Madras at 376: From 1940s to 21st century

Madras is 376! I am 22% as old as this city and I am sharing random memories of just these decades I know personally.

1940s: Among the first things I recall is a threat to the city, by the potential of Japanese bombing during the World War. The city was evacuated as an emergency measure. Our family shifted to my grandmother’s home in Nagapattinam. When everybody was leaving behind all valuables, I was clinging to my wooden rocking horse refusing to leave it behind.

To my great joy, my father (‘Director’ K. Subrahmanyam) wiped my tears, allowing me to take it along. About a year before freedom at midnight, the Mahatma visited the city. There was a sea of humanity to have a glimpse of him. As an active congressman, my father had deputed his crew to film Gandhiji’s visit. Holding my father’s hand, I had the privilege (I was 7) to say Namaste to the Father of the Nation standing just a few feet away from him.

1950s: While several scenes of the city compete for attention, I recall the face of Potti Seeramulu who was fasting to carve out Andhra Pradesh from Madras Presidency, and thespian N. S. Krishnan’s funeral which attracted crowds comparable only to that of the last journey of Gandhiji himself.

The city’s earlier history is replete with several things of colonial India emerging here – such as the first Engineering College, the first Government Record Keeping, enrolling the first woman medical graduate and so on.

In that way, the impact of cinema on politics too had its origins in Madras. While Tamil cinema had occasionally been political during the freedom struggle (my father’s film Thyagaboomi was banned in 1939 for inspiring nationalist aspirations), in the later era, it became a manipulative instrument, subliminally promoting the Dravidian parties. The city also justifiably boasted of studios such as Vijaya-Vauhini, which was the largest film studio of Asia.

1950s/60s: The city saw the birth of India’s first industrial estate for small industries, while heavy industries too sprang up such as the Integral Coach Factory, Ashok Leyland and Standard Motors. If all that was during one political regime, some significant social changes took place with a change of regime.

For one, Madras became the first city in India to abolish hand-pulled rickshaws, which were all replaced with cycle rickshaws. But it also got the dubious distinction of being among the first to initiate scams such as Veeranam water to solve water scarcity.

1960s: With the idea of making a long documentary on Indian History, I took a room on rent at the Leadbeater Chambers of the Theosophical Society for a couple of months in the early 1960s, to write my screenplay in a quite ambience

(It is a different story that I could raise funds for this production, titled Indus Valley to Indira Gandhi, only a decade later). From my top floor room, I could watch a thousand flocks of birds flying away from their nests at sunrise, and again returning just after sun set. Alas! Today visiting the same campus, I don’t see or hear the music of even a few hundred of them.

1970s: The 1970s saw the arrival of television in the city – the first in South India. I recall nostalgically that I was a member of an expert committee of three, to recruit the first set of producers for Madras Doordarshan Kendra (later renamed Podhigai).

…and later.: During the 350th anniversary of Madras, I made a long documentary on the history of the city, in which a scene shows the historic and massive Bentinck Building, built in 1793. It also shows the process of demolition of that building with my commentary, “This building which would have been 200 years old in 1993, was allowed to die un-honored and unsung by a city, which is too pre-occupied with its existential present to remember its past”.