And the city grew
NIMI KURIAN
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Does your city celebrate its birthday? Well, that’s what Chennai did recently. And what a celebration it was!
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The ships of the
East India Company sailing out of
Madras describe
the promise
of a prosperous city.
Vestiges: Central Station
Once upon a time, two men belonging to the East India Company found a “sliver of land” along the Coromandel Coast. It looked beautiful — a few villages, palm-fringed paddy fields, a serenity and calm that kept tempo with the gentle waves that beat upon the sunny sands. The two men were Francis Day and Andrew Cogan and to help them in their request for land was their dubash Beri Thimmappa. The land was granted on August 22, 1639, from the local Nayak ruler
s. This was the beginning of the city of Madras. Day and Cogan established a factory-cum-trading post here. A year later, a fortified settlement came up and being completed on St. George’s Day, it came to be called the Fort St. George.
Esplanade
Outside this settlement was George Town, which the British chose to call the “native town”. George Town comprised small lanes bustling with activity and business. The speciality of these lanes was that each one was devoted to one particular trade and they all functioned to support the British colonists. The Fort became the nucleus of all British activity.
Glimpses of the past
A number of events took place recently to celebrate the founding of this magnificent city. One of them was the exhibition held at the C.P. Arts Centre showcasing the city as it was.
Monroe’s statue
The sketches give you a glimpse of how much the scene has changed. A sketch of the busy Mowbray’s Road shows a narrow tree-lined avenue with bullocks and bullock carts, a few people walking about. The sketch is titled Moubray’
;s Road 1885. The sketch of the Kapaleeswar Temple in Mylapore allows you to see the quietness and sanctity of the temple precincts.
A motor at a petrol pump
North Beach Road throws many surprises with its hand-pulled rickshaws and people hurrying to work holding umbrellas.
Kapaleeswar temple car festival
There are sketches of the Central Railway Station with the Cooum flowing serenely by, the High Court with the Lighthouse atop it and even a rather interesting one of a motor vehicle tanking up at a petrol bunk. East India Company ships sailing out of Madras describe the promise of a prosperous city. The large collection of maps gives you an idea of how much the city has grown since then.
Today, the city continues to retain the magic of the old world but is in all terms truly modern.
Mount Road
The “sliver of land” grew and the people of Chennai lived happily ever after.
What’s in a name?
Two theories exist on how Madras got its name. One says the original Portuguese name is Madre de Deus and the reference point is the oldest church in the city, which was built in 1516 by Portuguese Franciscan missionaries.
Historian S. Muthiah holds that the city got its name from the Madeiros family, who were prominent at that time.
Thus, Madras perceived as a name of Portuguese origin, was renamed Chennai — a derivation of the name of Damarla Chennappa Nayak, whose son, Venkatapathy Nayak was the ruling chieftain of that time.
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