Our readers write

Need remembrance
It has been a great service rendered by Chennai Heritage and Madras Musings, but I would request you to give space for the Madrasis who were behind all the landmark heritage buildings. Many people would have parted with valuable land. Many builders, suppliers and service agencies would have sweated in their building. We should also salute them.

Dr. Capt. M. Singaraja,
Chairman
Senior Citizens Bureau
No. 90, Rama Street Nungambakkam
Chennai 600 034

Editor’s Note: If only we could find any records about them!

A cue from New York!

On coming in from hot, dry and humid Chennai to New York, the most populous agglomerate in urbanisation, you are struck by the lush greenery that envelopes the landscape. All roads, boulevards, etc, are lined with lush vegetation that stretch as far as you can see and create an optical illusion of mountains at the tail-end of highways! Patches of green are mandatory in front of buildings and apartments, independent houses and public places. No wonder the tall trees are greeted with nightly showers and an annual bonanza of pure snow during winter. The fragrance kicked up by the rain-water landing on manicured lawns early in the morning sings hosannas to Nature!

If only the powers-that-be in Chennai could treat trees and vegetation with “loving-kindness” and prevent the rapacious elements from illegal quarrying on mountain-sides, if only the so-called land developers could keep away from the few remaining wetlands, lakes and marshy lands (and thus beckon the fleeing birds), if only encroachers could curb their lust for territorial aggrandisement and not force elephants, leopards and panthers to rush into human habitat in revenge, we would have a better story to narrate in Tamil Nadu.

Perhaps a high-level delegation should visit New York and study closely how urbanisation need not be at the cost of destroying the eco-system. The delegates could be provided with two “bonus” days for shopping at Macy’s and having fun in Manhattan so that the focus of the study is strictly maintained!

V. Kalidas
vkalidas@gmail.com

Why Radio Oil?

Back in the 1960s, Madrasis used a cooking oil called Radio Oil. My mother recalls that it was refined groundnut oil. Do you have any idea why it was called so?

Lochan Sarathy
lochgeet@yahoo.com

Spur Tank – and its road

A recent issue of Madras Musings featured a map of old Madras, which showed the tanks of Madras. My memories of the Spur Tank Road were jogged, reading the text and seeing the map.

As a Purasawalkam resident for several years, I used to ride a pushbike to Loyola College, where I was studying in the late 1960s. I used to wait (cursing myself) at the manned rail crossing at Gengu Reddy Road and proceed on to Sterling Road via majestic Spur Tank Road, which then hosted several elegant villas and massive garden houses on my right and the weak, meandering Cooum (my memories of it is that it was much cleaner and better than what it is today, thanks to my fellow citizens of Madras!) on my left. This road used to offer me a great feel, more because of its relative cleanliness and the wide pavements hosting massive rain trees (Samanea saman). I remember Hansa Stores at the Spur Tank Road-Harrington Road junction and a little towards the eastern side of Spur Tank Road there used to be Vaman Brothers, who competed with the then famous still photographers, G.K. Vale & Company.

Obviously Spur Tank Road was named after a tank, which existed there. I was indeed curious to know why this name. In A History of Some Place Names of Madras in the Tercentenary Volume of Madras (1939), V. Rangacharya says, “One of the curious names found in connection with Egmore is the Spur Tank given to its reservoir. It has been said to be so called because the tank was like a spur in shape.” In this paragraph (I am not reproducing all of his comments here; I will encourage the reader to read them, accessible free in the Internet), Rangacharya remarks, rather, laments the increasing buildings along and around the Spur Tank.

The Asiatic Annual Register (also known as A View of the History of Hindustan, and the Politics, Commerce, and Literature of Asia), Vol. X (of 1808) published in 1811, refers to the arrival and settling in of Thomas Andrew Strange, who was to become the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. This note mentions that Strange met several officials belonging to the Madras administration at the Chief Justice’s garden on the Spur Tank, at 9 o’clock on July 12, 1808.

The name Spur Tank has been in existence from 1718 at least, since Henry Davison Love in his Vestiges of Old Madras writes, “1718. A lease of ground near the Spur Tank in Egmore measuring about 200 yards square, was, with the consent of the Renters, granted to Mr. Matthew Empson, Senior Merchant, in view of his forming a garden there. Matthew Empson (Junior) was the son of Matthew Empson (Senior), who entered the civil service in 1718. He married Elizabeth, daughter of William Plumbe, a seafarer.”

Love’s other notations on the Spur Tank are paraphrased below:

“1766. Major Eley (possibly John Elly, a sergeant in the Train, who was commissioned Lieutenant Fireworker in May 1786), who had purchased the ruins of the house and the ground at the Spur to the Westward of Egmore obtained additional land to the west of it between the garden and the road by the Tank side (sic. the present Spur Tank).”
“1766-1774. The Nabob at this time possess’d of one … near the Spur.”

“1774. The Triplicane River, or call it by its modern name, the Cooum (perhaps a contraction of Komaleswaran, a name applied at this period to the stream) passes from the edge of the Spur Tank near Egmore village to Chintadaripetta by a deep loop southwards.”

“1800s. In Chittopett and Keelpaukum still farther west, Harrington’s and McNicholl’s Roads and Spur Tank Road are shown as at present.”

“1810s. McNichol’s Road, Chetpet, existed in 1798 as an avenued highway for the greater part of its course from Spur Tank Road towards Poonamallee Road. It derives its name from Robert McNichol who was Assistant Master Attendant between 1811 and 1822. In the map of 1822 ‘Sladen’s Gardens’ and an adjacent property abutting on McNicholl’s Road are lettered ‘Capt. McNicole’.”

C. Srinivasachari’s remarks on the Spur Tank in History of the City of Madras (1939) are, “The larger tanks like the Vyasarpady Tank, the Spur Tank and the Nungambakam and Long Tanks have now been silted up and have been built over in parts. On the southern skirt of the Poonamallee High Road lies the Spur Tank, rapidly covered over with playgrounds. To the south of the Poonamallee High Road lie the suburbs of Chintadripet and Egmore while the Spur Tank is wedged in between the latter and Chetput. In Chintadripet, there is nothing much of historical or architectural interest except, perhaps, its origin as a weavers’ village in the 18th Century.”
This narrative brings to light several aspects which have, by and large, escaped our attention.

1. The oldest available map on the internet (1854) indicates the Spur Tank more as a rectangular water body. I could not detect any slim, tail-like extension, prompting the name ‘spur’. Maybe it existed earlier than this time; during later days, the spur may have got decimated by human action, while the rectangular structure prevailed in the 19th Century.

2. The Poonamalee High Road was known as Poonamalee Road in earlier days.

3. McNichol’s Road in Chetpet is referred to as a ‘highway’ by Love. Does this mean a ‘high road’ or a highway – somewhat implying the meaning of highway today? Not clear. High Roads in the early segments of the 20th Century were common. They were called ‘High Road’ since they occurred at a higher elevation (with filled soil and mud) than the level of housings that occurred along the sides.

4. Whereas Rangacharya laments on the shrinking Spur Tank in 1939, Srinivasachari – of the same year – refers to deliberate filling of tanks, including the Spur Tank, and justifies that action. Srinivasachari argues that closing of the existing tanks of Madras was a reasonable decision, since many of them, according to him, were acting as reservoirs for the malarial vectors, viz., the mosquitoes.

– A. Raman
araman.csu.edu

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