Madras Day Celebration- Memoirs on the City of Dreams

This year is the 380th anniversary of Madras/ Chennai. India Poetry Circle (IPC) decided to participate in the celebrations of Madras Day by bringing out an anthology titled "Madras Hues, Myriad Views" of poems and short articles written by its members.  I wrote an article that was a little longer than the 500-word cap fixed by the editors. Therefore, I contributed an abridged version. to the booklet which was released on 11th August 2019. Here, I am sharing the article in full as was initially envisaged. 

Madras, as the city of Chennai was known then was the city of dreams for the people of the whole of south India. It was the only metro in the south at that time, Bombay being more accessible to the west, Calcutta to the east and the capital city of Delhi closer to north of India. Although the Hindi agitation in the sixties commenced from  Madras, the headquarters of the Dakshina Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha founded by Mahatma Gandhi in June 1917 was and still is in the grand old city of Madras/ Chennai.  In the early years of independence, People from other parts of the country had less awareness about the geography and the culture of the people of the south.  However they knew the famous city of Madras and therefore referred to the people from the south as “Madrasis’   

For many years, Madras was home to the Southern film industry with films in all the four languages of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam being filmed in the studios of Madras. It was much later, around the eighties that Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam industries shifted to Hyderabad, Bangalore and Trivandrum/Kochi respectively. However, a lot of work pertaining to music continues to be done in Chennai as Chennai is home to some of the best musicians in the country.Prior to independence and reorganization of states, the Malabar region of Kerala and the Dakshina Kannada districts of present day Karnataka were under the Madras Presidency. Hence the natural choice for higher education for students in these regions was Madras. Thus from very early times; Madras had a cosmopolitan character with intermingling of various cultures.   

I had come to Madras for studies when the option was offered  in May 1975 , as  Kerala was notorious those days for violent student politics in college campuses. I always felt that a student’s job is to study and not get involved in activities that primarily benefit political leaders.  I was aware that politics derails the basic objective of the student. It turned out though that my moving was actually not necessary as the Indira Government declared emergency in the country soon after and political activities were severely curtailed in  college campuses. I did my graduation in Economics at  A.M. Jain College Madras and subsequently my post-graduation at  the Madras School of social work

The gateway for most people to the city of Madras was and perhaps still is, the iconic central railway station. In a movie, you only have to show a screen shot of the station from the front and the audience would immediately know that the hero/heroine/ traveler has landed up in the city.  Those days, we had the advantage of being saved from the boredom of waiting at the station for long hours. The famous Moore market, a flea market built in the year 1900, selling all kinds of second hand goods was available just next door. The only danger was that one could become so mesmerized by the activities in the Moore market and end up forgetting the departure time of the train. Sadly, the historical monument made way for construction of the suburban railway terminus in 1985

When I first landed in the city, there was the excitement of coming from a town to a big city. There was also some apprehensions of the unknown.Well-meaning people advised me to be very careful in buses and public places as pick pocketing was a big menace in  big cities. I would like to relate an interesting incident, which in those days could be associated only with big cities. 

I was standing at a bus stop near Central railway station. Not many people were around at that time. Apart from me (a student in his teens), there was only one other person of middle age waiting for the bus. Suddenly, a person appeared from nowhere and started soliciting clients for spending time with college students. He started reeling details of the regions, ages and complexion of girls on offer.  I was surprised and taken aback as I had never come across something like this in my life. The middle-aged person was furious. He started verbally attacking the fellow for daring to make such propositions. He said he would hand him over to the police. As the row became loud and verbal, a small crowd gathered. They pacified the gentleman and advised him to ignore the proposal if he does not approve of it.  I wonder whether anyone would have cared or dared to speak out on such occasions if it were to happen today.

As students living in a hostel 13 Kms away from the city (doesn’t seem so far today), it was like being in a rural area with no source of entertainment. Therefore, for us hostelers, just being on the Mount road in the weekend with many eat out options and plenty of movie theatres was the best place to be. The Safire theatre complex, India’s first large Multi theatre complex had three movies running at Safire. Blue diamond and Emerald. Blue diamond had the same movie running from 9AM to 9 PM with a brief interval after end of film each time. If the seat was available, one could walk in at the middle of the movie, and  subsequently watch the full movie several times at the price of a single ticket. It was a boon for the lovebirds who spend lot of time together away from prying eyes. 

Other attractions that people coming from smaller towns or villages marveled at were the 15-storied LIC building standing tall on Mount Road and the Anna / Gemini Flyover at the Mount Road-Nungambakkam High Road junction. Built in 1973, the Gemini Flyover is not just Chennai’s first flyover but also India’s third and Asia’s first Grade Separator.

I came back to Chennai in 2009  to serve as AGM (Learning and development) in Hyundai Motor India Limited for over five years. However, it is  for me, the student days of graduation and post-graduation  that bring back fond memories of the city. A lot has changed since those early days. The city has become bolder, less conservative and lot more expensive to live in. However, the significance of central railway station and mount road  as key landmarks of the city, remain steady as ever!