Hunc Pontem Peter aka Petras Uscan, the armenian trader is the visionary who built the Marmalong aka Maraimalai Adigal bridge over River Adyaru in Saidapet in 1726. He was the same Armenian trader who built the steps for St. Thomas Mount shrine too.

The Stone in the bridge announcing this piece of history shown below.

Happy Madras / Chennai day and have a blast on the 369th birthday.

Madras Day, which is being celebrated from 2004, has been revamped as “Madras Week” this year. Its going to be a week long celebrations starting from August 17 to August 24th

Checkout the events @ www.themadrasday.in

One such event which is based on the celebrations is “Chennai & Independence Movement – an Exhibition”, organized by “Roja Muthiah Research Library Trust” and “Chennai Willingdon Corporate Foundation”

Exhibition-invitation

Exhibition is open to all…

12 years after Madras was rechristened to Chennai, we still find people (including yours truly) who have changed for the most part to using Chennai in formal/informal, oral/written communication forms. But every now and then, analogical to the unstoppable urge to use our mother tongue, we use the word Madras.

There are a lot of things Madras. What I am about to talk about here in Madras String Quartet. Led by VS Narasimhan and joined by several artists at different points in time, this is one of the finest quartet style orchestras aimed at bringing harmony between Western Classical Music and Carnatic Music.

If you will, please try the album Resonance by MSQ. It’s a treat to listen to.

I am usually the most vocal of critics when it comes to the government and their efforts to improve something.
Which is why, either the government has either devised a way to brainwash me remotely, or they have actually done good. I think it is the latter.

Read more

In one of the posts of Vinod Subramanian “Zyng – been there yet ?”, there was a comment by Michelle Binkley  

Hi Vinod, Read more

A few weekends back I went for a turtle walk after a  long time. Well a really long time one can say, it was my first walk after 3 seasons, or in other words 3 years. In these three years a lot had changed, first being the direction of the walk. Earlier we walked from Besant Nagar beach to Neelankarai, now the its been reversed. The hatchery which was earlier located in Neelankarai is now located near Adyar Estuary. The distance is now a roughly 30 percent more.

Apart from this, the biggest change would have to be the crowds. Regular walkers inform me that on weekends, the average crowd is 30-40 people. That’s a phenomenal number compared to the earlier crowds, which averaged around 15 people. There of course were the days when 40 people turned up, but that was a rarity rather than being the norm.  The larger crowd obviously meant that it has become a joy walk, actually it always is that for everyone except the scouts who go ahead looking for tracks, or those who have to carry the turtle nests back incase any are found.

The stretch now is more lit up, it’s brighter than it earlier was. Over the years the area somehow has lost its charm. During my first walks in the late 1990s, beyond Thiruvanmayur was the brigest stretch, Valmiki Nagar had a few lights, otherwise there was hardly any noticeable lighting in the area.

The distressing fact about this season is the number of nests found. With the season almost over, only 60 odd nests have been found, it’s a marked drop from past seasons when twice that number of nests would be found. It’s partly due to development of t he coastal front which has lead to the few turtles nesting, while trawling also has contributed to a significant number of turtles being caught in them.

In all, very soon, in a decade or so, they just might not be enough turtles nesting on the Madras coastline to make it worthwhile for people to walk.

Hello,

Yes, I realise I haven’t kept up my end of the bargain and haven’t answered questions raised in this post. My defence: time. Or rather, the infinitesimally small amounts of it that I end up having. I intend to catch up with that this weekend.

So, anyway, to the point of the post.

Sharanya and Meena (and I) are organising a poetry event this Friday at Mocha. An open-mic session - which means we’ll keep the mic by the door. Errm…it means everyone’s invited and everyone can read out. Friday, 21st March is not only Good Friday, it’s the World Poetry Day. So the idea is to kill two birds with one metaphor. The idea is also to bring poetry to Madras city, and do it closer to the city than Thalankuppam was.

Head out to Sharanya’s blog for the details. But if you are click-lazy, here’s the short version.

What? Original + Translated poems, to celebrate World Poetry Day & Good Friday
Where? Mocha, upper-reaches.
When? Friday, 21st March, 10 AM
Why? Um, it sounded like a good idea?
Who? Sharanya Manivannan, Meena Kandaswamy and Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan

I find that I’ve been lax in answering/awarding points to answers for questions I’ve asked before. Apologies, and Amologies too.

Anyway,  here’re the pending answers.

The right answer to this question (where in Madras would you find that particular milestone) was of course Mount Road at Teynampet, just where it meets the Anna Flyover. The reason I posted the picture was the milestone seems to be facing the wrong way - for those who need the distance to Madras will not see it (are on the other side of the road) and those who do see milestone, see the distance to Dindigul (380 kms)

And so, we go to the next question.
The right answer to the q (how many horses on Mount road) is 4. The first horse is that of Sir Thomas Munro. The second and third are the two horses (and horseman/men) flanking the Anna Flyover and the fourth is that of Dheeran Chennimalai/Chinnamalai in Guindy, next to the Intellectual Property council/court building. Interesting info - the horse and horseman on either side of the flyover is said to be modelled after Vallavarayar vanthiyathevar (of Ponniyin Selvan fame).

Right then, to the winners.
Question #1 - Most of you got the right answer, BLN was the first on the Metblog. But the first was Navneet - he posted his answer in Flickr. But the credit for the second part of the answer (why?) goes to Nilu.

Question 2: Not many got the answer (or should I say not many answered) but Chenthil got the right number, and so did GVB. But it was GVB who correctly identified all the four horses. So credit to him

On that note, let me throw the gear backwards and throw an open challenge.
In the comments to this post, ask me any question about Madras - any thing at all - History, trivia, geography, culture, music, whatever*. I shall try to answer it (time permitting) without consulting the all-knowing Google. 10 points to the best question that I can answer, 5 to all good questions, and 30 to the question I don’t answer. We’ll keep this game going for as long as it can, and each new week, a new challenge. At the end of the month, I will buy coffee and a walnut brownie to the one with the most points. Game? Who goes first?

*My weekpoint is celebrity related stuff. But I shall give it a shot too.

Eminent Tamil writer S. Rangarajan, popularly called by his feminine pen name Sujatha, died in the city late on Wednesday night. He was 73.
Read more

A friend of mine, Harini is organizing a Heritage walk in Fort St. George, it being one of the oldest monuments here in the city.

Inspired by one of Mr.S.Muthiah’s lecture on Madras, the plan is to organize a walk around Fort.St.George, one of the earliest symbols of the British era in India. She has been in touch with Dr. Suresh, an eminent archaeologist in Chennai and he has agreed to guide a small group (minimum 15 people) on this walk around the fort.
Read more