Rambling in West Mambalam (4) … with Janaki Venkataraman

Helping out, the local motto

For many years Ayodhya Mandapam used to be a meeting place for the priests of West Mambalam. They usually congregated here in the evenings exchanged notes, made appointments and traded priestly engagements for the next day. That has, however more or less stopped now, because of the advent of the mobile phone. Now priests make all their professional calls from home. Priesthood is a significant profession in West Mambalam. Priests from here are invited to perform poojas, homam-s and rites all over Chen-nai. Although, till the 1990s priests were not very well recompensed and were looked upon with a certain amount of pity (for having to live off the raw bananas, betel leaves and minor change that were usually given to them by their clients), things have become far more lucrative now. Take S.S. Manikandan for instance.

Fortyish, well dressed and with neatly cropped hair, Manikandan flashes his card to new clients. The card advertises that he is capable of organising all poojas and homam-s. He also has a cache of regular clients and the fees are no longer anything to sneer about. Manikandan drives a car and a two wheeler, has firm political views and is as savvy and with-it as any priest of these times can be. I ask him if other priests of his age and status are sending their sons to Veda patasalas in order to become priests. He replies carefully, “They do. Nowadays many Veda patasalas have CBSE schools attached to them. So the boys get the best of both kinds of education. They can later choose to take up a secular job, but the option of priesthood will always be there. Actually, many young men are opting for priesthood because of the lucrative fees and the increased interest in performing poojas and homam-s from all strata of society.”

Manikandan’s father, Subra-ma-niam, for some reason known popularly as Dandapani, is, however, of the old school. For long he was a priest. Now, after retirement, he has taken on the small business that his father-in-law left him, that of selling pooja articles on the pavement outside Ayodhya Mandapam. Every afternoon at exactly two, he arrives at the spot on his two-wheeler bringing with him two polythene sacks full of dharbha grass, bundles of twigs, for homam-s, bunches of sacred threads, strands of turmeric-stained thali threads, vermilion powder, turmeric and stacks of almanacs and prayer books. “Why do you open your shop in the hottest part of the day?” I ask him.
“That’s when all my customers arrive, the housewives who are free only then. In the evening the men returning from office or those coming to the Mandapam buy things from me.” The shop remains open till about 6.30 and then Dandapani gathers his stuff in his sacks and heads home. An exasperated Manikandan says,“I have told him not to do this. We are quite comfortably off now; there is no need for him to be a vendor. But he will not listen!”
His father retorts,” I like doing this. A lot of my customers are my friends. And there are people who depend on my shop when they need to buy something in a hurry. I earn some money doing something worthwhile. Why should I give it up?”

West Mambalam is also the hub for professional Brahmin cooks. Pushpavati Ammal Street that branches off from Lake View Road is unique in that ninety per cent of its residents are professional cooks. It is an unassuming, rather poor looking street but a boon for anyone looking for cooks to turn out meals for a function. It is also a street where even today you can get a room for Rs 1000/- a month. And, it is safe. Destitute Brahmin women from the districts often come to Mambalam in search of livelihood and, as they are usually well versed in Brahmanical cooking, they rent a room in Pushpavati Ammal Street and then take up cooking assignments. Within a few years they are usually able to move to bigger homes.

Do the offspring of priests and cooks really follow their parents’ profession? Some do. Many do not. Most study well and get into software or bank jobs and move out of West Mambalam. They may shift to Ashok Nagar or K.K Nagar, or they might leave town altogether. Similarly the children of the bank executives, government officers, chartered accountants (this is a favoured profession in this area) and such, also often leave for other cities or other countries. This exodus has definitely led to the greying of West Mambalam.

And what does the grey-haired generation of West Mambalam do?

Good things. All right, the women watch TV serials and the men watch cricket. And, of course, they are all seriously into religion and rituals. And they all love Carnatic Music. But apart from that they exhibit a real tendency to volunteer and help out. During the 2015 floods, when West Mambalam practically drowned, groups of local volunteers worked tirelessly to evacuate families, bring food and water to marooned homes and they made very little noise about government agencies not helping out. Helping out seems to be the local motto. A hospital such as the Public Health Centre could not have lasted this long and done so well, without the participation of committed volunteers from the community.

Started in 1953, by M.C. Subrahmanyam, a Gandhian and social worker, the Public Health Centre was initially meant to be only a birthing centre. West Mambalam did not have a hospital at the time and pregnant women had to go to hospitals in other parts of the city for delivery. This often meant waiting in line at the railway gate and people joked that the wo-man in labour would probably give birth before the gate opened. It was T.T. Krishnama-cha-ri who suggested to his friend, Subrah-manyam, that he should start a hospital in West Mamba-lam to serve the poor there. Subrah-manyam and his band of volunteers found the funds to start a small hospital in a thatch roofed building to begin with. Rajaji inaugurated the hospital. K. Kamaraj, the then Chief Minister, granted them 16 grounds of land. From the first it was decided that the hospital would be run on a no-profit basis. Dr. Lakshmi Chaturvedi, well-known Chennai gynaecologist, was their first doctor. She lived in Nungambakkam and whenever her services were required, she would take a rickshaw to the hospital. The cost for the ride was Rs. Five! “In all these years not a single mother who has delivered here has died,” the hospital authorities tell proudly. Since then, the hospital has grown into a multi-disciplinary one, the latest addition being a wing for heart ailments and -surgery.

The hospital has been managed by three generations of volunteers from West Mambalam and its capital expenditure is still taken care of by public donations. Running expenses are met by the small fees charged to the patients. A consultation here still costs only Rs.100. All surgeries cost only half what they would cost elsewhere. Doctors from all over Chennai volunteer a few hours of their time every week for consultations. There is also a team of resident doctors. Free treatment is given to the poor to the tune of Rs. 24 lakh annually.

All though, the hospital shows signs of wear and tear, and it could look tidier, but it has a huge bank of trust among West Mambalam residents and the waiting hall is always crowded with patients. Apart from the hospital, the Centre runs a crèche, sells hygienically prepared baby food, and also runs a centre for training and rehabilitating differently abled children. “The fee per child is Rs.350 a month, but of the 63 children only 13 are able to pay. The others are supported by annual donations by kind people around here,” a volunteer informs me.
(To be concluded)

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