Tale of a city, warts and all

Chennai – A Biography

Author: V.Sriram

Publisher: Aleph

Pages: 416

Price: Rs 899

I know who would have loved this book, heavy with historical detail and minutiae about Chennai’s past, its evolution among social, cultural, intellectual, and industrial upheavals and its timeworn present —my father, if he had been around today.

He considered himself a proud Madrasi, blithely ignoring the taunts implicit in the term, of being inward, boring and traditional. That’s because he thought those descriptions were lazy, superficial cliches and didn’t apply to him.  He felt like a true Chennaite, as we are called these days; modern yet traditional, curious yet shy, a firebrand but a ready arbitrator. His boyhood and memories and nostalgia were around the area that marked the birth of this great city —George Town —where one August in the 17th century, an Englishman bought land to build a factory and slowly carved a fort with a moat and a city around it.

In the 21st century, North Madras is the roughneck neighbourhood compared to the spanking IT corridors of South Madras along the East Coast Road. In the beginning, though, when Madras was born and much up to my father’s time, North Madras was the happening place in Chennai. Industry, commerce, banking, educational institutions were built here alongside the colonial segregated black and white towns —the mercantile Armenian Street where a lone crumbling church stands bravely today; the majestic red Indo-Saracenic Madras Central Station; the bone-white grandeur of Ripon Building; the circular yellow Ice House, later christened Vivekananda Illam after the Americans stopped docking blocks of ice there; the handsome Wallajah mosque and the village of Tiruallikeni; the sacred lily tank, home to the Parthasarathy Temple and Bharathi’s careworn house, the Chepauk stadium. Then there is the wide beachside of the Marina flanked by a row of colonial architecture, the grand hotels and restaurants of Dasaprakash; India’s first arts college; the towering business houses at Parry’s Corner; the leafy grove of Drive-in-Woodlands; the haloed Carnatic music halls; the first cinemas that mushroomed in this mad-about-movies city; its temples, churches and, yes, its fabulous food.

And it wouldn’t be the city it was without its quirky, excitable and contrarian citizens. They were fervent about social justice but divided over caste; rationalists but ardent worshippers of every shrine, temple, and sacred tree; iconoclasts but abject fans of politicians and movie stars; votaries of the Tamil language but speaking a Madras lingo that is creole of Hindi, Telugu, English and even Dutch words; and an otherwise shy but highly performative people, whether in the arts or politics or public life.

V Sriram became popular in Chennai in the late 1990s when he began to write and speak about Chennai’s heritage and take groups of city enthusiasts on heritage walks. He is a veritable encyclopedia on the city’s history, its knotty present and its labyrinthine social dilemmas. His biography of the city encapsulates all aspects of Chennai, especially its current civic problems, urban nightmares such as recurring floods but chronic water shortage since its founding days. You get to read about its messy ghettos, corruption, city corporation conundrums and its hoary past where great poets and minstrels of yore and modern English writers such as R K Narayan left behind glorious literature for posterity. You learn about a metropolis that was an example for city building, notching many administrative firsts, such as the first city corporation, bank, arts colleges, hospitals and distinct architecture. You follow the development of great institutions such as the Theosophical Society and philosophers such as Jiddu Krishnamurti. You get to know Chennai’s bookish people who love a game of cricket, surfing and even top other cities in pigeon-racing. You encounter a city that loves its drink and was the founding city for the famous McDowell’s liquor brand but allows the government to control drinking and set up tippler’s joints, a city better known for its vegetarian fare but serves a variety of seafood and biryanis.

Given that Chennai tops tourist numbers in India on account of its fantastic medical tourism, Mr Sriram wryly remarks that Chennaities don’t roll out the red carpet for the average visitor. The hospital is your best tourism option for efficiency, tourist trappings be damned.     

If this can be called the true biography of a city just remember that Chennai is utterly comfortable in its skin —it does not feel the need to be liked and accepted. It welcomes people and outside influences and makes them its own on its idiosyncratic terms. Chennai’s Silicon Valley honchos, Nobel laureates and Oscar winners, sporting stars and performing artists, both global and local icons, are all welcome but Chennaites themselves will shy away from drawing attention to themselves. Its strength is its ability to nurture the hybrid; but pride in being singular. Chennai as a city is all about still waters. 

Mr Sriram’s book reflects these eccentric and enduring qualities.