The story of Lloyds Road is a potent mix of the famous and the notorious from Chennai’s film and legal worlds. It is this heady cocktail that actor Mohan V. Raman and historian V. Sriram served us at the ‘Looking Back at Lloyds Road’ walk on a recent early morning as part of Madras Week. “A map of Lloyds Road in the 1930s is just about 50 houses, each spread over huge grounds,” says Sriram. But the illustrious and colourful lives of the inhabitants thereof make for many historical anecdotes and much amusement.
We begin just ahead of where Lloyds meets Thiru Vi Ka High Road and Masilamani Road. Beyond lie the Jewish and Chinese cemeteries, but before us is land that belonged to a colony of lawyers, from Justice V. Balasubramaniam, advocate-general K. Rajah Iyer who bought the property from High Court judge Venkatarama Krishnaswamy Iyer, and many others. The one exception among these was a house with three entrances sprawled across 32-grounds that once belonged to K.P. Viswanatha Iyer, right hand of Kasturi Srinivasan, best remembered for his first-hand reports in The Hindu of Gandhi’s Dandi March. One of the largest landowners in that time was R. Balaji Rao, after whom Balaji Nagar is named, who is said to have walked in his youth from Kumbakonam to Madras looking for work and education, for he could ill-afford transport. Aided by a hay-cart driver and later a padiriyar, Balaji went on to teach at an orphan home and earn a law degree from Presidency College in the 1860s. He rose to be the Mylapore representative of the then Municipality, retired with huge wealth, and bought the lands of Balaji Nagar. “It’s amazing just how identical to Dick Whittington's life story Balaji’s was,” observes Sriram.
Further down, at Lloyds Corner, stands the stately ‘Raman and Associates’ home of the former Advocate-General of Tamil Nadu V.P. Raman, Mohan’s father. With Raman deeply involved with a young DMK party, the house was often host to numerous cultural luminaries such as poet Kannadasan, actress Saroja Devi and, most frequently, to MGR, who lived just two doors away at ‘160 Lloyds Road’. Mohan vividly remembers the day MGR was shot, and the sole witness producer K.K. Vasu landed home blood-soaked, with the weapon in hand. Raman went on to be witness at this case. Mohan also recalls mornings at MGR’s home, which faced V.N. Janaki’s residence. “You’d see him practising
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Lloyds Road’s film connections deepen with the homes of
Lloyds also figures in the beginnings of two newspapers, the Swadesamitran whose manager and later editor, C.R. Srinivasan lived here, and the first office of MGR’s paper Anna , which today is the AIADMK headquarters. It was also home to the Lakshmipuram Young Men’s Association, which was then an intellectual hub, graced annually by the Governor’s lecture every January. Lloyds’ biggest claim to fame, though, probably lies in the unassuming house of TKS Kalaivanan, son of dramatist Avvai T.K. Shanmugam, who still lives here and tells us anecdotes from his father’s life. Incidentally, Sriram notes, that Lloyds Road ends by the beach, right at the statue of Avvai, much before the road was renamed Avvai Shanmugam Salai.