Training for conservation
I was delighted to be asked recently to inaugurate the first workshop of what might well be the country’s first centre to be established in an educational institution with a focus on saving heritage structures. I might not have been able to contribute much to the proceedings on ‘Historic Lime Mortars’, but it was heartening to discover that the National Centre for Safety of Heritage Structures (NCSHS) had been set up about a year ago as a part of the Department of Civil Engineering, IIT-Madras.
The NCSHS, convened by Dr. Arun Menon, has been established with a five-year grant of Rs. 12 crore from the Union Government’s Ministry of Human Resource Development. Its focus initially will be workshops, seminars, short-term training programmes, and research support for professionals working in the field of restoration and preservation of heritage buildings, monuments etc, ancient or more recent. If Government departments like the PWD, Archaeology and heritage wings of civic authorities make use of these opportunities, not only for learning but also to exchange views and experiences, heritage conservation will be taking a huge step forward. In the next phase, the Centre plans to introduce Master’s and Doctorate courses for civil engineering graduates, thus creating something lacking today: manpower capable of undertaking restoration work and, more importantly, conservation of ‘living’ heritage by providing qualified maintenance support for them.
Consultancy is another area the Centre plans to take an active role in, going beyond academia. It is already working in Kutch, in Himachal Pradesh (where it is studying Kangra Fort), and in Sikkim (where it is assessing the structural safety of ancient Buddhist monasteries). All these are in seismic zones and seismic safety is one of the expertises of Arun Menon’s team. Closer home, the Centre has looked at Khalsa Mahal and the State Bank of India building on Rajaji Salai, both victims of fire.
All this, I felt, was well and good and much needed. But conservation of heritage needs more that professionalism. It needs passion. This is why at every programme of the Centre they should have a session or two focusing on the importance of heritage and why greater attention should be paid to it. I’ve long spoken and written about this, that heritage-related subjects should be taught in schools from Class 2 to Class 10, but while little is happening in response to that plea, the NCSHS’s programmes provide an opportunity for adults to catch up on what many of them would have missed in their earlier years, if my suggestion is taken.
One thing I did not fail to be aware of in my earlier years was Chettinad (or Madras) Cement. I was therefore doubly glad that I was inaugurating a workshop on ‘Historic Lime Mortars’. I hope that out of the exchanges there comes an answer as to why ‘Chettinad Cement’ plaster these days fails to survive for long, even if the work is done by maistries from the deep South where it seems to have evolved and who all claim knowledge of secrets passed down to them by their forefathers. I was happy to hear from one young participant that she was working on finding some answers to this problem and developing a ‘new’ such cement. Meanwhile, I left thinking that the next workshop should be on rising damp, found in many a restored building in South India — for which ailment I’ve found the Australians and the Singaporeans they have mentored having noteworthy expertise in preventing it.
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Medals to be won
Writing from Australia, Dr A Raman, one of whose hobbies is pursuing the history of medicare in the Madras Presidency, says that as this is the time students choosing a career in medicine will enter Madras Medical College, many of them may wonder what awaits the best of them. Successful careers certainly, but ahead of the very best are a few medals with histories over a century old, he says. He also wonders how many of the recent winners know the histories behind these awards.
The most prestigious medal of the lot is the Johnstone Medal that is awarded to the best outgoing student. The text on one side of the medal reads, “Presented by 91 subscribers with the sanction of the Government to the most deserving student in the Madras Medical School in gratitude and affectionate memory of Dr. J.W.T. Johnstone, who died in Madras on 18 August 1848.” On the obverse side are the words ‘The Johnstone Medal 1848’, a circular design of a crest and a scroll with the words Nunquam Non Paratus (‘Never unprepared’), the motto of the Johnstone clan of Scotland, and the horizontal staff of Asclepius.
Not much is known about Joseph William Turner Johnstone, who was only 40 when he died, but there is a noteworthy reference to him by Alison Winter of the University of Chicago in her book on mesmerism published in 1998. She writes that “Dr. J.W.T. Johnstone of Madras removed a tumor from the shoulder of a European woman after she had been mesmerized by a Dr. Smith, and after this success, mesmerism became fashionable within the medical school in Madras, where students have been mesmerizing one another under the superintendence of a surgeon. They began, it seems, by making trials on two native pupils, worked their way up through the apprentices and then extended the program to everyone — with complete success.”
I wonder whether any surgeon uses this technique in Madras today!
Another prestigious medal is the Blacklock medal awarded to the most deserving clinical student graduating from the College. There were 89 subscribers who made this medal possible after the death of Dr. Ambrose Blacklock in 1873. He was the Deputy Director-General of Hospitals, Madras Presidency, at the time of his death, after 33 years in the Madras Medical Service. During those years he had written much on cholera and sanitation.
A third 19th Century medal (it was once established as a scholarship) is the Bharati Lakshmi Medal that owes its origin to the Maharajah of Travancore.
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When the postman knocked…
* Edward Waller Stoney (Miscellany, August 4), I’ve discovered, thanks to Sailendra Bhaskar, fully deserved his CIE (Companion of the Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire and not ‘Commander of the Indian Empire’ as I had it). He was one of the most innovative bridge builders in India, his most outstanding work being the bridge across the River Tungabhadra. A well qualified Irish civil engineer (M.E. and M.Inst C.E.), he wrote prolifically on railway civil engineering and bridge building before he retired as Chief Engineer of the Madras and South Mahratta Railway. But his daughter, Sarah Turing, once wrote that he would probably be better remembered for inventing ‘Stoney’s Patent Silent Punkah Wheel’ which enabled people to sleep more soundly, undisturbed by creaking punkah wheels! Stoney, Bhaskar concludes, lived at 1 College Road, Nungambakkam, for a while before retirement, then spent 21 years at The Gables in Coonoor (Miscellany, January 13) before returning to England where he passed away two years later.
* Tagore composed what is now the national anthem when living for a short while in 1919 on the Besant Theosophical College (Miscellany, July 28) campus in Madanapalle, writes Radha Padmanabhan who had studied there. The place where he stayed was later named Tagore Cottage , she adds.
Writing about the College in another context, Ganga Kumar Powell writes from Australia that Besant and Dr. Arundale chose “a group of promising young men” to go to university in England. One of them was her father, Bhagat Ram Kumar, who took his degree from Oxford. Also in the group were J. Krishnamurthi and his brother Nithyananda. Bhagat Ram Kumar came back to Madanapalle in the 1920s and taught at Theosophical colleges (besides Madanapalle, there was National in Hyderabad) for much of his life. He retired in the 1950s after having been one of the longest serving Principals in Madanapalle.
* Scouring through old newspapers, Ramineni Bhaskarendra Rao says that he has found four digit telephone numbers (Miscellany, July 21) as early as 1922-23, but the major change to four digit numbers by adding the prefix ‘2’ or ‘3’ to the three digit numbers appears to have been in 1926. In the course of his search he found an advertisement that intrigued him as much as it does me. It was for the Daily Express (14 Mount Road) and stated that it “is the only journal published twice daily, Morning & Evening, in Southern and Central India”. It also stated that “all advertisements appear in both the editions, but one charge is made.” What I knew till Bhaskarendra Rao added this to my knowledge was that the Daily Express was started as Madras’s first morning paper in 1921 by R.W. Brock. It was founded to entertain and, strong in features, had women’s and children’s pages. But despite its popularity, it closed in 1927. Thereafter, through changes in ownership, it evolved into today’s Indian Express in 1939.
