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.

 

 

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!