Chennai: Hundreds of children’s books are lined up on the shelves of Sudha Umashankar’s first floor residence at Tarapore Avenue, off Harrington Road in Chetpet. While the books (numbering around 3,000) present a pleasant picture, the small room that houses them was, on Saturday evening, filled with eager children. They remained in rapt attention for stories were being narrated to them, an activity designed by Sudha to keep them engaged.
On Friday, the room, alternatively called the Book Mine, underwent some last minute changes, including electrical wiring. “I ran the children’s library (Bookmine) all through the 1990s. Then the Internet boom happened, which not only slowed down the library business but also led to diminishing book reading habits,” said Sudha, a freelance journalist. It was then she trained in the art of storytelling and, now with “renewed interest shown by children in literary activities, the library has been converted into a small storytelling space.”
On Saturday, a story telling session on the ‘Tales of Harrington Road’ took place, and it proved to be an appropriate topic. It was in the year 1977, when Sudha, then a young wife, moved in to her Tarapore Avenue residence with her husband. She recalled the exact date with a twinkle in her eye, “It was the seventh day of the seventh month of that year!” The Harrington Road, as she observed then, seemed to be stretching forever with the entire road lined up with trees on either side. Now there are plenty of shops, some of them so hip that she doesn’t care to remember their name, “There was just Varadarams, a quaint little silk shop, then. It was all pretty much quiet and peaceful.”
Sudha says, “The racket caused by the trains which passed by the railway track nearby just couldn’t be missed. It seemed as if they (trains) were running right through our houses. But now, the ‘whoot’ of the train aren’t to be heard as numerous buildings have come up, thereby cushioning their noise!”Before she finished, she told her attentive audience about the most famous landmark on the Harrington Road.
The well-known Madras Christian College School, situated on an 18-acre plot, has an interesting history, she said. “It was the efforts of Kuruvila Jacob, the first Indian principal of the school, which resulted in the school’s move to the present campus. He came across vast land (the current campus), valued at Rs 8 lakh. He spoke to Professor Boyd of Madras Christian College, but was told he would have raise funds on his own. A man of immense faith, he however believed this (relocation) would happen. Incidentally, one of the parties interested in buying the old school building (on Linghi Chetty Street in Broadway) agreed to give a loan and work was started in the new campus,” Sudha said.
