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The Simla-Delhi links
OVER THE weekend, I discovered yet another of those numerous associations in Madras where listening to a speaker is an opportunity to keep in touch with old friends and colleagues.
This one is called the Madras City Association of Simla-Delhi Friends and is comprised mainly of retired senior officials of the Establishment.
The Association had its beginnings in suggestions made at the sathabishekam of A.V.Y. Narayanan (1898-1985) celebrated in Madras. Narayanan had retired as Under Secretary, Ministry of Defence, Government of India, but was better known in Simla-Delhi as a social activist and music lover. A founder of the South India Clubs in Simla and Delhi, he was also a founder of the Carnatic Sangeetha Sabha in the capital. His friendship with T. Sadasivam helped Delhi to host numerous Carnatic music concerts.
Narayanan's biggest contribution to South Indians in Delhi, however, was helping to start the Delhi Tamil Education Association (DTEA). It started from a school he ran in his house necessitated by the circumstances of the times. In those pre-World War II days, much of the Government staff used to move with the Government of India to Simla during the summers. When Narayanan found that the four schoolgoing children among his six had their education affected due to the annual shift, he started a school in his house which was joined by four other children of like-minded parents. From these beginnings grew the multi-school DTEA, one of the best educational set-ups in Delhi today.
When many of the Simla-Delhi crowd, retired by then, met at Narayanan's sathabhisekam in October 1979 and found themselves reminiscing about the old days, they decided more frequent bouts of nostalgia would be enjoyable and agreed that they should get together more often. Narayanan himself organised the first get-together on 13-8-1980 — and the Simla-Delhi Friends have ever since been meeting a couple of times a year, to listen to a speaker, enjoy a concert or just get together to reminisce over a meal. If nothing else, it provides them the opportunity of behaving rather differently from when they belonged to the bureaucratic Establishment.
Errata
* It should have been Rangaswamy, not Rangachari, Srinivasan in my item on V. Krishnaswami Ayyar on February 28.
* In the item on the Scudders of Arcot on March 14, the reference to the four brothers who became doctors was followed by the words, "Of the three..." It should have read, "Of the other three... "; there were seven brothers.
S. MUTHIAH
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