It’s been years since I visited Pondicherry. When INTACH Pondicherry and others organised a three-day Pondicherry festival there recently, they gave me the opportunity to discover a new Pondicherry. Ville Blanc had become a tourist town — welcoming the French and other tourists as well as the crowds from Bangalore, with street after street of guest houses, hotels, restaurants and bars, and tourist shops, in all their variety. While all this had changed the character of a sleepy little town, the positive vibes were that old homes and shops had been conserved and converted, maybe sometimes including additions to the past, into this adaptive re-use. Once again the purists are unlikely to be happy, but to me it was heartening to see so much of the old standing and hear that the Mairie (Miscellany, December 29, 2014) was to be re-built to look exactly like it was and made a museum, the World Bank funding the resurrection. It was also a welcome sign to see an MLA speak positively about the Government’s attitude to heritage in Pondicherry at the inauguration and then sit through and participate actively in a long discussion of heritage the next day. Come and meet me about your requirements, we will find ways to help, he told a roomful of heritage activists.

Three of us from Madras had the previous afternoon spoken on getting the wider community involved in a city’s heritage. Debbie Thiagarajan spoke of a citizens’ signature campaign she had organised when she headed INTACH Madras some years ago and how it had resulted in positive action from Government, even if it had been only for a while. Vincent D’Souza spoke eloquently of the Mylapore Festival he had conceived and how not only had it grown but had also spawned Madras Week. And your columnist spoke of how Madras Day, with a half-day beginning, had grown through voluntary organisation of events into Madras Week and had events going on for nearly a month. Getting the local communities involved, encouraging volunteer participation, persuading schools to play their part, and reaching out to all parts of the city were what all three stressed. In speaking of Madras Week, they said what had started with a South and Central Madras activity had, in the last couple of years, got some participation in Anna Nagar, Kilpauk, Purasawalkam and George Town but needed much more of it in these areas and an awakening in North Madras areas like Perambur, Royapuram and areas beyond. Trying to catalyse volunteer activities in these parts of the city is now the focus of the coordinators of Madras Week.

This needed to be stressed, this writer felt, in the context that the Pondicherry Festival tended to focus of Ville Blanc and had only a couple of activities in Ville Noire, and even those focused on Ananda Ranga Pillai and ‘what brings people back to Pondicherry,’ both topics in many ways related to the White Town. Sadly, unlike Madras, a wall — actually a drain — has divided Pondicherry’s White Town and Black Town for decades and even though this year’s programme on Bharati and Bharathidasan tried to literally bridge it, much more has to be done if and when Pondicherry catalyses a Pondicherry Week. One of the problems in Pondicherry is that its heritage activists come from different parts of India or abroad and there are not enough Tamil voices. We look forward to those voices growing in the weeks to come.

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A man of many parts

At the recent release of a book that presents a pictorial glimpse of Chettiar history from the late 19th Century to a little after the mid-20th Century, The Chettiar Album, one of the speakers drew attention to a Chettiar of many parts, well-known in his time but forgotten today, who features in the book, which draws attention to two of his passions. The Chettiar referred to was S.A.A. Annamalai, ‘SA’ to all.

One of those pictures is featured here today and shows an immaculately dressed ‘SA’ presenting a trophy to another Chettiar, as immaculately dressed. These two Nagarathars were the first Nattukottai Chettiars into the ‘Sport of Kings’, Horse Racing, ‘SA’ getting into it first by a length. One of the first Indians into racing in Madras, he went on to become, if I am not wrong, the first Indian Steward and then Chief Steward. Of him, it used to be said, that the horses would refuse to run if he was not present at the Guindy course. But for all his affinity to the horses, they refused to tell him when they were winning and, in the long run, it cost him dear.

His other passion was flying. According to the Madras Flying Club records, Avadaiappa Chettiar and ‘SA’ were the fifth and sixth members of the Club and the first and second Indians to get private pilots’ licences (in 1931). But ‘SA’ had learnt flying in England sometime before that — some say he was the first Indian to get a licence, preceding J.R.D. Tata — and bought a plane there which he shipped out to Madras. Be that as it may, he was one of the pioneers of aviation in South India and one of those who helped create the Kanadukathan Flying Club, in his eponymously named village in rural Chettinad.

Around his village and elsewhere not far from it, he made an arid region bloom. He was a successful landlord-farmer whose advice on agriculture was sought by many. But as much as his interest in agriculture was his interest in industry, a field no Chettiar had got into even as late as the 1920s. Visiting the Wembley Exhibition in 1924 he looked at the wide range of bicycles on display and thought this was just the means of transport for an impoverished country like India. Tying up with a German company, he began to manufacture the frames in Madras and, with other components from the collaborators, assemble the bicycles in Madras under the brand name ‘Swan’. But when it came to total manufacture, he faced numerous difficulties. Also, he could not compete with imported products. And, so, he threw in the towel. It was about 30 years later that a family who were his kin were to pioneer India’s bicycle industry and develop TI Cycles into what is today known as the Murugappa Group.

‘SA’ and his family lived in a splendid mansion in San Thomé that bordered the beach on which the ugly-as-sin tenements for fishermen came up in, if I remember right, the 1960s. It was on that beach that his children buried me, right up to my neck in the sand one evening and, after playing around me in the dusk, fled as night fell leaving me to be rescued by passing fishermen responding to my screams. One of those children was to become internationally known as Yogi Ramaiah, who spread the knowledge of Kriya Yoga worldwide.

A geologist by qualification, Ramaiah fell seriously ill before he could go to the U.S. for higher studies and was for almost seven years confined to his home. A miraculous resurrection in 1952 had him take the path of a swamiji and preach the gospel of yoga. From 1968 onwards, he did this for thirty years while headquartered in the U.S. Then he began to turn more and more to the village of his birth, Kanadukathan. Today, it is a heritage destination of Tamil Nadu Tourism, but the first influx of visitors from abroad to it were those to gather at Yogi Ramaiah’s shrines and other facilities in and around the village. That album could do with a picture of Yogi Ramaiah holding forth in the U.S.

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When the postman knocked…

* Referring to my statement that the SIR’s first train ran from Negapatam to Tiruvallur (Miscellany, March 2), G.R. Sampath says I must have meant ‘Tiruvarur’. My source is an official history of the South Indian Railway (1859-1951) published by the Railway Heritage Centre, Tiruchchirappalli (incidentally, that is the correct Survey of India spelling) in 2010. It has in the text recorded it repeatedly as ‘Tiruvallur’. But, curiously, in an SIR map of 1929 in the same book, it says ‘Tiruvarur’ (see portion of map featured here). However, I am told by a Tanjorean that it is not an author’s error or a printer’s devil being at work, but the way old-timers of the region called what we call ‘Tiruvarur’.

* Referring to my statement that Chetput Lake does not exist today (Miscellany, March 2), R. Madhavan of “our locality’s Resident Welfare Association” tells me the Association has “fought tooth and nail and revived the lake”. Well, over the last ten years, I can’t say I’ve seen too much water in it; but I’ve seen a dry lake bed for years. However, Madhavan tells me that all that is changing; the Government has sanctioned Rs. 42 crore for it revival with “pleasure boating, fishing, walker’s track etc.” It’s that etc. I fear most apart from walking on water. Is a lake going to be revived as an entertainment park, with all the pollution that goes with it, or is it going to become again the water body it once was?

* V. Ramnarayan, referring to my suggestion of a Buchi Babu clan cricket team (Miscellany, February 23) writes, “I do not know how many of the clan lived in Luz (which from your columnist’s point of view is the defining factor), but their list of Madras (and Andhra) cricketers may be even longer than those of my family: Of them C. Ramaswami played for India and M. Suryanarayan in unofficial Tests, while Baliah, Bhat, M.M. Kumar and P. Ramesh played for Madras/Tamil Nadu. C. Lakshman Swarup, C. Ram Swarup, who played for Andhra in the Ranji Trophy tournament, M.V. Bobjee and M.V. Prakash all played for the Mylapore Recreation Club. Ramnarayan adds that I erred about V. Sivaramakrishnan playing for India; he was an India prospect. I have since found that Sivaramakrishnan played for the East and South Zones in the Zonal tournaments and South Zone against England and West Indies and was very much in the running for one of the openers’ slots for the 1977-78 Australian tour, but was beaten to it by Chetan Chauhan.