Chitra Viraraghavan - MADRAS ON MY MIND: a city in stories

MADRAS ON MY MIND

A City in Stories

Edited by

CHITRA VIRARAGHAVAN
AND
KRISHNA SHASTRI DEVULAPALLI

HarperCollins Publishers India

A city is more than a place in space, it is a drama in time.
Patrick Geddes

CONTENTS

Bujjai

K. Srilata

K. Raja

Priyamvada N. Purushotham

Sanobar Sultana

M. V. Swaroop

Harry MacLure

Usha Chaya

Krishna Shastri Devulapalli

V. Ramnarayan

Dilip Kumar

V. Sudarshan

V. Sanjay Kumar

Aniruddha Sen Gupta

Kalpana Komal

G. Sampath

Chitra Viraraghavan

Anuja Chandramouli

Vamsee Juluri

P. Balasubramanian

Chitra Viraraghavan
Krishna Shastri Devulapalli

I am the ultimate Madrasi.

I certainly dont fit into the north-of-the-Vindhyas idea of that term. Meaning, I dont wear a pista-green polyester safari suit, speak like Mehmood in Padosan, sport vibhuti, nor am I named Swami Iyer.

Funny thing, I dont do justice to the local version of it either. Because, first and foremost, Im no Tamilian. Also, I dont particularly care for Bharatanatyam or Carnatic music (dislike them if anything, and am ready to face the music for saying that, as long as it isnt Carnatic), am far from fanatical about cricket, and am currently not, nor have I ever been, in Saratoga, running a software company even as my son learns mridangam on Skype from a vidwan in Raja Annamalaipuram. (In case youre wondering, no, I dont wear a green-and-purple Kanjeevaram, and fragrant jasmine in my hair. Except when the script absolutely demands it.)

But Ive been in Madras for pretty much half a century. And I dont mean on and off. Just on and on. And on. Without ever leaving for a minute. Not for higher studies, not for a better job, nor in pursuit of a girl, nor when being pursued by the law all of which, mind you, were scenarios that presented themselves to me at different times. Through a tsunami, cyclones, a couple of floods and the annual heat wave, I have remained unshakeable. And immovable. Like Valluvar Kottam, the Gemini Flyover or the Schmidt Memorial. If we were to get technical, Ive been here longer than the first two.

I first came to Madras in the late 1960searly 70s as collateral damage of a maverick grandfather who was summoned by the Telugu film industry to write songs for Telugu films in the heart of Tamil Nadu.

When my sisters and I put up a mild protest at being gouged out of Hyderabad, which was our home we thought, my father pitched Madras to us thus. (Or, at least, to me.) Madras had a drive-in restaurant. Madras had the best Peach Melba at Jaffars. Above all, Madras housed my favourite aunt and exotic cousins therefrom.

And my eternal thanks to said Aunt & Co because, had it not been for them, my very first memory of Madras may have been going to Kapaleeswarar koil for a birthday archana instead of sitting on the floor of their living room, listening awestruck to Frustrations Amalgamated, one of Indias first-ever bona fide rock bands, of which one supercool cuz was both bass guitarist and founder.

Suffice it to say that it was an auspicious beginning.

Because the next part of my Madras syllabus thanks to my supercool cuzs supercool sister was a fashion show at Abbotsbury (Madrass hippest kalyana mandapam then, now the headquarters of a political party not quite in fashion), involving a catwalk, recorded music and an actual parade of young women in colourful saris, and bouffants of Sharmila Tagorean altitude. The best part: not one of the models minded my straying more than once into the dressing room but actually ruffled my hair every time I did it.

The street we decided to live on was also chosen by my grandfather for its proximity to the same aunt, so I think. This serendipitous juxtaposition meant that our neighbours turned out to be the first family of Indian motorsport. Often, it seemed, their long-haired son vroomed up and down our street, blackening the faces of passers-by in a contraption made with flattened Dalda tins, aluminium tubes and leftover Herald parts, doing practice laps for the races that took place every February in an abandoned airstrip in Sholavaram. I moved quickly from rock music aficionado to connoisseur of fashion to motor racing enthusiast. If Hugh Hefner was looking for a pre-pubescent Telugu Brahmin heir in Tamil Nadu, he neednt have looked any further.

From then on, predictably, the high points of my undeniably Madrasi childhood, youth and adulthood, in no particular order involved: gaining a deep understanding of the nascent beauty parlour industry via an early girlfriend, celebrating Easter and Christmas with my Anglo-Indian friends from St Thomas Mount, being lathi-charged at an Osibisa concert by the only female cop in the contingent, designing sentimental greeting cards for a cold-blooded leather merchant from Tondiarpet, being beaten up by a guy at a discothque after being mistaken for the guy who stole his girl, being beaten up again after he found out I wasnt, winning a jackpot at the Madras Race Club and having my pocket picked soon after, riding pillion with a friend on a Suvega as he tried to commit suicide on Thiru Vi Ka Bridge twice, having my virtue protected by a half-far eastern, half-deep southern lass in a swimsuit on an unexplored beach on the road to Mahabalipuram. And, most recently, writing a couple of books which were as much about Madras as anything else; books that made a writer friend with a poetic bent of mind tell me they were so Madras, had so much Madras packed into them, that even their trimmed edges would have had Madras in them, before he passed out.

So, I thought (as I finished the remainder of the whisky at the neighbourhood TASMAC shop that we were both at), if I had experienced a Madras so vastly different, yet so quintessentially itself, wouldnt there be others like me, too?

And that question led to this book. But only the following day, after two Alka Seltzers, an oath in front of the family deity that I would never go to that shop again and a wife who forgave me for the time being and agreed to be co-editor.

A couple of days later, it emerged that Viraraghavan (as she likes to be referred to officially), the real editor of this book, and I wanted roughly the same things for the anthology: that it be a fitting tribute to our city with two names, and while achieving this, that it be fun, that it be non-academic, that it be easily relatable as much to stranger as to insider that its non-fiction have as much story as its fiction, that it showcase any writer big, small or unpublished if they could achieve the above mentioned things in their piece, that it studiously avoid any contributor who would come under the category of usual suspect, and that it favour quirky and irreverent over sentimental and pious.

So, if youre expecting filter coffee, mallipoo and lungi dances, you will be disappointed.

But if youre okay with my intro and see it as a preview of things to come without so much violence and self-harm, of course I suspect you could be on the verge of an enjoyable ride.

K.S.D.

Madras. Chennai.

How near impossible it is to shake off the Ghosts of MadrasChennai Books Past. To think in unalloyed terms about a city whose history, geography, names, culture, traditions classical and folk, climate, demographics and society have been so well-documented so many times by so many better-informed people (peace be upon them).