PAST & PRESENT, with a river connecting them all

CHENNAI: The Adyar area (south of a river thus named), consists of the core locality and the various nagars developed by the housing board after Independence. While the banks of the Cooum were solely about colonial history, Adyar riverside shows the blossoming of our country’s efforts, skills and tastes.

The River

The Adyar river, which gives the name to this area, starts near Manimangalam village where the great Pallava-Chalukya war took place in the 8th Century. Though a very short river of about 42.5 km, it determines the cultural, political and demographic landscape of Madras. The river forms an estuary and seldom joins the sea because of a sandbar at the edge of the sea, with some small islets in-between. The river has been mentioned as Valmiki river in some temple edicts perhaps because of the Valmiki legend near Tiruvanmiyur. Though it was bridged quite early, population south of the river was low throughout the first three centuries of the existence of Madras. The invading French always approached Madras from across the Adyar, and the hostile Portuguese were on its north bank. This could have been the reason.

The Vasanta Press

The Vasantha Press Road is near the south of the Adyar river. In 1914, Annie Besant launched a weekly newspaper after purchasing the existing Madras Standard realising that it would assist in spreading her political ideas. Annie called it New India, and it became her preferred medium for her riotous crusade for India’s independence. It was widely read by the Indian middle and upper classes at a time when the Indian freedom struggle was gathering steam. The Chief Presidency Magistrate of Madras would frequently ask Annie to deposit Rs 2,000 as security or seize any copies of New India found to be forfeited to His Majesty. The paper was published in Vasanta Press, which Annie wisely positioned outside the campus of The Theosophical Society to avoid any conflict of interest. But why the name Vasanta? Actually, Vasanta is the Sanskritised version of Besant. The Besant school’s prayer in Vasanta raga is till Devi Vasanthe penned by Papanasam Sivan.

U Ve Sa Library

U Ve Swaminatha Iyer was a Tamil scholar who was crucial in resurrecting numerous lost works of old Tamil literature. Over the course of 50 years, his collections would significantly contribute to the vibrancy of its literary tradition. The library, with perhaps the oldest collection of readable material housed in Madras, would be the U Ve Swaminatha Iyer Library in Adyar. There are 3,000 letters addressed to him. His diaries cover several decades. There are 3,000 books and manuscripts, and even copper plates with history etched on them are held here. After his demise in 1942, his family decided that all his collections and work should be under one roof. The Adyar Brahma Gnana Sabha then headed by danseuse Rukmini Devi supported the move and allowed it to function within the Kalakshetra campus. More than 2,000 palm leaf manuscripts of all Tamil classics (most of them nearly 400 years old) are preserved carefully here.

Scouting

Scouting is today the world’s leading youth movement empowering youngsters to be active agents of change in their communities. The movement, started by Baden-Powell, spread in India but was open to only the British and Anglo Indians initially. The Theosophical Movement of Adyar was instrumental in opening up this movement for Indian boys. Theosophists saw that the Scout Movement shared many of its values and Besant is known to have said often: “There were two great movements which stood for Universal Brotherhood. One was the Theosophical Society, and the second, the World Boy Scout Movement.” A part of the Theosophical campus was carved out as a forested camping ground. There was an initial dispute with the international scouting about wearing a scout hat or a green turban but it was sorted out later. To identify herself more closely with the Scout Movement, Annie Besant would wear woven silk sari in khaki colour with a green border to the scout meetings.

Gandhi Nagar

In 1948, The Madras Co-operative Housing Construction Society co-incidentally established the Gandhi Gram just 9 days before the Mahatma was murdered. It was afterwards changed to Gandhi Nagar. The entry of lakhs of people into the city after the war put a burden on housing. Daniel Thomas, the Local Administration Minister, wanted to build a large middle-class housing colony in the city. So, Elphinstone Park, a riverside plot of 158 acres, was purchased from the Archbishop of Madras for Rs 16 lakh, which the church had desperately needed to build a Catholic centre on Armenian Street. Gandhi Nagar was one of Madras’s first planned developed areas with 332 home plots, underground drainage, wide roadways, schools, parks, temples, and even a club. House owners received a 4-bedroom house on a 30-cent plot for less than Rs 60,000. VIPs such as MKT Bagavathar, MGR, and Kalki relocated here.

The Olcott Memorial School

In the middle of a riverside forest, one would imagine the rich and the privileged to have schools. To an extent, it was true. The most expensive schools of Madras are coming up in the Adyar area. But the Theosophical Society founder Olcott thought differently a century ago Olcott was an American civil war veteran who became a Buddhist, and designed the International Buddhist Flag as well. He was considered an avatar of King Ashoka by Sri Lankan Buddhists. Olcott was very disturbed by the caste system in India. He realised though the 4 varnas of the Hindu culture had disparities in status, they had their own space, temples, education systems and some respect. The people at the end of the ladder were the casteless (the Panchama’s). In 1894, Olcott started a school for the casteless children. The Panchama school was renamed after him after his demise. Perhaps the first food for students in school premises started here and is the norm in the State today. The school is still going strong and provides free education and food for underprivileged children, both boys and girls.

Adyar Cancer Institute

It was a time when cancer was thought to be God’s curse and hence incurable. The government thought the scarce healthcare resources of a newly independent India should not be used for treating patients who were about to die anyway. The Adyar Cancer Institute, which started functioning in 1954 from a thatched shed with 12 beds and grew into a Centre of Excellence for Oncology, changed public perception of the disease and treatment modalities. One of the first women doctors of the country, Muthu Lakshmi Reddy convinced the government to bestow a piece of land in Adyar and brought in none other than Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to lay the foundation stone for a cancer institute. Out of the blue, in 1956, the Atomic Energy Commission donated the cancer institute its first Cobalt-60 unit, Eldorado. And suddenly the city took notice of them. The institute has also devoted considerable effort to the prevention of the disease through tutoring, publicity, field appraisals and screenings and also strived to change public perception of the disease.

The Kaj Schmidt Memorial

An odd memorial like a perforated gateway stands in the middle of Elliot’s beach and is now one of the most recognisable landmarks in the city. It commemorates a Danish sailor who drowned in 1930 trying to save the life of a white girl. Kaj Schmidt, who had gone to the beach, saw an English girl struggling against the tide. In a successful attempt to save her life, he lost his own. The memorial stone reads, “To commemorate the gallantry of Kaj Schmidt who drowned near this spot on December 30, 1930, while helping to save the lives of others”. Schmidt was originally thought of as a Dutch national but records later proved that he was Danish in origin who joined East Asiatic Company in 1921. He worked in the Madras Office for import and export of goods from both countries. The monument was constructed hurriedly using bricks and had a very weak foundation. It was recently renovated by the Greater Chennai Corporation.

Besant Nagar Beach

Edward Elliot’s Beach, now popularly known as Bessie Beach, is a natural urban beach. For long, it had no habitations around, and the Englishmen would motor down for a day at the beach enjoying the privacy. Even the Governor had a bungalow there. Early shootings of cinema in the 1940 took place here. On the northern end of the beach, a single track concrete bridge (built in 1967) collapsed in a wave surge during a cyclone in 1977. The Broken Bridge is a favourite haunt of the city’s denizens. Churches and temples on the southern end of the beach have become crowd pullers. The Housing Board developed apartments around the beach in the 1970s and most of them have now given way to apartment complexes making Besant Nagar one of the most sought-after high-end residential areas of the city.

The Maharajah’s Statue

Adyar, in comparison to the rest of the urban areas of the city, has fewer statues, at least in public areas. One exception is the statue of the last Maharajah of Travancore, Chitra Thirunal Balarama Varma. His Temple Entry Proclamation of 1936 (allowing all castes temple entry) was a social landmark. In commemoration of that proclamation, a statue was installed in the Esplanade area of Madras. The statue was least cared for and soon had become a public defecation spot. The Malayalis of Madras lobbied hard for shifting the statue to a better environment. The king was still alive at the time. Adyar was a good choice, as the Travancore Ramalayam palace was located there. The Maharajah had helped the residents of Gandhi Nagar build a temple resembling his family temple of deity, Padmanabaswami. Since it was a corner plot, the statue was shifted to the very edge and is well-maintained now.

The Scandal of Theosophy

The Theosophical Society, seen as the start of Adyar locality, was also notorious for its scandals. Its’ founder of Ukrainian origin, Madame HP Blavatsky, was one of the most controversial figures of the 19th Century. Madras Members were astounded by her miracles, magic and other occult phenomena happening in the society. In fact, it was the glue that held the society together. Blavatsky would suddenly appear in a meeting room and then vanish as speedily. Letters from nowhere would drop on members in the meeting with instructions from the masters on what to do. But in 1884, reality began to unravel. A housekeeper in the society claimed to have staged fraudulent phenomena on behalf of Madame Blavatsky. She had ‘dropped’ precipitated letters onto Theosophical heads from holes in the ceiling. Her husband had reportedly made sliding panels and hidden entrances into the shrine room to facilitate Blavatsky’s comings and goings. Not wanting to draw unwanted public attention, Blavatsky returned to Europe. Her relationship with Madras was effectively over.

Ponniyin Selvan

One of the best-selling novels in the Tamil literary field was written in Adyar. Krishnamurthy started a magazine named after one of his 10 pseudonyms and Kalki proved to be a forum that lit the literary flairs of its editor. Living in Gandhi Nagar on the banks of the Adyar River, Kalki’s last two novels, Ponniyin Selvan (with a lot of river input) and Alai Osai, which won him the Sahitya Akademi Award, were written in Gandhi Nagar. Kalki visualised a mega novel based on river Cauvery–Ponniyin Selvan (The Son of Cauvery) based on the early years of King Raja Raja Chola. But experts point out that descriptions of the river Cauvery would suit the river Adyar more. He describes the river as splitting into two arms before reaching the sea, and converting it to a metaphor of an embrace between the river and the sea. The Cauvery, which he was supposed to be writing about, on the contrary, splits into hundreds of distributaries at its end. It’s the Adyar, which splits into two. In many places he would describe the view of a river as a fountain of creativity.