At the recent release of A Madras Miscellany – A Decade of People, Places and Potpourri , mention was made that over the years I had failed to mention one foreign cricketer with Madras connections. And that was Nasser Hussain, Captain of England and Essex. I should have remembered him after the differences of opinion he had in the press box during the recent World Cup on a matter of bringing food into a ‘no go' zone, according to the press reports of the time. But not having done so, let me make amends. Not so much by remembering the cricketer, but by recalling his parents, stalwarts of the Madras Cricket Club and usually the first couple to take to the floor at a dance.
Jawad Hussain was not the greatest of cricketers, but he was a very competent club cricketer who made his debut for the Madras Cricket Club in 1966-67 under the captaincy of U.Prabhakar Rao. He went on to captain the team in 1971-72 and ‘72-‘73. In the latter year he led the team on a tour of Malaysia and Singapore and won all six matches played there. As a captain he was a stickler for practice off the field and “a clever strategist” on it, according to a contemporary. These were the years his little sons Mel and Nasser were learning their cricket on the lawns of the Club.
Somewhere along the way, Jawad got married to a Kashmiri girl and it was around this time in the 1970s, they decided to settle in England where his eldest brother had put down roots. He was certain he could make a good living there by coaching and his sons could, if properly coached, became successful professional cricketers and, perhaps, even more.
In the 1981-82 Madras League season, Mel Hussain arrived in Madras to get some further cricketing experience and turned out for the Club. At the time he was in the running for a place in the Essex First XI. The ‘import', as he was described, had a modest season but proved a very popular member of the team. When he got back to England, however, it was younger brother Nasser who was seen as the better cricketer and went on to play for Essex and England and captain both. No cricketer of Indian origin from Madras has done better than him playing for a team abroad. Jawad Hussain's coaching, I would think, would have had a lot to do with that.
Royal memorabilia
Pradipta Mohapatra, corporate `honcho' and now adviser, whose interest in corporate matters goes back to the East India Company, is also a royalty buff and an enthusiastic collector of a variety of things, ranging from watches to scrips with, I recently discovered, medallions in between. These medallions he exhibited at the British Council on the eve of the wedding of the year and had many a story to tell about them at the inauguration.
One medallion that interested me particularly was issued in connection with an event I had written about only a couple of weeks earlier in the Sunday edition of this paper. And that was the 1911 Delhi Durbar at which the King Emperor of India, George V, announced that the capital of India would forthwith be Delhi. Strange that there's little excitement in New Delhi over the centenary year. Be that as it may, it was in this context that what caught my attention at the exhibition was the Delhi Durbar Medal 1911. And looking at it hard, I heard Pradipta narrating from behind me, “Theirs was a great love story people don't talk too much about. In many a medal, George V insisted his Mary share the space with him. And that's a unique feature that makes many a George V medal different from other Royal commemorative medals.” No wonder I had been looking at it wondering why it looked different from the others.
The other medal that caught my attention was the ‘Victoria Regina, Empress of India Diamond Jubilee Commemorative Silver Medallion', elegant in its simplicity. It made me remember that Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee was coming up next year and I wondered what her commemorative medal would be like, mod like the Golden Jubilee one on display or a throwback to the simplicity of the past? It's thoughts like these that make such exhibitions, no matter how small, occasions that keep anyone with an interest in history standing and staring a little longer.
A postman’s knock — literally
It was some weeks ago (Madras Miscellany, January 10th that I had referred to a book that was due to be published, Indian Postal History – Focus on Tamil Nadu . I was at the release of Dr. K. RamachandiranN's Ph.D thesis-made-into-a-colourful-history the other day and heard him relate several fascinating bits of Madras-specific postal history and caught up with more in his book.
Something new I learnt was about dak bungalows, though the explanation should have been obvious. I had always thought that they were Travellers' Bungalows run by the Public Works or Highways Department. But apparently in the late 18th Century the PWD had been put under the charge of the Postal Department and, with that arrangement, the Travellers' Bungalows it managed came under the Postal Department. With the mail carts also accepting officials as passengers, that service too was linked with the Travellers' Bungalows and they became dak bungalows. The Dak Bearer service, as it was called, accepted private passengers too, if there was space for them after the requirements for officers had been met. This service also offered palanquins and dholis for travellers.
The first Railway Mail Service (RMS) came into operation in the Madras Circle, virtually the whole of South India, on September 29, 1871. The route it catered to was Madras-Cuddapah-Raichur. This route also pioneered the Travelling Post Office in the Madras Circle from April 6, 1874.
The first telegraph office in Madras was, I learnt, opened in 1863. Not long afterwards, in 1866, the telegraph line from Madras to Colombo across the Palk Strait was laid from Rameswaram to Talaimannar. Apparently there was a connection to Peneng too, presumably through Colombo. Then Dr. RamachandiranN lays pointed emphasis on this being a boon to the business community, “particularly” beneficial to “the Nattukkottai Chettiars…. actively involved in trading with the two neighbouring countries.”
Letter boxes away from post offices were introduced in the major cities of India from October 1854. That was the year the postal system introduced postmen to provide home deliveries. In February 1959, the Madras Circle had the distinction of recruiting the first postwoman in India. K.Padmakshi Amma was appointed to the Thiruvanathapuram Postal Division.
Despite this column welcoming the postman's knock, it would appear to be out of touch with all the different services the Postal Department offers. I had heard of the Postal Savings Bank, but the Postal Life Insurance Scheme was a new one on me. Apparently the success of the banking scheme introduced on April 1, 1882 led to the insurance scheme being launched on February 1, 1884, originally for postal employees alone, but gradually being extended to government and quasi-government service employees as a whole. Giving an idea of how big this business is, is the record of R. Venkadesan, Development Officer, PLI, in the Tamil Nadu Circle. For 12 years in succession he has been the country's leading generator of PLI business. In 1997-98, he began his gold-medal-winning streak with Rs.13 crore business and, increasing that figure every year, he recorded Rs.51 crore in 2008-9 and was heading for nearly Rs.100 crore the next year at the time the book was being written.
Snippets include the fact that PIN code 172114 is in Sikkim and is the highest post office in the world, at 15,500 feet, that the first postage stamp on a Tamil Nadu subject was issued on August 15, 1949, and featured a Nataraja bronze, the first Tamil Nadu Centenary to be honoured was that of the University of Madras on December 31, 1957, and that the first Tamil personages to be honoured were the legendary Tiruvalluvar on February 15, 1960 and the more recent Subramania Bharati on September 11, 1960.
And did you know that C.V.Raman, Akilan the author, R.S. Manohar and Vivek the actors, K.Balachander the film director, and Dr.V. Gopalakrishnan, the toponymist and linguist, had all served in the Postal Department at some time in their lives?
All this information and more that, reading between the lines, I sense is available warrant a much more comprehensive history of the Postal Department, the present edition just whetting the appetite.
