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

 

 

 

 

 

Hemantha Kalam - 105 "Memory Streets"

                                                                                  Memories don’t leave like people do;                                                  They always stay with you...

Sir Tom Jones

Men and some animals (known to us) have memories, however vague or strong they might be. We will not be able to say whether animals could have favourite memories, but as human beings many of us have some or more favourite memories. Well, so do I. In fact, I have too many memories that many of them are more of a burden as I belong to the breed that forgives a lot but seldom forgets!

So I was dwelling on my favourite memories and then started writing this blog with one favourite memory of mine (in fact that of almost all of our siblings), which is about my father. I have so many memories of my father that I can perhaps write a book on them. So this is a slice of those.

As mentioned by me in my earlier blogs, my father was working in whichever way his talent pushed him, to make ends meet.

During the early 1960s, he started stabilising a bit when he started working for a gentleman who ran two companies – one was called SYGA Corporation and the other SYGA Movies. My father was the manager of the first and an associate director in the second. I have reasonably distinct and vivid memories of his work in both.

But the favourite memory is from the first – SYGA Corporation. This was an indenting office in Madras (Chennai),  for an Indian company called the Gwalior Rayon Silk Manufacturing Company Limited (later name changed to Grasim Industries), with its manufacturing plant located at Mavoor, Kozhikode (Calicut), Kerala, India (if I am not mistaken, this manufacturing plant does not exist anymore there). The job of the indenting office was to check on the availability and prices of raw material needed by the plant, on a daily basis, from various sources in Chennai, and inform the factory appropriately and promptly so that their procurement department would place orders directly to a vendor of their choice.

My father used to go to office around 11.00 am, work in the office to cater to the needs of the plant, as also taking care of the necessary communications, leave office to go to George and Park Towns and the Sowcarpet area in Chennai (between Chennai Central Station on the West, DARE house on the East, Broadway area in the South and Mint/Mannadi area in the north).

For this purpose, his company did not provide him with any vehicle, not even a bicycle. So he used to commute initially by bicycle but as we started growing up he too started aging and preferred to commute by public transport and the nearest facility to his office was the bus service.

Depending on the day’s requirement of material, he used to alight sometimes at Wall Tax road (adjacent to Chennai Central station) and start walking the streets to meet vendors and find out the availability and prices of the raw material needed for the day.

He would cover areas and streets like Pai Kadai, Evening Bazaar, Mint Street, Govindappa Naicken Street, Flower Bazaar, Godown Street, Badrian Street, Anderson Street, Lyons Square, Broadway, Sembudoss Street, Armenian Street, Thambu Chetty Street, Linghi Chetty Street, Angappa Naicken Street, Thatha Muthiappan Street, Seven Wells, Mannadi, Muthialpet, II Line Beach, Burma Bazaar etc., and many more depending on the need. For at least a couple of decades he was the uncrowned king of these streets like many other petty traders in these streets too. Every vendor my father met or had business in these streets loved him.

This walk would continue till about 9.30 pm by which time he would have covered a major portion of the area, when he finally would call it a day, more because the vendors were closing than because of lack of energy on his part, and take a bus from Broadway bus stand. The last buses of the day were always crowded and one needed deftness to find and hold a seat which my dad used to do with aplomb. Even the most irritated and irate person used to calm down on seeing his smile.

As I entered school and later college (which was located at less than 500 meters from his office) he started taking me around too, just to show me the ‘world’ in its true sense. Being a bit of laissez faire guy that I am, I never had his energy levels and used to crib often for walking so long and for so many hours. Being a foodie, one of my favourite cribs was to ask him for evening snacks; in restaurants where the different aromas used to waft onto the streets; which he almost always used to pass by saying that we are ending our work for the day and should not stuff ourselves, else we cannot justify our dinner. There were times when I used to point blank refuse to accompany him, if he did not buy me snacks in the evening.

Once or twice a week he also used to buy and bring home vegetables from ‘Kotwal Chavadi’ which was the wholesale vegetable market in the city (before it was relocated to Koyambedu) at the time and was located at Lyons Square. Part of Broadway near the Lyons Square was cobble stoned (British era) and even in the normal times it used to be a bit painful to walk on the smooth polished dome like cobbles. In rainy season it used to be dreadful added with slush and stink. There used to be ankle deep water filled with vegetable wastes and walking on the slippery cobbles, without spraining an ankle, was an art.

My father used to hold his office brief case in one hand, umbrella in the other and used to bargain for vegetables where no bargaining was available. But those vegetable sellers, who loved my father, used to offer him good prices and generous in measuring / weighing too. My father used to wear real stylish cooling glasses or they all just looked good on him whichever way, but also used to lose them mostly at the vegetable shops by forgetting to pick them up when they fell from his pocket or when he placed them on some vegetables while picking the good ones!.

I must have moved with my father in the evenings like this for several years alright. My cribbing continued, but later, only much later, could I (the dumb guy that I am) understand the value of my father’s personal tutelage in teaching me (later, all my siblings) the markets, the products’ availability, the art of negotiation et al., for which I am forever indebted to him. Unknown to me then, the seeds, for my qualifying in Materials Management study, were sown in those days itself.

My favourite memory in this episode is that somewhere in 1973 (yes, half a century ago) one evening my father asked me to come to his office straight from college to go to Parry’s corner. We met Mr. Kishan Lal Khanna, a good friend of my father, at a pre-fixed place on Thambu Chetty Street and slowly walking through Armenian Street, Broadway, Lyons square, Bundar street, Govindappa Naicken street, we finally reached Kasi Chetty street. That was the first time I was entering Kasi Chetty Street as earlier, there was not much of an occasion for us to go there since it was a street well known for products in the grey market.

But, apparently, unknown to me as yet, that was a special day. We went shop after shop where my father was asking for good and stylish imported wrist watches. Allwyn and Titan were not born yet and HMT models were considered not stylish enough at that time.  Finally both of us could agree upon one model of a watch, interestingly in grey colour. Those days, my father used to wear a beautiful white dialled and light weight Swiss ‘Favre Leuba’ watch, and I was wondering why he was buying another watch, as he is not known to squander his money. This watch, after a deep bargaining, was fixed for Rs.230.00. My father paid the cash and asked me to wear it. He had a twinkle in his eyes when he saw me wearing it.

That was my first watch and gifted by my dad on the occasion of my entering a college, the first to do in our family. That was one happy day and this is an unforgettable memory of my father. I tried resurrecting the now defunct watch several times, even last year, but though it has not lost its sheen, it is just not functioning. Perhaps, its function now is to remain a good living memory for me.

Later my first job was in the same area for about a year and a half when both of us used to meet sometimes in the evenings and together bring vegetables home. My work over the past eight years takes me to the same area again and every time I walk on any street in the area, I find myself walking along with my dad, invisibly though. I see him everywhere in the area.

Today (14^th July) is the day he passed away six years ago. Interestingly that was a Friday and today is a Friday too!  There has not been a single day when I don’t think of him or do not reminisce my association with him. He had been a dad of a different stock and I could not or can’t ever be like him and I am glad of that, so my father’s uniqueness is unscathed and untouched.

I do hope that he would be busy wherever he is with that infectious smile of his and bringing more smiles on to others’ faces, or would he be singing, without a care for time? How I would love to know!

So folks that’s about it for this blog.

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