History of Big Street

Big in history

 

If you walk down Triplicane and asked for Veeraraghava Mudali Street, chances are that you will draw a blank. But ask for Big Street and everyone in the area will tell you. Today even the Chennai Corporation signboard refers to it as Big Street. The thoroughfare, contrary to its name is a narrow and long one that stretches north south in the heart of crowded Triplicane. It is better known today for its numerous mansion houses all of which offer cheap accommodation for single men who come to the city in search of livelihood.

 

Triplicane has always had a healthy mix of various religions and communities and Big Street is no exception. Its Nawabi associations are still evident in some of the old households that exist in various stages of decay. At one end of it, the street branches off into the Khana Bagh area, once the Nawab of Arcot’s gardens and now a crowded area. The end of the street has a mosque to which the Nawab of Arcot still pays a visit on Ramzan day. The wealthy Dare House Naidus, dubashes (agents) of Parry and Company owned several properties here and the patriarch of the family, Moddaverapu Dera Venkataswami Naidu has a street named after him as also his grandson the famed cricketer Bucchi Babu Naidu.

 

Dominating Big Street is Hindu High School (now the Hindu Higher Secondary School), founded in 1852 as the Dravida Patashala. In 1897 the school became the Hindu High School and moved into a present premises which is a red coloured three storeyed building in what can best be described as the Indo Gothic style. The uppermost floor has the Madabusi Hall which apart from serving as the assembly room also became home to one of the earliest music Sabhas of the city, the Sri Parthasarathy Swami Sabha, founded in 1900. Among the musical alumni of the school were GN Balasubramaniam the vocalist and Papa KS Venkataramiah, the violinist. The ‘silver tongued orator’ of Madras, the Rt. Hon. VS Srinivasa Sastry whose English was praised even by Winston Churchill was once headmaster of this school. Yet another illustrious alumnus was S Chandrashekhar, the Nobel laureate.

 

The Triplicane Urban Cooperative Society, one of the first cooperatives of the country, was founded in Big Street in 1904 by VS Srinivasa Sastry, M Singaravelar and others. The Society began one of the earliest examples of retail in the city and flourished for several years. Dotted around Big Street are several properties belonging to the TUCS including its headquarters which was constructed in 1949.

 

Big Street was home to several musicians as well. Most famous among these was C Saraswathi Bai, the first Brahmin woman to give public Harikatha performances and who was hence called the First Lady Bhagavatar. Later the famed drama artistes, the TKS Brothers lived in one section of the same house. Bai’s evening coffee sessions were famous and many of her friends and admirers would flock to her house for a musical evening. MS Subbulakshmi too lived in Big Street in 1940 when she and T Sadasivam made the film Sakuntalai.

 

Big Street has a famous Ganesha temple to which everyone with a wish to be fulfilled comes to pray. The temple’s real name is Arasadi Selva Vinayagar Koil, but like the street name everyone has forgotten it and calls it the Big Street Pillaiyar Temple.

 

 

Chennai’s Music Season (yet another article on this!!!)

http://indiatoday.digitaltoday.in/index.php?issueid=56&id=2399&option=com_content&task=view&sectionid=20&secid=30

 

Come December, I am asked every year to write something about the season. So here is one sample!

Evening Bazaar

A Market of Thieves

 

The area behind Central Station is divided into streets with quaint names such as Rattan Bazaar, Flower Bazaar, China Bazaar and Mat Bazaar. One among these is Evening Bazaar Road which branches off Poonamallee High Road opposite the Madras Medical College and leads you to George Town.

 

In early days, this was where a makeshift market came up every evening with just about any kind of goods available for sale. Dense crowds would descend on the place and pickpockets would make merry. Often the unwary would see their own possessions on sale as they reached the end of the road! The place therefore also came to be called Thieving Bazaar. Because these thefts took place in a hush hush manner, the place also acquired an Urdu name – Guzili Bazaar, coming from the word Guzal meaning private or secret.

 

Incredibly, the Bazaar also spawned its own literature. In those days of no radio and very few newspapers, the news of the day would be disseminated by balladeers who would compose songs on them and perform in this area. The songs would be printed on cheap paper and sold to passers-by and today they form an invaluable source of information on the city as it existed in late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. These came to be called Guzili songs and scholar AR Venkatachalapathy has recently published a full volume on their development and impact on public life. Everything from the hanging of Bhagat Singh to the fire at the Park Town Fair was grist to the Guzili mill.

 

Evening Bazaar is not without its stately buildings either. The English of Madras, spared as they were of the horrors of the 1857 Mutiny, offered thanksgiving to God by building Memorial Hall here. This structure, built in the Classical style to the designs of George Winscom and Col. Horsely was completed in 1860 and is part of the Bible Society complex of buildings. It is largely used as a venue for discount sales of garments and pottery now. The Christian Literature Society Building is a neighbour to Memorial Hall and is also in the same Classical style. Opposite the Hall stands the Park Town Post Office (now the Head Post Office), one of the older post offices in the city.

 

Today this road forms a vital artery connecting congested George Town with the rest of the city. The Guzili Bazaar has vanished though a remnant of it still operates between Central Station and the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. Evening Bazaar Road however does not lack hustle and bustle thereby giving an indication of what it was like in its heyday.

 

Bunder Street and Tyagaraja

http://indiatoday.digitaltoday.in/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9253&Itemid=1&issueid=59&sectionid=20&secid=30&limit=1&limitstart=1

A street that hosted Tyagaraja

 

 

Bunder Street is a narrow thoroughfare in George Town, full of fruits and vegetable shops and wholesale stationery outlets. In its time it was the home to the Dubashes, wealthy merchants who acted as middlemen between the East India Company officials and the traders of Madras. Then Bunder Street was lined with stately mansions, all of them with warehouses in the ground floor and residences on the first floor.

 

Why the name Bunder? Ships anchored a short distance away in the years before the port came up and this street was the Bandar (warehouse) which became Bunder. The Hindi word for port Bandargah, could also have been corrupted to Bunder. This was where sarees brought from Bandar Srikakulam, a town in Andhra, were sold and that could also be the reason.

 

Tyagaraja (1767-1847) is one of the greatest composers in Carnatic Music. He came to Madras in 1839 and stayed at what is today no 41, Bunder Street. Incredibly, the building has survived intact till date. This was the town-house of Kovur Sundaresa Mudaliar, a a dubash of the East India Company. It was Mudaliar’s earnest desire that Tyagaraja ought to visit Madras and stay with him and this was fulfilled when Tyagaraja was on a pilgrimage in 1839. Acceding to Mudaliar’s request, Tyagaraja also travelled to Kovur, his native place in the outskirts of Madras and composed five songs on the presiding deity of the temple there. These are today referred to as the Kovur Pancharatnams.

 

Sundaresa Mudaliar’s son was Ekambara Mudaliar who was a trustee of the Pachayappa’s Trust which even today runs several educational institutions in the state. The first school of the Trust, Pachayappa’s School moved into its own Greek styled building in 1850 in nearby Esplanade and the inaugural procession for it left from No 41, Bunder Street.

 

No 41 was to have one last burst of glory in the 1950s when it became home to the Indian Music Publishing House, run by Professor P Sambamurthy, the eminent musicologist. It was from here that most of the text books he wrote, which still remain University music syllabi were published.

 

Today, the mansion of the Mudaliars is a warren of shops and is totally decrepit, crying for maintenance. But then, so is most of Bunder Street.

 

History of Cathedral Road

I began a series of monthly articles on the heritage of Madras, taking one street at a time for India Today (Simply Chennai section) . While getting them to stop editing what I send has been a big issue, I enjoy doing the series. Here is one on Cathedral Road

The truncated version of this is on the web in the India Today site –
http://indiatoday.digitaltoday.in/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&issueid=58&id=8000§ionid=20&secid=30&Itemid=1

 

The original is posted here

 

The road to a Cathedral

 

St George’s Church came up in 1816 to cater largely to the population of Adyar and the “Great Choultry Plain”. Planned by Col Caldwell and executed by Maj. Thomas de Havilland, it was upgraded to the status of a Cathedral in 1835. The road built for those in South Madras to come to this church became Cathedral Road. Next door to the Cathedral and divided into two by the road, was the Madras Horticultural Society which was founded in 1835 becoming the Madras Agri-Horticultural Society in 1860. The Woodlands Drive-In Restaurant which came up in 1962 in the southern part of the Society’s land was a great attraction. It closed down last month when the Society lost control of its 22 acres following a High Court order. The Government now plans a Botanical Garden in the place. Next door to this verdant sprawl was ‘Garden View’, a gigantic property owned by Dewan Bahadur Captain P Krishnaswami, one of the earliest heart surgeons of Madras and the Dean of Stanley Medical College. His grandson is PC Ramakrishna, the well-known theatre personality and ‘voice’. Today ‘Garden View’ has given way to several commercial buildings.

 

Binny Road is a cutting off Cathedral Road, so named as it led to several garden bungalows belonging to Binny’s. One of the surviving bungalows is ‘The Cloisters’ which became the home of Stella Maris College when it moved here in 1961. Today this heritage building houses the Commerce Department of the college.

 

Cathedral Road is home to several corporate offices, the ones belonging to the Rane Group and the Sanmar Group being landmark buildings. The latter came up on the site of ‘Shanti’ once the residence of TT Krishnamachari, prominent businessman and Congress party member who was Finance Minister of India. A part of what was ‘Shanti’ still houses the TTK Group of Companies. 

 

At the end of Cathedral Road stands the Music Academy. The premier cultural body of Madras acquired this property, once a bungalow called ‘Sweet Home’ in the 1940s. In 1955 the foundation stone for the present auditorium was laid by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The auditorium was inaugurated in 1962 and has since then been the venue for countless cultural events.

 

Cathedral Road is home to several hotels and restaurants. The Chola Sheraton stands where a guest house belonging to The Hindu once existed. It was in that bungalow that Gandhiji planned his Satyagraha. A monument outside the hotel commemorates this.

 

Interestingly, if there was a ‘power district’ in Tamil Nadu, Cathedral Road bisects it. For Gopalapuram and Poes Gardens lie on either side of it!

 

Tamil Nadu’s tourism revenue peaks, but what about Chennai?

TN tourist revenue at all time high-

 

But what about the city?

 

There is good news on the tourism front in Tamil Nadu. The state set a new record of sorts, earning Rs 5,430 crores in 2007 from foreign tourists. The increase is roughly 80% higher than the amount earned the previous year. A total of 17,53,000 foreigners visited the state last year, 31.3% higher than the previous year. The higher increase in spend vis-à-vis the increase in numbers indicates that per tourist spend is on the increase in the state which points to higher value added services. On the domestic tourist front too the state has clocked impressive figures. A whopping 506.47 lakh Indians from other states have visited Tamil Nadu last year, which is an increase of 28% over the previous year.

 

There are some interesting statistics in terms of geographic spread of tourists as well. Internationally, Sri Lankans top the list when it comes to Tamil Nadu as a destination with over 3.60 lakh arrivals last years. They are closely followed by people from Malaysia and Singapore. Residents of UK, USA and France have also made a beeline to the state in impressive numbers. As for Indian states, neighbouring Andhra sends in the maximum number of tourists with 39 lakh visitors last year. Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh follow in that order.

 

The state government is extremely pleased and is planning a slew of measures to improve amenities for visitors. A Rs 5.5 crore package has been announced for Vellore which is fast emerging as a tourist hub, the presence of the gold domed Sripuram temple being a major attraction. The tourism department has also analysed and found that tourists are going in large numbers to Gangaikondacholapuram, Mahabalipuram, Tanjavur and the wildlife sanctuaries in the state. What is interesting is that Chennai is completely absent from the list. The city, while serving as an entry and exit point is obviously not considered by most tourists as worthy of spending time. This excludes those who come in as part of health tourism in which case the city is an obvious destination.

 

Why is Chennai not a sight-seeing destination? Why does it not compare favourably with the other three metros of the country, all of which see tourists descending in large numbers and more importantly spending time within the city itself? The reasons are not far to seek.

 

• There are no printed brochures made available by the tourism department, with maps that have the places of tourist interest clearly marked out.
• The tourism department does not have a visible presence in the railway stations and the airport. Tourists who come into the city, therefore have to rely on taxi drivers for their information most of which is half-baked and often unreliable. Thus contrasts with most cities abroad and also against a much smaller city such as Hyderabad, where the old airport had an active tourism office for many years dedicated to city based sight-seeing.
• There is no single internet site from the tourism department which lists out the places worth seeing in the city.
• The city has over 20 museums, large and small and there is no organized booklet or any other method by which such information can be had. Compare with cities such as London. It is also worthwhile to see the success of small museums in Indian cities such as the Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum in Pune and the Dolls Museum in Calcutta.
• There is simply no street signage near any monument in Chennai. Those who do not know anything about the city have simply no chance of going to see any place unless they are accompanied by an informed local resident.
• Most of the monuments and buildings are poorly maintained or are simply inaccessible to the public. To cite a few examples- the National Gallery has been closed for repairs for years, the Senate House is locked up and most parts of Fort St George are inaccessible. So what does that leave the tourist with? Temples and churches are the sole remaining choices and not many may want to have an itinerary exclusively dedicated to these. The beach therefore remains the only worthwhile destination.
• There are no organised guided tours of the city. Calcutta has one that has been in place for twenty five years and is booked weeks in advance. Can Chennai not rustle up something equivalent?
• The city is home now to a long festive season beginning with the music festival in November to the Chennai Sangamam in January. Can this not be marketed effectively? Two years ago there was an announcement that a consultant had been called in by the state government to submit a report on how to market this season. But since then nothing much has happened.

 

There are many ways in which the tourists can be made to stay in the city and spend time in it. But unless concerted efforts are taken up, this will never happen.

 

 

New Tamil Nadu Assembly

Government unveils designs for new Assembly

 

Details of the design for the new Assembly building complex for the Tamil Nadu government have been coming out. The buildings it appears will be modernistic in look incorporating a few Dravidian elements.

 

The original layout had five circular courtyards with the main assembly hall in the fourth. It has now been decided to have four courtyards only and the assembly has been shifted to the second court. The assembly hall was earlier planned with a dome that looked like the one at the Reichstag in Germany. This will now be modified to resemble the gopurams of the rathas of Mahabalipuram. It is reliably learnt that all buildings will be of locally available granite and hopefully they will not be faced with the regulation red granite that our PWD is so fond of.

 

The entire complex will be divided into two principal blocks, the first one being the Assembly and the second the Secretariat. There are reports that the second one will have around 20 storeys making it one of the tallest buildings in the city. There will also be a convention centre within the compound.

 

All this is most admirable, but the plan has a few logistic issues which it will be well worth the Government’s while to ponder over before work begins. The only entry and exit for vehicles, and this includes the high security convoys, will be near the intersection of Mount Road and Sivananda Salai (Adams Road). This is a very busy intersection being an oft used route for those wishing to access the station. Sivananda Salai is a narrow stretch with the river on one side and the MRTS going directly above it. It is also one of the last green stretches in the city. With government vehicles frequently using this road and also Mount Road, there are chances that traffic will be stopped whenever ministerial convoys use them. This will lead to an enormous pile-up of traffic. It must be borne in mind that in order to access Fort St George, the convoys are presently using Beach Road which sees less traffic and is also very broad. That not being the case in the new location, traffic bottlenecks are foreseen.

 

The PWD, never known to be proactive, has stated that it needs to study the relocation of bus-stops along Mount Road and Wallajah Road junction. The pedestrian entry to the Assembly complex will be along this intersection. If the bus-stops are to be moved away from here, it will mean pedestrians will have to walk much longer and perhaps cross the roads at all kinds of places, thereby making their journey more hazardous. It is strange that the impact of placing the Secretariat/Assembly in the heart of the most important thoroughfare has not been studied as yet. It is only now that traffic experts have been called in. They will therefore have no option but to accept the site as a reality and work towards changing the traffic flow, adopting a post facto approach, always a solution that is fraught with problems.

 

The presence of a tall skyscraper, which is what the Secretariat promises to be, standing out among low-rise buildings may be flattering to some egos, but what it does to the aesthetics of a place is a different matter altogether. May Day Park, which has remained a sylvan oasis, will soon be run over by hangers on and petitioners, always to be associated with any government complex.

 

The original design as worked on by the architects from Germany has undergone a number of changes, apparently with interventions being received from the highest level. The designers had apparently in their original design incorporated Government House, Gandhi Illam and Rajaji Hall. But there was pressure to do away with the first two and only retain the third. While the demolition has been done, it is interesting to see that all reports on the new Assembly emphasise the point that Rajaji Hall has been left untouched. What everyone conveniently forgets is that two buildings, one of them among the oldest buildings in the city and the other a museum dedicated to the Mahatma have been done away with. A new question that emerges is related to the future of Rajaji Hall itself. Till now it had been a convenient venue for meetings organised by those with limited budgets. Now the building, practically shut off inside what will be a high security enclave, will be practically useless. And everyone knows what happens to heritage buildings that are not used regularly. Perhaps that is also part of a grand plan.

 

 

 

Short and Snappy July 1st 2008

Short and Snappy July 1^st 2008

Heritage by any other name

 

The longer the Man from Madras Musings lives, and he has not lived that long and would definitely like to live much longer, the more he is convinced that this heritage movement in Madras that is Chennai is blighted from the start mainly because it lacks supernatural blessing. And what better way to get it than numerology? It is the in thing now. MMM did not take it seriously till he received an invitation from an organisation calling itself the Artss Academy. MMM seriously thinks that Madras Musings must change its name to Chennai Chatter. After all who muses today? Everyone chatters and continuously into cell phones at that. This will be more in keeping with the trend.

 

Also Chennai Heritage itself could be spelt as Chennai Heritaje. I am told certain alphabets have more strength than others and ‘j’ is far more powerful compared to the mere ‘g’. Phonetically it will not make a difference and after all it could have been infinitely worse with options such as Chennnnai Herrritagge etc. Now for the buildings. Ripon Buildings could be Ribbon Buildings. If only Government House had been named as “Gorement House”, its fate would have been a lot different. We could have Chebag Palace, Merina Beach, Central Tesan and so on. About Egmore MMM is not all worried. After all in its history it was named Elumuroo, Ezhumbur and so on. So a change to Eggmore would not matter. MMM would request those who worry about heritaje, sorry heritage, to consider this.

 

Fly by night Exhibition

 

Speaking about Elumuroo or Ezhumbur or Egmore, the Man from Madras Musings was away when the centenary of the station was celebrated. But he was happy to note that an exhibition of photographs concerning the building was put up. MMM was looking forward to returning and looking up the display when he found out that the exhibition was on only for a day. In any other country, they would have dined out for a year on this, but here it is more a question of putting up something for the sake of doing it and then heaving a sigh of relief that it is all over and done with. MMM suspects that there must have been a budget for the event which those in charge would have been eager to spend. Now that the expenditure has been incurred all are happy. What does it matter if it was up for a day, an hour or even just a minute?

 

Agile and mobile

 

The Man from Madras Musings used to run for exercise. That was until a fall in a heritage building (of all places) put paid to some part of his spine identified by an alphabet such as C or L or S or some such. As a result of this, MMM is now only allowed a dignified walk. And as he walks along he look about, always on the lookout for material to fill this column with. And what amazes him is that times are changing. There was a time when men took their dogs for walks. Now just about everyone takes his mobile phone for a walk. This realisation dawned on MMM when one day, early in the morning, when it was not yet bright, MMM was walking along a tree-lined avenue and espied a well-dressed if overweight man talking to himself as he walked on. He appeared to be arguing or even fighting with himself. Perhaps it was a struggle between the body and the immortal soul? MMM is always a votary of safety first and so thinking that this man may be non compos, he decided to give him a wide berth. But the other gent was a swift walker and soon caught up with MMM, all the while yelling at himself. As MMM slowed down, wondering what could be offered by way of self-defence, he realised that the other was wearing a twinkling ornament over his ear which extended halfway down his cheek. This, MMM later came to know is the famed ‘blue tooth’, which is not the term for a tooth that has received an excessive dose of anaesthetic, but a gadget which provides you handless contact with your mobile. So you keep the mobile in your pocket, stick the blue tooth into your ear, answer all your calls and hey presto! You look loony but your work gets done. These strollers are the highest in status. They appear to communicate with the clouds and most often have their head in them.

 

Then there is the second variety of walker who has a complicated set of cables dangling all over. This one has not yet attained the status that the blue tooth wearer has. Among the many cables, the first set belongs to an i-pod, which is a portable musical gadget that stores an awesome number of songs in it. Here again there is subliminal sub-communalism, for the man whose i-pod holds 53259 songs looks down on the chap whose gadget has only 3245. Size matters. To come back to the point, the i-pod is in say, pocket A, with its wires firmly plugged to the ear. The mobile phone is in pocket B, with its own set of wires. Now as soon as the phone rings, or buzzes, or vibrates, or whatever else it can do, sometimes all of the above, the walker takes off the wires from the music gadget and plugs the phone wires in. All this is fraught with danger, for the wire that is idle can trip you over and then in addition to the music, you can also see stars. There was a time when only your shoelace could do that, but then we live in dangerous times.

 

There is a third variety which is still getting used to the mobile phone. This kind believes that it has to roar every word into the instrument thereby disturbing the public peace. There is a fourth variety which appears to have graduated from the old walkie-talkie. Walkers of this type keep switching the phone from ear to mouth. While speaking they bring it close to their mouth and while listening they press it to the ear. They barely stop short of barking “Over” at the end of every sentence.

 

One thing is common among all the above types. There is very little walking done. And of course there are those like MMM who belong to the rare breed that does not bring along a phone. But then we cannot be bothered with such outcastes can we?

 

Zeal v Greed

 

There is news on the illegal building front. Apparently those who have been served demolition notices after the High Court passed judgement have appealed on a new logic. They have accepted that their buildings violate all norms, but they claim that they are entitled to a one-time pardon, because their intention was not to violate but they were overcome by their zeal to do business which must not be mistaken for greed!!!

 

The Man from Madras Musings marvels at the brains that come up with such unique reasoning. He also wonders why, if the builders had become overzealous, the Corporation or the CMDA did not damper then enthusiasm even during the planning stage by pointing out the violations? Were the authorities also motivated by the zeal to do business of some kind or the other? MMM hopes and prays that such gobbledegook will not be paid any heed to and that all violators will be brought to book.

 

 

A memorial for Subramania Bharati

My Encore article for June 2008 featured the laying of the foundation stone in 1945 for the Subramania Bharati memorial. The Hindu’s link is given below. The finding of the Tamil note written by Gandhi in the HIndu archives was pure serendipity. Thanks to Sri K Rajendrababu, the Chief Librarian.

 

http://www.thehindu.com/fr/2008/06/27/stories/2008062750820300.htm

Tanneer Turai Market and its surroundings

My article on Tanneer Turai Market appeared in the Times of India dated 13th June 2008

 

The Buckingham Canal was dug as a famine relief measure in the 1870s. Till around a 100 years ago, it was a major means of transportation with 1500 boats plying between Mylapore and Mamallapuram.

 

With the Canal running close by, a market was planned on its banks in Mylapore so that vegetables, firewood, tiles and other items could be brought in by boats. Hence the name, Tanneer (water) Turai (fronted) market. Spanning eight and a half grounds and divided into stalls, it came up as a Trust largely due to the munificence of V Bhashyam Iyengar, a legal luminary who resided nearby. Today the river is a foul gutter and bringing goods by boat is impossible, but the market thrives.

 

The best times to visit the place are in the early hours of the morning and once again in the evening. The best way to explore it is by walk and there is no space to park any vehicle in the near vicinity. Sales go on in a brisk fashion, with bargaining being enjoyed by vendor and buyer alike, the sharp Mylapore repartees being given and taken in equal measure. Today you can buy vegetables, fruits, plantain leaves and coconuts from here. Meat is a strict no-no perhaps due the largely Tambrahm nature of Mylapore.

 

Feeling peckish and in the mood for some light ‘Tiffin’? Then step into Durga Bhawan, one of the oldest Udupi style restaurants in this part of the city, just opposite the market. As for temples, there are plenty in this area. Facing the market is the Appar Swami Temple, built in 1852 in memory of a saint of the same name who attained salvation here a year earlier. Sharing a wall with the market is the famed Luz Anjaneyar Temple. Close by is a temple dedicated to Tiruvalluvar, the immortal early poet, who is said to have resided in this area. He is also commemorated in a statue next to the market.

 

This nerve centre of Mylapore is sadly under threat. One of the 18 merchants who controls it has it is said sold his share to a developer who wants to demolish the structure and build a high-rise here. Over 250 families, including vendors, labourers, handcart operators and rickshaw-pullers depend on the place. Some of the shopkeepers have gone to court against the demolition and there matters rest. Before something happens, rush along and see Mylapore in all its dynamism.

 

The author can be contacted at srirambts@gmail.com

http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Daily/skins/TOI/navigator.asp?Daily=TOICH&login=default&AW=1211518563593

The article is on page 57