A New Old City

That was in 1639. From that strip of land is now shipped not just cloth but cars,cellphones and all things computers,Carnatic music,Kolaveri di,and a home-grown brand named Rajinikanth,which sells chips in Japan.

Loud and colourful,vibrant and emotional,congested and dirty,it is a quintessential Indian city with a special place in the country’s colonial history and its political future.

Welcome to Chennai that was once Madras,as it enters its 375th year,home to TamBrahms and the Periyarists and other contradictions. It is the city that nurtured Nobel laureates CV Raman and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar,and which won India two Oscars. It also fed English rulers like Elihu Yale,once governor of the East India Company settlement at Madras,with enough riches to help establish the prestigious Yale University.

But Chennai is not Madras. It is bigger,better and worse. It is different as well. It is now home to people who would rather enjoy the imbecility of Chennai Express than suffer the pretensions of Thalaivaa,despite the history of anti-Hindi imposition protests and even the silly stereotyping of Tamils in the Shah Rukh Khan film. This can be explained away by the north Indians growing in number,but the younger ones seem to have moved on,too. “Chennai was never chauvinistic,that is a misconception. This has been a cosmopolitan city with a liberal outlook,” says writer and commentator Gnani. The successful anti-Hindi agitation of the 1960s was against the imposition of a language and not against the language itself,he points out.

Another Chennai myth: that it has not moved with the times. Vincent D’Souza,a journalist who runs the weekly English language community newspapers,Mylapore Times,Adyar Times and Arcot Road Times,and who organised the annual celebrations on Madras Day this year,says: “It is a conservative city that values traditions,and a progressive one that has its sights on the future.” Agrees V Sriram,city convenor of Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage,“The Margazhi Carnatic music festival in December grows bigger every year,but you will also find the nightlife becoming more active.” Or as Gnani puts it: “This is a city that loves its dosa and pizza alike.”

Globalisation brought in the fried chicken-pizza-burger franchisees,but that did not wipe off the dozens of Saravana Bhavans,Ananda Bhavans,Adyar Ananda Bhavans,and their poorer cousins Parvati Bhavans and Lakshmi Bhavans,all offering “high-class,pure-veg food”. For those looking for a change from that slim dosa,there is always the Khushboo idli,an admittedly cheeky name for plumper idli.

The versatility of food,whether Italian,Mexican or Korean,also reflects the large number of expats who live in the city: the most significant are the South Koreans,numbering over 3,000. Around 200 Korean companies have plants in Chennai,including biggies like Hyundai,Samsung and LG. As their numbers grew,grocery stores began stocking Korean products; and around Sriperumbudur,where the manufacturing plants are,the signboards began to speak Korean.

The city is surrounded by manufacturing plants and dotted with information technology companies,all fed by countless engineering institutions,including IIT-Madras,Anna University and its affiliated colleges.

This is nothing new,Chennai has been a land of employment and education from its inception. The English first brought in weavers for its cloth trade from present-day Andhra Pradesh,and,as business grew,came the merchants and financiers,mainly from Gujarat and Rajasthan. For the next century and half,Madras was the regional headquarters of the Company on the Coromandel coast.

The first technical institute outside Europe was established here,and Western education,law,banking and even bureaucracy took roots in India here. Perhaps,that explains why there are so many Tamil Brahmins excelling in these fields. William Gyfford set up the Madras Bank in June,1683,the first banking experiment by the English in India,which,however,had limited success.

Soon after it set up base,the Company realised the need for a judicial system to maintain law and order when the body of a native woman was found floating in the river. Agent Andrew Cogan wrote to the local Nayak,asking him how to proceed. The latter reportedly asked: “If justice be not done,who would come and trade here,especially when it shall be reported it was a place of theeves and murtherers?” But there were no fixed rules till Streynsham Master became the Governor in 1677 and set up the Court of Judicature that followed the laws of England.

For years,the Madras Presidency drew people from across the Empire,who came in by rail and by sea. It offered exposure,jobs,the best educational institutions and hospitals. It,thus,is no surprise that the eponymous lead character of the first classic novel in Malayalam,Indulekha (1889),chose to settle in Madras with her lover,away from the corrosion of conformity that her native society in Kerala represented.

But centuries on,it all depends on which Chennai you are talking about.

Fort St George is Chennai’s zero point,its fountainhead,the first structure built by the British,around which settlements grew and the city arranged itself. It now stands as the boundary between the old and new city —which can be translated in everyday terms as the city of the rich and that of the poor.

To its north is the old city,a congested but charming part of the original Madras that was once its heart. The Company had settled the weavers from Andhra in the northern part of the fort,and over the years,the merchant community,too,joined. But as the city grew rapidly,it began to move southwards,swallowing ancient neighbouring villages.

Commercial establishments branched out to the south,and Anna Salai,once a dusty path from the fort to St Thomas Mount,where the body of Saint Thomas is said to be buried,became a busy commercial street. At the other end of the road came up the city airport,and Thyagaraya Nagar or T Nagar became the retail hotspot — not just of the city or Tamil Nadu,but the entire south India.

The last two decades of liberalisation benefited the southern and western parts of the city where new buildings,industries,IT companies,gated communities,shopping malls,multiplexes,coffee shops and other urban comforts mushroomed. If you are in this half of the city,Chennai seems to be a work in progress,one without any seeming deadline. Its thoroughfares are now studded with hundreds of pillars — skeletons for the Chennai Metrorail,the elevated expressway,and the numerous flyover projects.

The north,the poor man’s city,was left out. It had little or no space to grow,and the population now largely comprises the lower middle-class and the working class — sections with the least purchasing power. The neglect of the area and disregard for its people over the years has made it an urban ghetto,the underbelly of the city from where gangsters emerge and thrive.

“The people in north Chennai are the real sons of the soil but they have no place in her heart. Instead,they are often reviled for violence,filth,vulgarity and other ‘sins’,but critics never bother to understand that this is the language and manners of the street which you learn simply to survive,” says ‘Marana Gana’ Viji,a popular singer who grew up in Royapuram in north Chennai. Abandoned at the beach by his mother and brought up by beggars,prostitutes and undertakers,Viji knows well the life of a subaltern in a rich man’s city.

Sriram does not see anything new in the indifference. “Be it Charminar in Hyderabad,old Delhi or north Chennai,India always treats its old cities cruelly,” he says,adding that there is immense scope to salvage what is left of north Chennai. “But we will have to plan differently. Unlike the vacant spots where south Chennai rose,these areas have character because they have a tradition. Instead of the usual demolish-widen-rebuild routine,we should retain that character.”

The divide goes deeper than just development. The south-north hierarchy affects Viji in another way,too. His genre,gana,is a home-grown working class ballad which originated in the port before spreading to other slums in the city. It has simple lyrics shorn of embellishment,one that connects with its people. But when Viji tried to hire one of the famous concert halls in the city to stage a show for “his people”,he was told there were no dates free for the next two years. “Chennai is a magnanimous foster parent but to her own children,she is a bloody cruel mother,” says Viji.