There’s more to mylai than kapali

CHENNAI: While Mylapore has become synonymous with Tam-Bram neighbourhood and its middle-class culture, its history is far more diverse. The ancient Greek maps refer to the town as ‘Maliarpha’ and later, European cartographers called it ‘Meliapour’.

Anglo Saxon chronicles mention that King Alfred of England had sent a bishop to the shrine of St Thomas in India in 883 AD. In the 1300s, Marco Polo, the Venetian traveller, would visit the place and describe Mylapore as a place full of peacocks.

Mylapore juggled between the Portuguese (the viceroyalty of São Tomé de Meliapor was established here), the Dutch, the French Golconda and the Mughals before the British took control.

It had a mint-making Mughal coin, a Portuguese gunpowder factory and a Golconda court/police station called a Kutcheri at various times

Country’s Map Redrawn

The Madras Presidency had Tamil, Telugu, Tulu, Kannada, Malayalam and even Odiya speakers. It was just a matter of time before linguistic chauvinism raised its head. The most robust crusade for linguistic realignment was by the Telugus.

Nehru was intent on consolidating India as one. Potti Sreeramulu Congressman, exasperated by the evasive nature of Nehru, began a hunger fast in a house in Mylapore (adjacent to Vidya Mandir School). The fast soon caught the attention of people. Nehru did not budge. On the 56th day of the fast, Sreeramulu passed into a coma and died soon thereafter.

Thousands joined the funeral procession. Halfway, all hell broke loose with government offices being attacked and trains defaced. Police were ordered to fire to kill. Nehru relented and stated that a province of Andhra would come into being and this sparked off a redrawing of the map of India, according to linguistic lines — a major impact on the history and geography of our country.

Songs of Bharathi

Krishnaswamy Iyer, a leading lawyer of Mylapore, was a moderate who had even sponsored the George Deva Sadhakam, 100-verse poem in praise of the emperor in Sanskrit by composer Lakshmana Suri.

Iyer did not like articles in Swadesamitran and India for their hardline content —written by assistant editor Subramania Bharathi. Meanwhile, Bharathi had the desire to take his poetry to the larger public but was short of funds.

Publisher Nadesan suggested seeking Iyer as a patron. Bharathi initially refused to go to his residence on Luz Church Road but agreed on the condition that he should not be introduced to the lawyer.

Bharathi was asked to recite his poetry which he did standing before the small group. Iyer teared up at the strength of the words, but he was angry. “Why are you keeping quiet after writing such lovely songs? These have to be sung in schools and taught in music classes.

How can you remain so inert?” A laughing Nadesan would intervene and introduce the antagonists. As an aftermath of this meeting, Iyer printed 15,000 copies of Bharathi’s songs and had them sent to all over Tamil-speaking regions.

The Last Devadasi

Gauri Ammal was the last serving devadasi of the Kapaleeswara Temple in Mylapore and perhaps of all the city. She came from a family of devadasis’ sadirattam dancers who gained eminence in the Thanjavur tradition.

Temples had been having dancers on their pay roll with pujas requiring a dance before the deity a necessity. They were given accommodation, monthly emoluments and even some honours. It was a time when this dance style was being noticed.

Gowri Amma performed in the Madras Music Academy in 1932. She first taught Rukmini Devi, thus serving as perhaps the last link between the traditional sadir and the modernised Bharatanatyam.

She also taught T Balasaraswati – serving as a common teacher to the two rivals. An anti-devadasi sentiment, spearheaded by Muthu Lakshmi Reddy, criminalised the system, including the act of dancing before the god in temples (a law still not repealed).

Gauri was evicted from the temple house. As one who spent her entire life in the temple, she was forced to pick up a rented house nearby from which she could see the gopuram daily.

Buchi Babu

Buchi Babu Naidu in Mylapore was adopted to a rich dubash family. They were enormously wealthy and cricket became a part of his life early. Buchi had an English governess, then a status symbol amongst wealthy Indians.

All the British governesses would meet on the sidelines of the Chepauk ground. A young buchi was fascinated by the game played by Europeans but Indians were not allowed to play in the matches. Buchi was determined to bring the game to the natives and started training Indians, funding all the costly paraphernalia a player needed.

Buchi also helped found the Madras United Cricket Club (now Madras United Club or MUC), which focused on taking sport to Indians in the city. He organised the first European versus native match, and was to compete as captain of the Indians.

Unfortunately, he died of a heart attack just before it. The match was held on the fixed date however. Buchi, as one of the pioneers of Indian cricket, laid the founding stone for the power and popularity the sport has in the international arena today.

The Moderates

Mylapore was the site of fervent nationalistic activity but was dominated by the moderates. Two moderates both closely interacting with Gandhi but moving to the moderate side were GA Nadesan and Srinivasa Sastri. “Obtaining freedom was needed,” they said.

“But the method was important too. Freedom must be obtained by negotiating and not agitating for it would show the future generations of a free India the wrong way to get their rights.” While Sastri would edit Gandhi’s autobiography and be called anna by the Mahatma, Nadesan, who moved from George Town to Mylapore’s Mangala Vilas, would host Gandhi on the latter’s early visits.

He also printed Gandhi’s first biography and had Lord Ampthill, the former British Governor of Madras, write the foreword. When Sastri nicknamed ‘Silver-tongued Sastri’ for his excellent English skills, he was also a sort of diplomat for the British in South Africa. He founded a school in Durban still functioning as the Sastri College.

Kapaleeswarar Temple

Tiruvalluvar, Peyalvar and Vayila Nayanar were the saints born in Mylapore. The Mylapore temple where Goddess Parvati prayed to Shiva as a peahen (and hence the name mylai) was visited by Sambandar, who sang the Poompavai Pathigam to raise a dead girl alive.

Poompavai thus became the most frequently mentioned mortals in the Shaivite holy text, Thevaram. The Kapaleeswarar temple had been taken over by the French as a garrison to defend Santhome, then under their control.

A Golconda army invasion resulted in a pitched battle in 1672 on the mada streets. One of the popular icons of the city is the 100-foot entrance tower of Kapaleeswarar temple. The tower came only in 1900, and details of its donor are not recorded except as Triplicane Chettiar.

The theppakulam or the ceremonial pond was donated by the Nawab, and steps were laid by the trustee Pammal Sambandha Mudaliar. The temple is perhaps one of the best run and popular religious places in Chennai, and has come to represent the ethos of the whole city.

Kamadhenu Theatre

Mylapore was not a typical cinema area. People had to go to Mount Road to watch films. Alagappan, the son of the Devakottai zamindar, decided to build a theatre on Luz Church Road. He leased the land from the Jaggampatti zamindar, a plot which had a hoary history.

It had originally been a Portuguese garden house, perhaps predating the founding of Madras. During the World War, all beach front offices were shifted inland and the Imperial Bank moved to this spot.

Taking the land on lease, Alagappan proceeded to build a theatre in an art deco style, which was the raging fashion then. He named it Kamadhenu, after a spinning shed in his family’s textile mill in Coimbatore.

It took a lot of time to build and there was litigation thereafter. Much of the lease period was emptied without a single reel being filmed, but he managed to open the theatre. With ML Vasanthakumari singing the inaugural song, the only Mylapore theatre was open to business.

VIPs including NS Krishnan, and Justice Rajamannar graced the occasion. Alagappan lost control of the business soon, and it moved to other lessees. The theatre is now a marriage hall and still has the art deco façade, a winding staircase, and an expansive balcony.

Hindi film-connect

The Mylapore accent has been parodied in cinema quite often. There was one hero in Bollywood who could never reach the heights he was destined for because of this accent of his. Right from the early years, there has been an endless stream of heroines who migrated from Tamil to Hindi cinema, but very few heroes.

Among those who stood out was Ranjan, who acted in more than 50 Hindi films with heroines as famous as Madhubala. Ranjan had been a popular hero and a villain in Tamil as well. A generation of Tamil children was frightened into eating their meals just with the mention of Shashankan, the role he played in Chandralekha.

A well-educated actor, he insisted on adding his college degree – BA –to his name in the list of actors. About Ranjan, it was a running joke that ‘You can take a man out of Mylapore but never take Mylapore out of him’, for his Mylapore slang seems to have done him in. Though his career in the Hindi film industry took a nose-dive, the Mylapore actor continued to live in Bombay.

Sponsors of Culture

Arunagirinnathar, the poet saint, had sung 10 songs in praise of Lord Singaravelan of the Mylapore temple. In one, he mentioned the 16th Century Mylapore temple surrounded by jackfruit groves.

Perhaps in memory of that, the land adjacent to the then clean Buckingham Canal was named as palathoppu. The canal had brought great prosperity to Mylapore. It became a hub of lawyers. With roaring practices, they became sponsors of culture as well.

Some went on to found important institutions. Krishnaswamy Iyer was one of the founders of Indian Bank, Mylapore Club and Sanskrit College. Subbaraya Iyer would help found the Vivekananda College and Vidya Mandir school.

Raghunatha Rao’s Krishna Vilas on West Mada Street hosted 14 leaders in December 1884 to discuss the formation of a national movement to seek freedom from the British. Thus, the Indian National Congress was born.

The Luz Church

The Portuguese named it Nossa Senhora da Luz or, Lady of Light. Residents still call it Kaattukoil, in memory of the forested area around it several decades ago.

Built in 1516, it is one of the oldest churches in the city and its foundation stone marks it as one of the oldest European monuments in India. Some Catholic friars were lost in the rough sea, and legend states that they were miraculously guided by a mysterious bright light that guided them safely to land.

The church is built at the spot the light led them. This 16th-century European architecture building has Gothic arches and Baroque ornamentation.

The church with a semi-circular barrel roofing is obviously not built on a strong foundation because triangular buttresses were built on either side to shore it up and prevent the structure from toppling.

The road leading to the church is now named as Luz Church Road after the church itself.