Madras Miscellany

A sylvan campus under threat

The Regional Institute of Ophthalmology, the second oldest eye hospital in the world, is in a state of collapse. What is needed is public will to get it restored. IF ONLY it was tended, there could be a few more beautiful campuses than this richly tree- shaded one that's developed over the last 150 years and more in Marshall's Road, Egmore. Today, where gardens once flourished, heavy undergrowth is taking over the open spaces, gardeners doing little more than being idle.

It could well be that they too have lost hope as this veritable museum of 19th and early 20th Century architecture in all its variety, is slowly being emptied of life and crowded across the way into a soul-less building of recent PWD construction.

But need this be the fate of the Regional Institute of Ophthalmology, the second oldest eye hospital in the world, younger by only a year than Moorfields, London, which was established in 1818? An institute with a worldwide reputation deserves better.

Condemned by the PWD as unfit for habitation, merely because no maintenance has been undertaken due to alleged paucity of funds, the architectural treasure is slowly being allowed to deteriorate into a state of collapse and become a haven for vandals as building after handsome building is emptied. Still occupied — but by no means crowded — are the Lawley Ward — the main building on the campus and its first, raised in Indo- Saracenic style when the decision was taken to move here in 1844 from its 1819 home in Royapettah — a partially-occupied ward in Chisholm's Kerala style, the near empty Camp Ward, and the only building that has received some maintenance, the Elliot School and Museum of Ophthalmology which got a cosmetic facelift this past year.

The magnificent wooden staircase in the centenary (1919) Elliot Building, the brilliantly engineered classroom out of the Victorian era also in it, the splendid archival treasure trove in the Museum that needs to be better known and visited, the handsome Lawley Ward, the unique tiling of the Kerala-style roofed buildings, and the towering wooden staircase, the marble- and-tiled flooring and the trelliswork around the upper verandah of Shawfield, the garden house across the road which was the nurses' quarters till a year ago, would all have been part of a colourful feature in Sunday supplements anywhere else in the world. Here few even know they exist. But it is never too late to restore the campus and make people aware of its beauty.

What is needed is public will — and that of all those who graduated from or worked in the campus — to get it restored.

I'm told that overcrowding is not something the Institute suffers from, so may I suggest restoration of the old campus for occupation once more as hospital, school and research centre, with the new building across the road made to pay for the regular upkeep of this campus by being turned into an upmarket office space or mall, with Shawfield behind it turned into an elegant food court for its tenants and others?

If more space is needed for the hospital, there's room enough in the old campus for a new building in sympathetic styles.

Raising funds for such projects is, of course, the perennial problem. But would Moorfields, with which the Institute has had close links, `British Heritage', which has played a part in the restoration of the Raj landmarks in Calcutta, as well as the alumni, Government and the corporate sector help?

If someone like the persuasive Naveen Jayakumar, an alumnus of the school and a grandson of one of its first Indian superintendents, was sponsored by Dr. S. Badrinath and alumni to campaign with Moorfields and British Heritage in the U.K., I wouldn't be surprised if the Institute got the help it needs to make it one of the most beautiful heritage campuses in the country. Any buyers for this bit of wishful thinking?

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Remembering the Emden's surgeon

I THOUGHT that with the passing of the name Emden into Tamil, most people had forgotten that 1914 scourge of the Indian Ocean, the German cruiser Emden, which had that year, on September 22, shelled Madras. It was not a surprising supposition, considering the disrespect paid the year round to the plaque in the High Court's east wall commemorating that bit of derring-do by Capt. Helmut van Mueller's raider.

I was, therefore, surprised to receive, consequent to a short feature by me, an invitation to a function associated with the Emden, that's apparently been held annually on September 22 these past few years beside the plaque, cleaned up for the occasion. Organising this has been J. Veluswamy Pillai and a committee of well-wishers.

The commemoration is not of the raid but of the Emden's surgeon, Dr. D. Chembakaraman Pillai, a Malayalee who had gone to Germany to study medicine and who became a committed anti-imperialist.

Fanciful legends abound of his being Mueller's second-in-command, of his directing the firing on specific targets in and around Madras Harbour, and of his rowing ashore at Cochin to greet his family and admirers! Authentic records of the voyage of the Emden do not corroborate any of this, but they do speak of his work aboard the cruiser and his post-War attempts to gather in Germany an anti-British group of Indians, a forerunner to the Indian National Army.

His volunteer force, another legend has it, was the inspiration for Netaji Subash Chandra Bose's Indian National Army.

Dr. Chembakaraman Pillai died in Germany in 1934 and, after his death, his wife Lakshmibai, who is said to have suffered at the hands of the Nazis for being a Hindenberg sympathiser, returned to India and lived in Bombay till her death in 1972.

Maintaining a low profile during the last years of the Raj, she began after Independence to keep "the memory of Dr. Pillai alive (and) propagate his views". She also backed J. V. Swamy's petition to the Government of Tamil Nadu to have Fort St. George renamed Fort Chembakaraman!

The most intriguing part of the Chembakaraman story is the mystery of his missing papers. J. V. Swamy, a nephew of the doctor, claims that shortly before Lakshmibai's death, the Bombay Police visited her flat and took away 17 boxes containing her husband's papers.

All his efforts to trace them, contacting officials in Bombay and Delhi, have failed, but he had heard they were stored in Delhi. I wonder what happened to them?

Could they be in the National Archives? And would they be accessible to a researcher wanting to do an authentic biography of a born rebel who appears to have led a fascinating life?

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New life for an old hotel?

Of pre-Independence Madras's Western-style hotels, some of the better ones that survived after Independence were the Connemara — the best among South India's hotels and which, along with the West End, Bangalore, Malabar, Cochin, and the Savoy, Ooty, was part of the Spencer Hotels empire — the Bosotto and the Victoria. Bosotto's, where Jardine's team stayed, was founded as D'Angeli's in what is now Bata's Mount Road showroom, in 1906. Today, Bosotto is no longer a hoteliering name, but its connection with confectionery still remains. And the old Victoria, a converted garden house, is no more, but there is a new Victoria nearby.

In the first years of Independence, just two new hotels were established. Queen's, in what was the Maharani of Vizianagaram's palatial home — and now known as Harrison's, and the Oceanic in San Thome which, in a garden setting, gave the Connemara a run for its money, hosting West Indian and Commonwealth cricket teams and a royal entourage during Queen Elizabeth's visit.

Alas, the Oceanic, ridden by litigation, has been closed these past two decades, but there was hope a couple of years ago that the Taj Group would take it over and reopen it after refurbishment and expansion. The negotiations were finalised and the Taj had even agreed to retain the Oceanic's art deco style main block, but with a change in the Taj management, the deal was not concluded. Since then, highrise has been eating into the Oceanic's property on its fringes, but it is still a property with potential for an enterprising hotelier. Which is why I was glad to hear that a fast-expanding local hotel group running some of the best small but multi-starred hotels in the city is interested in the Oceanic — if the litigation issues are resolved.

If that takeover materialises, I hope the new owners — or managing partners — will restore the old block, like the main block of the Connemara, a classic of art deco hotel architecture, and incorporate with it new buildings raised in sympathetic style. Not pull it down.

S. MUTHIAH

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