatsky and Col. Henry S. Olcott. The 175-feet high High Court building that functioned as a lighthouse. The Connemara Library and the spectacular National Art Gallery of Henry Irwin design, both built by T. Namberumal Chetty, and the Ice House, which became Vivekanandar Illam. The majestic San Thome basilica or Madras Veterinary College founded by Lt. Col. Dobbins, the first vet college to get University affiliation and grant degrees.
Don't forget the 252-feet long Ripon building in dazzling white planned by P. Loganatha Mudaliar, Capper House at the Marina, the first women's college in the city re-christened Queen Mary's College in 1917 or the Southern Railway HQ building. Or the movie studios, Music Academy, legendary Rukmini Arundale's seaside Kalakshetra, Gandhi Mandapam, the steel and glass LIC building, the useful and not-so-useful flyovers, Koyambedu to which Kothwal Chavadi moved, the mega manufacturing units, Tidel cyber park. The temple at Triplicane. Chennai's ancient trees, both in and out of Theosophical Society, its rivers, ponds and parks.
Striking, but Chennai is also its people like Vidyakar whose Udavum Karangal have embraced thousands of the city's unwanted; organisations for the disabled; consumer rights groups; its catalysts for civic consciousness. For Chennai lover Thennavan, it is "the vibrancy that harmoniously blends the old with the new. The city ends the day with the same humility with which it woke up. It doesn't need to flash wealth, doesn't need tags like "silicon valley" or "cyberabad" and doesn't give up its tradition in spite of influences to make it "cosmopolitan". In character, this is truly an "Indian" city."
Gosh, said Nancy Gandhi, it's impossible to reduce years of living in a city to one symbol. "I thought of Chennai's terrible weather, the temple gopurams, filter coffee, the grey-headed crows in my garden. The lives of Chennai-ites — people from all parts of the nation living harmoniously together.
But the moment I find profoundly moving even today, was the cricket match between India and Pakistan, in 1999 I think, when the Chennai crowd gave the winners, Pakistan, a standing ovation. That was a wonderful symbol of the best of Chennai — tolerant, open-hearted. We may not always live up to that standard, but the fact that that moment occurred is important to me."
Ancient and modern
Husband Ramesh Gandhi thought of a pujari on a motorcycle, bare-chested, with shaved head and tilak, his veshti ballooned out by the breeze — a blend of ancient and modern — and the Ice House. The Ice House originally stored something important to British comfort in a foreign land, and is now a memorial to the first Indian widely known in the West. That is a nice symmetry. Blogger Srivatsan finds Chennai's spirit elsewhere. "People seamlessly dabble between the conservative and the liberal. They are at home in a Carnatic music cutcheri as well as a pub. It's a city not just concerned about Page 3 and glitterati but engages in serious intellectual discussions. During Noam Chomsky's talk, there wasn't any space in Music Academy. Chennai has the ability to assimilate various cultures. Today Marvadis, Jains and Telugu-speakers call the city home."
"A fast-changing city that hasn't gone faceless," said Andal Damodaran. "People make an attempt to know each other. You are not classified by where you live. And, of course, the city's symbiotic link between screen and politics." For Dr. Sultan Ismail, religious harmony forms the city's USP. In Valmiki Nagar ex-IAS officer K. V. Venkatraman rued, "The peace and tranquillity of Triplicane, Mylapore and Mambalam are gone. Chennai to me is its music and its not-a-village-not-a-city character. It has become a cultural capital but I wouldn't like to live in North Mada Street anymore."
What symbolises the city most for you?
GEETA PADMANABHAN
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