Chronicler remembered: The theme of a heritage stroll, organised to mark LitForLife 2025, was chosen to recollect Muthiah for bringing alive the heyday of the arterial street.
| Picture Credit score: AKHILA EASWARAN
When requested by The Hindu to do a heritage stroll at the side of its LitForLife 2025, I instantly urged the theme be: Muthiah on Mount Highway. To me, none aside from that peerless chronicler of town introduced alive in writing the heyday of that arterial street. It was for me an emotional and fulfilling train to place collectively the record of books he wrote wherein Mount Highway buildings and other people had been central characters.
We started on the Munro statue, at all times a favorite of his. He wrote about Sir Thomas Munro a number of occasions, as additionally on his statue. In his Madras Rediscovered, which stays the important thing useful resource to understanding the core metropolis, he dwelt at size on Munro and why his statue should be retained the place it’s. From there, we proceeded to Simpsons, whose sesquicentennial quantity Muthiah penned. Titled Getting India on the Transfer, it was not simply the story of the corporate but in addition that of S. Anantharamakrishnan and the empire he based. It was additionally the primary complete account of how Madras grew to become an car hub.
A Home pulled down
Among the many many heritage buildings Muthiah fought relentlessly to avoid wasting, Authorities Home on the Authorities Property was maybe the one which disillusioned him essentially the most. To him, it was unbelievable that one of many oldest precincts within the metropolis could possibly be executed away with to make manner for an unimpressive Meeting-cum-Secretariat constructing that grew to become a hospital. And it was a twist within the wound that he was requested to work subsequently with the South Zone Cultural Centre to create a espresso desk guide on the Raj Bhavans of Tamil Nadu. This publication, with some sensible pictures by Kombai Anwar, begins with that Authorities Home which by then was historical past. Our subsequent cease was The Hindu, for which Muthiah wrote his Madras Miscellany column, setting a report of kinds: it ran for 20 years. I’ve seen the best way Muthiah labored on it, week after week, and the best way he made it a folks’s motion, along with his Postman Knocked part. The primary 10 years of that column grew to become a guide, titled Madras Miscellany. On the Spherical Tana, we stopped to take a look at Madras, Its Previous and Current, which with a set of early twentieth Century black and white images of Madras as its core checked out how town had modified. The Spherical Tana and buildings round it function on a number of of its pages.
Poignant tribute
Our stroll then went previous different heritage buildings that Muthiah had admired and featured typically in his writings — The Mail, P. Orr & Sons, Lawley Corridor, Higginbothams, Bharat Insurance coverage Constructing, and the misplaced Saraswathi Shops — earlier than we got here to the LIC. To Muthiah, the LIC was a monument to MCt Chidambaram Chettyar, and his uncredited biography, Unfinished Journey, is a poignant tribute to that industrialist who died tragically in an air crash, far earlier than his time on earth ought to have been over. As Muthiah by no means uninterested in reiterating, it was at MCt’s Reliance Motor Co that Ashok Leyland had its first innings as Ashok Motors and so his guide, Shifting India on Wheels, was our exhibit.
Our remaining cease, Membership Home Highway, was from the place we checked out three books. Muthiah’s The Ace of Golf equipment is on the Madras Membership, which was in its first century on the finish of Membership Home Highway. Reverse is Spencers on which he wrote The Spencer Legend and by its aspect is Connemara for which he wrote A Custom of Madras that’s Chennai. That final title might effectively be a becoming description of Muthiah and his writings as effectively.
(V. Sriram is a author and historian.)
Printed – January 07, 2025 11:10 pm IST
