URBANSCAPE
City that was
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`At times, it is difficult to escape the feeling that the Chennai that is recalled by more than one writer is the very same Madras — as it existed some 40 or 50 years ago.'
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RESPONSES to this book may well be shaped by whether you are an insider or outsider. If you happen to be a resident of Chennai, as this reviewer is, The Unhurried City has a comforting, if somewhat unexceptional, familiarity. Many of the writers of this motley collection — which is largely made up of essays but also comprises short stories and poems — are well known. Many of the subjects they deal with (music sabhas, the canteens, film studios, cinema houses, The Hindu) either were or still are emblematic of Chennai. Even the nostalgia has a recognisable character, a longing for a more simple-hearted time in a city that still retains a fair amount of its innocence.
In fact, if there is a common motif that underlies The Unhurried City and lends it a unifying character, it is this very nostalgia. The lengthy and unhurried introduction by the book's editor, the accomplished Tamil writer C.S. Lakshmi (better known by her pseudonym Ambai), is a rambling mix of history, anecdote, memory and autobiographical detail. Lakshmi is not a resident but a frequent visitor to Chennai, a city that means many things to her. "It is the Marina beach at night, rising in waves beneath the dark sky with bright stars spread out like a `black blue silk sari' that Bharati sang about. It is Rayar Cafe on Cutchery Road where idlis soft as a child's bum would be served lovingly on banana leaf and the owner would urge you to have more...It is the Tamil films of the fifties and sixties, where the hero, very often Sivaji Ganesan, would utter the words, `A word before I leave', and proceed to deliver a dialogue lasting ten minutes." There is a disarming quality about Lakshmi's unfussy and plain-dealing essay, rendered in a prose that is quaint and colloquial and that sometimes threatens the confines of grammar (Example: "In Choolai area there was a printing press by name Dravida Rathnakaram".)
Janaki Venkataraman's "A Voice from Aside" is an engaging, if somewhat dewy-eyed, account of a now-defunct city magazine ("a tiny, somewhat whimsical, slightly saucy journalistic voice piped up from among the steady drone of Madras city's established media".) The other "media" article is Tim Murari's personalised essay on The Hindu, a piece that has been partly overtaken by the times. It is difficult to see why a more expansive and general history of the Empire's first city hasn't found a place. There couldn't have been a better person than S. Muthiah to do this but his piece ("A Town Called George") is limited to tracing the growth of the city's native quarter (Black Town), which eventually morphed into its commercial hub (George Town).
Ramachandra Guha's breezily written "Tamils and Turbans in Triplicane" is an extract from his book Wickets in the East, an account of caste and cricket which is developed in other ways in his more recent work A Corner of a Foreign Field. And V. Arasu's essay on Chennai's slum songs ("Ghana") taps into a theme that adds to the book's diversity. It is impossible to review every article but one wishes there were more younger voices in it. If nothing else, this might have lent it an even more varied character. At times, it is difficult to escape the feeling that the Chennai that is recalled by more than one writer is the very same Madras — as it existed some 40 or 50 years ago.
All the short stories in the book are translated from Tamil. This reviewer couldn't help noticing that Dilip Kumar was missing from the list of the short notes on contributors. If his absence was felt, it was because his short story ("The Solution") is possibly the most intriguing of the small collection that is presented.
MUKUND PADMANABHAN
The Unhurried City (Writings on Chennai), edited by C.S. Lakshmi, Penguin Books India, 2004.
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