Hemantha Kalam - 106 "Streets and Stories of Chennai"

While on the subject of memory streets, let me share with you some intriguing stories of Chennai (Madras) streets and the history behind their names and name changes.

Many of the new generation citizens of Chennai, even if they are visitors, might be wondering (if they have the inclination and time, which I very much wonder whether they have) about some names of the streets.

The erstwhile Madras and Chennai as it is called now, had most of the streets and roads named after some British person, legend or not, for whatever reason. I don’t intend boring my readers with such details. There are historians for that anyway.

For a long time there used to be a practice in Chennai a person constructing a house first in an empty street or an area could name the street/area after him/her.

So, many street names were taken after some person who was a pioneer in that street.

However, in 1978, the Dravidian party that ruled Tamil Nadu under the leadership of Puratchi Thalaivar (Revolutionary leader) Late Thiru M. G. Ramachandran took a historic decision to drop all caste names in every street/road name in Tamil Nadu. So, overnight many street names have been changed, some leading to hilarious situations. 

Just for the readers’ sense of knowledge and memory, I give below samples of how some of the names used to be and how they have been changed.

Old Name	Changed to	Further Changed to
Angappa Naicken Street	Angappa Street
Chari Street	Street
Chinnaya Pillai Road	Chinnaya Road
Dr. Nair Road	Dr. Road
Gopathi Narayanaswamy Chetti Road	Gopathi Narayanaswamy Road	G. N. Road
K. G. Nair Street	K. G. Street
Kasi Chetti Street	Kasi Street
Linghi Chetti Street	Linghi Street
Narasimhachary Street	Narasimhan Road
Reddy Street	Street	(Reddy) Street
Sadan Street	Kumaran Colony 7th Road
Subba Rao Street/Avenue	Subba Street/Avenue
Thambu Chetti Street	Thambu Street
Thirumala Pillai Road	Thirumalai Road
Vyasa Rao Naidu Street	Vyasa Rao Street	Vyasar Street

 All these changes took place during my lifetime when I was so aware of these changes and happenings.

I also happen to know the history of the changes of some streets.

Mr. Chari’s grandson was my colleague and I was aware of the legal battle they had to undergo to regain their lost name for the street, rendering the name of the street to just ‘Street’ which was named in honour of his late grandfather. It took time and many efforts to make the powers be understand that Chari need not essentially denote any caste as there are Charis in Brahmins, in Carpenters and in Goldsmiths.

Late Chinnaya Pillai (who was our erstwhile neighbour when we lived next door in the street) was a renowned advocate/lawyer and the street was named after him apparently because his was the first house in the street. If today someone wonders who the Chinnaya was on whom the street was named, they, perhaps, would draw a blank.

Dr. Nair Road became just Dr. Road.

Apparently no significant protest has been made about Reddy Street becoming just Street. Now it looks like people found a middle path by putting the caste name in parenthesis and made it (Reddy) Street.

Gopathi Narayanaswamy Chetti Road is an arterial road and after removing the caste name Chetti (other equivalents are Sreshti, Shetti, Setti etc.) finally it became G. N. Road.

The story of K. G. Nair street is interesting as this happened fully in my presence. My father was the first to construct his home in the street of the area which was originally called Meenakshi Street, when the layout was made. So one day Mr. K. Gopalan Nair who also had a plot in the street but constructed his home much later walked into our home (he was our electrician and his sons were selling us fresh milk from the cattle they owned too) and asked my father whether he (my father) was interested in naming the street after him. Now came the interesting dilemmas. My father’s name was Venkateswara Rao. As per government Rao is supposed to be a caste name and so is not permitted. The next road was already called Venkateswara Street and the colony cannot have the same name for two streets as it won’t serve any purpose.

I was keen in naming it after our surname Pamarthy (to be pronounced Paamarthi) but my father vehemently did not agree. His logic was that inevitably my Tamil brethren will successfully kill the name in the pronunciation. Tamil script has the same alphabet for ‘pa’ and ‘ba’ and so is the case ‘tha’ and ‘dha’ as is the case with so many other syllables. So what is Pamarthy now will soon become Bamardhy (to be pronounced Baammardhi) which in Telugu means brother-in-law or Saala in the Hindi slang. My dear father visualised this possibility in a jiffy while on his toes. Then I said let us name the street after my mother and my father objected to that too immediately, saying that he didn’t want all and sundry to keep calling my mother’s name. That ended our side of the argument.

Now that my father did not want any name from our side, Mr. K. Gopalan Nair asked whether we have any objection to naming the street after him as K. G. Nair Street. We said we did not have any and so he moved the authorities convincingly to keep the name as K. G. Nair street which was short lived as, soon it became K. G. Street. Mr. Gopalan Nair also contested the Panchayat elections for Saligramam Panchayat and successfully lost.

Interestingly the portion of his plot onto the said road has been sold away but that part of the street is still called K. G. Street. Our part of the street has been reinstated with the old name of Meenakshi Street.

The story of Vyasa Rao Naidu Street is truly hilarious. First the caste name Naidu was removed. Then after sometime, as an after thought Rao was removed rendering the street to become Vyasa Street. Then the authorities wanted to add reverence and so made it Vyasar Street. But the point missed by the authorities is that Rao is not a caste name anywhere in India except in Tamil Nadu. Tamilians anyway don’t name themselves as Rao. But for some reason, maybe because of naivety, many of my Tamil brethren think that the suffix ‘Rao’ denotes a surname of Brahmins. Little do they seem to know or  realise or would like to learn is that it is just a suffix used after names, by people belonging to 'all castes', in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Telangana. My Tamil brethren are very intelligent but somehow appear to be obstinate in this aspect, probably because they do not want to give away their staunch belief so easily. Now who will bell the cats?

The story of Sadan street is interesting and for me, a bit touching too. Mr. Sadan (Late) was a stage and film artist, mimicry artist, film singer and may be some instrumentalist too. He constructed a cute and petite home, off Kumaran Colony and now behind the Nexus Forum Mall in Vadapalani, which I loved and used to admire much. He was famous for his mimicry in the song ‘Kadavul amaiththu vaiththa medai…’ (Tamil) which was made into Telugu as ‘Thaali kattu subha vela…’. So, the street leading to his house was named Sadan Street for a very long time. Sometime later Mr. Sadan passed away. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattom_Sadan)

However, one fine day when I was passing through the street, I found that cute house was no more in the plot and now some other construction is there, which to me is insipid and a big let down. What more, the name of Sadan street seems to have silently transformed into Kumaran Colony 7^th Street. Every time I pass the place, where his house used to be, I feel sad for the good times his family must have had there in their cute house. I do not know any more information about him or his family.

Names to the streets are given to remember people and whatever their little contribution or history was. So, tinkering with them not only is an insult but also a step towards obliterating history in its true sense, in the guise of creating equality. Like poverty eradication, equality, in my opinion, is a myth.

But then, we have never been good in keeping things for posterity. If at all there is any history, most of it is thrust on us from the northern Indian history. Whatever is left, is lost like this. And as for the future, it appears most of the millennials and ‘Gen Z’ hardly seem to have any time for such trivial things as history.

Still hoping for something good and until the next,  

Krutagjnatalu (Telugu), Nanri (Tamil), Dhanyavaadagalu (Kannada), Nanni (Malayalam), Dhanyavaad (Hindi), Dhanyosmi (Sanskrit), Thanks (English), Dhonyavaad (Bangla), Dhanyabad (Oriya and Nepalese), Gracias (Spanish), Grazie (Italian), Danke Schon (Deutsche), Merci (French), Obrigado (Portuguese), Shukraan (Arabic and Sudanese), Shukriya (Urdu), Sthoothiy (Sinhalese) Aw-koon (Khmer), Kawp Jai Lhai Lhai (Laotian), Kob Kun Krab (Thai), Asante (Kiswahili), Maraming Salamat sa Lahat (Pinoy-Tagalog-Filipino), Tack (Swedish), Fa'afetai (Samoan), Terima Kasih (Bahasa Indonesian) and Tenkyu (Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea), Malo (Tongan), Vinaka Vaka Levu (Fijian)

 

Hemantha Kumar Pamarthy

Chennai, India