A friend of mine, car buff Don Abey, visiting Galle in Sri Lanka recently, tells me of a small factory there that helps keep running the estimated 60,000 or so Morris ‘Minors’ surviving in the world today. As I mentioned in this column before (October 12, 2015) this iconic car of the 1950s and 1960s could well have triggered the four-wheeler revolution in India long before the 1980s if only Addison’s of the Amalgamations Group had stood its ground and not told big-stick-waving Hindustan Motors that it could have the ‘Minor’ too with the ‘Major’ it planned to manufacture in India, the Morris ‘Oxford’ that became the iconic ‘Ambassador’.
The first ‘Minor’ rolled out of Addison’s in 1950. In all, over 5,000 cars were assembled before the brand went to the Birlas’ HM. Amalgamations decided to stick to Perkins’ engines and, later, TAFE tractors.
Meanwhile, like the Dakota aircraft, the Minor has survived the world over. Helping the Minor are 15 mechanics in that Galle factory turning out 650 different types of spare parts Minors around the world need. These skilled mechanics, who’d kept running one of the most popular cars in Ceylon in its time, teamed together in 1995 to keep on the roads a car out of production from 1971. Today, they even manufacture the chassis for export to Denmark where a specialist firm supplies them to Minor enthusiasts in the US and several European countries.
There was a time in the 1970s and 80s (perhaps even later) when there was a ‘gentleman-mechanic’, Vengo in San Thomé, whose hobby was repairing foreign cars in the garage in his garden. Amongst the cars he handled — producing spare parts locally — were several Minors. There could still well be a couple around serviced by local mechanics. Such work is, I believe, called jugaad in Delhi.
*****
When the
postman knocked…
The third of the responses/supplementaries I’ve received is to my May 1 item on Oakes, Beehive Foundry and Netaji in Madras. Sayeed Cassim, that collector of scrips, also has a hoard of invitation cards. Many are those grandfather MH Cassim Sait received. The one reproduced here today was for Netaji’s reception at the Beehive Foundry.
Cassim Sait, landowner and businessman, was a member of the Madras University Senate and a Councillor in the Madras Corporation. During PV Cherian’s mayoralty (1949-50), he was Chairman of the Town Planning Committee, forerunner of the CMDA. A member of the Muslim League of India, and of the Madras Board of Industries, he was also an Honorary Presidency Magistrate and Justice of the Peace. But he was not the fourth person in the picture we published.
Following on that picture, Ramesh Kumar, Beehive’s present owner, sent me the Welcome Address to “Desagaurava Sri Subhas Chandra Bose’ given by his host, Kowtha Suryanarayan Row. It reads in part:
“Even those who differ from you appreciate the courage and perseverance with which you have been standing up for your convictions… The repercussions of your differences with the Congress High Command have so far touched the South only on the surface, but your present visit should enable you to give us your message direct…
“The dramatic resignation of Mr S Srinivasa Iyengar from the Congress in order to free himself from caucus influence within the Congress where power has been concentrated in a few hands… and his decision to fight for the Congress cause without the shackles of the ministerialist party, marks the rise of a new temper among Congressmen who are alarmed at the sacrifice of democratic rights…
“In Madras, political elements outside the Congress lie scattered in groups. Not in hostility against the Congress but roused by an enlightened sense of responsibility… There is need for the integration of forces now divided, but which will upon the right approach, respond to the call for common action, provided they are founded and organised on the bedrock principles of true Nationalism, Independence, real Democracy, Justice and complete Secularism. The conception of Indians as children of the soil and members of one race will, many believe, be the background for the achievement of Swaraj in our land of Bharatavarsha…
“The present atmosphere of exclusiveness, intrigue and recrimination for the sake of concentrating power in the hands of a few at the expense of free speech and civil liberties has resulted in the stultification of our campaign for Swarajya…”
Ramesh Kumar also sends me a picture of The Madras Exchange Hall of Oakes & Co, owners of department store as well as Beehive Foundry. It was part of a story on the ‘Father of Indian Forestry’, which concludes:
“Cleghorn (on his return to Madras) lived temporarily on the upper floor of a grand building called Exchange Hall, the premises of the merchants Oakes, Partridge & Co. At 3 am on the morning of 16 October 1852, he was woken up by the whining of his small dog, to find the whole building ablaze. Cleghorn escaped… taking with him (six) precious volumes of Hortus Malabaricus and his notes… but the poor dog was cremated.” Which is why a later 19th Century photograph of Oakes shows a different looking building.”
The chronicler of Madras that is Chennai tells stories of people, places and events from the years gone by, and sometimes, from today.
