One of the most beautiful avenues of Madras, Moubrays Road which is TTK Road today.
Photographs in this feature and on the cover have been reproduced from the book, “Madras - Its past and its present”. Our sincere thanks to S Muthiah, D Krishnan and G Vijayan and the publishers, Affiliated East-West Press (P) Ltd.
Madras Week (20-27 August 2006) commemorated the 367th anniversary of the founding of the city. S Muthiah, Vincent D’Souza and Sashi Nair decided two years ago to celebrate Madras Day every year on 22 August, the day that Andrew Cogan, representing the British East India Company, Francis Day and Beri Thimmappa, struck a deal with the local Nayaks, the rulers at the time. Land was granted by the rulers where the Fort St George stands today. Out of the old fort grew settlements and then villages around it. Gradually the old and the new towns merged into a city, very different from what we see today.
Madras Day is an event to focus on the city, its history, its past and its present. The effort behind this celebration to motivate people, associations and communities in the city to host events that celebrate the city. Heritage walks, exhibitions, quiz programmes, competitions, photography contests, lectures, talks, audio visual presentations, discover Chennai tours were some of the events that Madras Week offered to the Chennai public.
Courtesy: Madan Sriraman
An interesting feature this year was the live telecast or webcast of the “spirit of Chennai” from the Marina beach and Kapali temple, Mylapore. People from anywhere in the world could view life in the city at these two places on Madras Day.
A special competition for schools titled the Chennai City Living Heritage Projects was organised in association with INTACH, Chennai Chapter.For the first time, Madras Musings, a fortnightly that focuses on heritage, environment and civic issues, organised a series of talks, all well attended.
Sri Kapaleeswarar Temple at Mylapore in Chennai.
Lakshmi Viswanathan set the ball rolling with a lecture on ‘An urban setting for an ancient dance’; Dr A R Venkatachalapathy described ‘Songsters of the Crossroads: Popular literature in colonial Madras’; V Ramnarayan dwelt on ‘Cricket in Chennai’; V Sriram talked on ‘Music in South India’; K Hariharan highlighted ‘Cinema in Chennai’; K Kalpana, explained the background of the restoration of the Senate House; Theodore Bhaskaran spoke about ‘History from below; the Roja Muthiah Library of Chennai’; and Kanimozhi on ‘Poetry in Chennai’.
Outside this series of talks, Badri Seshadri spoke about ‘The last five Test matches in Chepauk’ at the Shanmughasundaram Hall in Karpagambal Nagar. And Randor Guy presented an illustrated talk on ‘Madras in Old Movies’ at the Sri Dakshinamurthy Auditorium,
P S High School, Mylapore.
The headquarters of The Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway, predecessor of the Southern Railway.
Organisations and people involved in the celebrations included the Unwind Center, Masquerade, Quiz Foundation of India (Chennai), PRSI (Chennai Chapter), Vintage Heritage, Carnatica, INTACH, Madras Book Club, Madras Musings, Mylapore Times, Archaeological Survey of India, Army Postal Services, Nizhal, All India Radio and Doordarshan, apart from schools including Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan, K K Nagar, Guru Nanak School, Velachery, Sri Sankara Vidyashramam School, Tiruvanmiyur, Avvai Kalai Kazhagam and P S Educational Society.
The Napier Bridge at a time when the traffic was not so heavy.
The man who started it all
Beri Thimmappa, a local merchant, brokered a
tripartite deal that led to the founding of Madras city. It was Thimmappa’s fl uency in English and the vernacular that caught the attention of Francis Day and Cogan. Originally from Palacole, near Machilipatnam in Andhra Pradesh, Thimmappa and his grandson traded in indigo and textiles before working for the East India Company.
Beri Thimmappa built two temples, one of Vishnu and the other of Shiva, in Devaraja Mudali Street in George Town – the Chennakesavaperumal and Chennamalleswara temples. Thimmappa held a seat in the Council and a salute of fi ve guns was fi red whenever he paid a visit to the Agent or Governor of Madras on Pongal days. He was presented with six yards of superfi ne scarlet on that occasion. I n 1678, Chinna Venkatadri, Thimmappa’s younger brother, acquired the Guindy Lodge and later sold it to the East India Company. Now we know it as the Raj Bhavan.
The Bashyam Naidu Park, off Taylor’s Road in Kilpauk is named after a fourth-generation descendant Thimmappa Bashyam Naidu. There is also a Narayanappah Pharmacy at Nungambakkam named after Ketty Narayanappah, another descendant. Present day representatives of the family include Urmila Satyanarayana, a Bharatanatyam dancer, Dr Praveen Godey and Ketty Bobji. One person who distinguished himself in the Thimmappa family was Ketty Venkataswamy Naidu.
Venkataswamy became Minister of Hindu Religious Endowments in the state cabinet in 1952. As President of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam Committee, he initiated a number of useful and popular schemes. In 1927, he, along with S Duraiswami Iyer and N Krishnamachari, fi led a suit in the High Court of Madras and secured admission for Harijans in the educational institutions managed by the Pachaiyappa’s Charities. He was responsible for the foundation of the new Pachaiyappa’s College buildings at Chetput.
In 1928, Venkataswami became a Councillor of the Corporation of Madras and continued in that post till 1952. He joined the Indian National Congress in November 1936. He contested the general elections the following year and topped the polls in the Madras City Constituency.He was elected Deputy President of the Madras Legislative Council, became Mayor of the Corporation during 1938-39. He preached against war and was sentenced to the Trichy Jail for six months imprisonment. A glimpse of the Mount Road of the past. The building here is where the Bata showroom is now and to the left stands the ‘Anna’ statue today.
By Sashi Nair
A glimpse of the Mount Road of the past. The
building here is where the Bata showroom is
now and to the left stands the ‘Anna’ statue today.