OLD MADRAS ROAD 8: SWADESI TYPE FOUNDRY

Not much is known today about this business which was founded in 1906 by T.Arumugam Mudaliar. The head office was at No.51, Guruvappa Chetty Street, Chintadripet. The foundry was inaugurated by the legendary V.O.Chidambaram Pillai. Over time, the business opened branches at Bangalore and Hyderabad.

A brochure published in the 1960s gives us some information about its functioning. According to it, their “Swadesi Home” label produced types in fifteen languages (which included Sinhalese, Devanagari and Grantham!!). The firm was also the inventor of the famous “Ganapathy Tamil Series”. It was an approved contractor to the Government of India, even supplying election blocks for various State elections such as the 1962 Gujarat and Bihar Assembly Elections, the 1967 Bihar Elections etc.

OLD MADRAS ROAD 7: SARASWATHI STORES

The name of A.V.Meiyappa Chettiar is inseparable from the history of Tamil cinema. Born in 1907 into a Natukottai Nagarathar family, Meiyappa Chettiar’s first exposure to business was thanks to his family run venture,a mini department store named AV and Sons. The business also sold gramophone records. The entrepreneur in Meiyappa Chettiar decided to get into its production instead of just marketing them. Thus was born Saraswathi Stores.

Saraswathi Stores tied up with the Odeon label from Germany to market their records here. Several top Carnatic musicians such as Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar entered into exclusive contracts with Odeon. They recorded dialogues of entire stage plays with songs and also had an in house orchestra in attendance to re record film songs exclusively for discs. Their showroom was in Mount Road, where today the DBS building stands.

Long after the gramophone era, Saraswathi Stores remained a popular destination for cassettes till the 1990s, when it slowly faded out. Today the name still stands thanks to the small outlet run in Alwarpet, next to Sankara Hall.

OLD MADRAS ROAD-6: MASSEY & CO

Not much is known today about the origins of the company, except that it was founded in Madras 1843. In his book “Southern India: Its History, People, Commerce and Industrial Resources”, Somerset Playne says that the Napier Engineering and Foundry Works belonging to M/s Massey and Co Ltd had was situated in Cochrane Basin Road, “within a short distance from the Central Station”. For a long time, the company’s furnaces were the first sight to greet visitors by train to Madras. The company was into a wide range of engineering activities. It also held agencies for Hornsby Oil and Gas Engines, Ruston Oil and Gas Engines, Roturbo Pumps and Johnson’s Elephant Brand Cement. Outside of the engineering sector, it held agencies for Lipton’s tea and coffee in addition to representing a few insurance firms and breweries. The company had branches in Coorg and other places across South India.

According to its website, the company was bought over by the current management in 1940. It however continues to operate from the same headquarters in Royapuram.

OLD MADRAS ROAD-5: THE MAIL

Founded in 1868 by Charles Lawson and Henry Cornish, The Madras Mail was the representative of the commercial interests in the Madras Presidency. Lawson and Cornish had earlier been part of The Madras Times, a newspaper that had been founded in the 1830s. The paper’s association with the Madras Chamber of Commerce was a close and long standing one, with the paper publicising the Chamber’s efforts to a great extent and for a long time its editors served as secretaries of the Chamber.

Functioning from First Line Beach, The Madras Mail would display its pro government stance on a number of occasions which seeded the birth of its rival, The Hindu. In 1921, the paper was bought over by J.O.Robinson, Chairman of Spencers, before changing hands again in 1945, when it was bought over by the Amalgamations Group. The name had been changed to The Mail in the 1920s, when it moved to the Mount Road premises. The paper ceased publication in 1981.

Wanaparthy, Income Tax and my Grandfather

I usually walk past the plaque put up in the Income Tax Department outside what is called the Wanaparthy Block, assuming it to be some quality policy statement and not bothering to read it, my mind usually gearing up for the battles within. Today I happened to glance through what was written and as it happens more often than not, my assumption had made an "ass" out of me. In a commendable act of heritage awareness the plaque had details tracing the history of the place, right from its origins to the time it was bought over by the IT Department.

Today's discovery was a tremendous act of serendipity, as my late grandfather Shri K.S.Bhatt who served in the IT Department would have been 92 years of age. Born on November 24, 1924, he joined service in Trichy in 1944 and went on to have a distinguished career spanning 38 years. He worked at several places across South India and had multiple stints in Madras, wherefrom he retired in 1982. He spent his retired life completely outside of Income Tax (barring a few instances in an advisory capacity in his early post retirement days), choosing to focus entirely on spirituality.

I did not have the opportunity to know him while he was in service, as I was born two years after he retired. However, I have had the great fortune of listening to old-timers from the CA and legal professions and his colleagues from the IT Department talk about him and unfailingly, his high level of ethical standards with great regard.

The picture appeared below in December 2011, three weeks before he passed away. It was a special feature that was published by the Times of India commemorating 150 years of Income Tax in India. I remember the morning I brought the picture to him. His face lit up instantly as he saw a picture of the Wanaparthy Block, where he served for a long time in the background, with the officers standing in front for a group photograph. There he was, standing second from right in second row of standees. Despite his ill health and fading memory, he set about the task of identifying his colleagues, which commendably he did to some extent. He passed away in January 2012, on Bhogi day.

To me, he was a worthy example of the famous quote by the Bard, "His life was gentle, and the elements
So mix’d in him that Nature might stand up and say to all the world, ‘This was a man!’

THE PULLYAR TEMPLE

The line drawing below is that of a small temple to Lord Ganesha in Chintadripet. The image is from the book "Life in India; Or Madras, the Neligherries and Calcutta" by Rev John W Dulles, published in 1855. The author says that the temple was on the main street of Chintadripettah and was opposite the Mission Church (the Zion Church).

On a heritage walk of Chintadripet a couple of years ago, I found that the temple stood exactly where it has been described in the book, albeit with several modifications!!

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THE VIVEKANANDA HERITAGE WALK

On the morning of the 16th of August 2015, I had the great fortune of yet again addressing a group of students from the Vivekananda Study Circle, IIT Madras as a part of their annual Vivekananda Heritage Walk programme. This programme, currently in its 5th year saw active participation from over 75 students. The Vivekananda Study Circle is an Independent Students Initiative of IIT-M and has been in existence since 1997.

The first time this themed walk was done was way back in 2009, when my mentor Shri V.Sriram and I curated a walk covering a few places in the city associated with Swami Vivekananda and the Ramakrishna Math as part of the Madras Week celebrations that year. Though the Ice House (now Vivekananda Illam) remains the most well known of places connected with Swami Vivekananda's stay at Madras, there are quite a few other places (including a couple of private residences) that were visited by him. We had the good fortune of having Swami Atmashraddhananda of the Ramakrishna Math, Chennai (Editor of Vedanta Kesari, the English spiritual magazine being brought out by the Math) accompanying us as part of the tour. Swami Atmashraddhananda had that year brought out a wonderful illustrated book on the history of the Ice House and its connections with the Ramakrishna Math. It was his brain child to do this tour for the members of the Vivekananda Study Circle (IIT, Madras) a couple of years later. The first tour was held in 2011 and has been a regular feature ever since.

The tour this year began with the students assembling at the new shrine of the Ramakrishna Math in Mylapore. After a brief overview of the history of Madras and the antiquity of Mylapore, the narrative went on to cover the story of the origin and growth of the Ramakrishna movement in Madras. The students then went on to visit the Kapaleeswarar temple and the Ice House to complete their tour.

The Vedanta Kesari is one of India's oldest spiritual magazines in continuous publication. Started in 1914, it was a successor to the Brahmavadin, the magazine started in 1895 by a group of Swami Vivekananda's ardent disciples in Madras, led by Alasinga Perumal. The Chennai Math also has an active publication department going back to 1908.

In a remarkable act of conservation worthy of emulation, the Chennai Math has digitised the archives of both Brahmavadin and the Vedanta Kesari, which are available for sale.