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The postman knocks
Several readers feel I got it wrong when I called it the Kanji Thottam Hospital (Miscellany, September 24); it should have been Kanchi Thotti Hospital, they say. I still stand by my version – the gardens where the gruel was served, not the cont
ainers from which it was dispensed would have been a better directional location. Be that as it may be, in a tragic coincidence, the day I was retailing the Stanley Medical Hospital story, the hospital got itself a press everywhere else for the wrong reasons.
* Reader R. Narasimhan wonders whether I could throw any light on the origins of the names Washermanpet, Royapuram and Ayyanavaram. The first one’s easy; during the early years of English settlement, cottons for export were manufactured in the area and the washing-bleaching-and-dyeing took place in the North River (now the Buckingham Canal). So the washermen. As for Royapuram, Royappa is the Tamil version of Peter and St. Peter is the patron saint of fishermen. There’s a St. Peter’s Church of some antiquity in the area too. Ayyanavaram, however, beats me; could there have been an Ayyanar temple in the area which gave it its name? I have no doubt some readers will come up with the answer.
S. MUTHIAH
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