Madras Week musings with Vincent D’Souza

From Broadway’s churches…

When we lived on Mount Road, we often attended Sunday Mass at St. Mary’s on Armenian Street and then walked down to NSC Bose Road to have breakfast.

On Sundays, you had the whole area to yourself. You still do – this densely commercial area shuts down on this day of the week. (I wish Ninan’s was open, for its fish curry-rice. It is in its 60th year, I was told).

I was back on Broadway to prepare to curate a Walk for Madras Day 2016.

Walk focussed on the ­heritage churches on this road, and of it. And Sunday mornings are the best time to work in peace.

The morning I stepped into St. Thomas Cathedral of the Mar Thomas congregation, ­located off Loane Square, the community was celebrating the feast of Saint Thomas.

The church office was packed with Baskets of appams; these and more were to be served to the community after service.

Thank God, the volunteers hid them away when the ­service was on!

At Tucker Church, at 7.30 a.m. there was time to take in all the memorials, including a prominent one to Thomas Moore Lane, surgeon and ­oculist in Madras and physician to the Nawab. And a well-maintained pipe-organ, repaired at great cost.

The Young pastor at Arcot Lutheran Church who rides his Royal Enfield from his home in Manali knew less of the church history but a lot of the Church, established by Danish missionaries in the then united Arcot region, with headquarters close to Cuddalore.

He had time to explain the salient features of the service. I needed that lesson for it is only at Christmas carol time that I visit the churches of the Protestant community.

On the long Walk towards Mint, there was a distraction – wondering why there was a large posse of policemen and a  large number of people crowding a tea stall, I veered off  the main road and found myself in a birds and chicken market.

I got a lot of stares, some stony ones. The men were selling some rare birds and racing pigeons and they did not like me taking pictures.

Street in these parts of the city hold old secrets.

Quietly, the Metro Rail line’s underground section is being constructed and already, there are stories swirling around. There the Metro workers had to sweat to break down huge boulders, which had been dumped in the other century to level a low-lying Broadway.

Salesian priest Fr. Santhosh was happy to brief me on St. Xavier’s, the only Catholic church on this road (at the far end). This year, the church celebrates 150 years since the core of the church was build; it was a sub-station of St. Mary’s on ­Armenian Street.

There are a series of Masses on Sunday mornings and I am hoping that when we do have the Walk we will get a window to step in and take in all the unique features here, including relics of Saint Francis Xavier.

Walks around old neigh­bour­hoods reveal a different world, even readers must be aware of. Why don’t you and your friends curate a Walk in your area for Madras Day 2016
(www.themadrasday.in)

… to City’s food trails

What do you need to make a simple fish curry on the city’s seashore?

Tomatoes, onion, tamarind, chilli powder and some salt should do.

The men who go out to sea for a few days must double up as cooks. So their fish curry has its limitation.
Their womenfolk do a better job.

The tangry taste matters and it goes well with steaming rice.

A city shows its colours through its food. Food made and sold off on its streets.
Walking around helps.

The old haunts are in Mylapore and Mambalam.

T’Nagar and Purusawalkam, Mint and Royapuram. Triplicane and Royapettah.

I wondered why a Sri Lankan food zone did not emerge in a place like Besant Nagar and beyond.

In the late 1980s, they made huge community, having taken refuge here following ethnic war and the seaside neighbourhoods of the city were their comfortable homes, for those who could afford rents here.

The strands of Burmese food lingers on in the backstreets of Parry’s Corner. It may not be the best. But it is cheap, quickly-tossed and street-food.

Newer food streets are emerging.

And one must appreciate the efforts of some members of Chennai Food Walks to explore the new street food zones in our city.

Muralidhar Shreedhaaran recently took off into the Kandanchavadi zone, into the streets that lie in the shadows of the giant IT companies here to sample the food that was on sale in the evenings.

He says the ‘classic’ vada pav for 15 bucks was a steal at one joint, the egg chicken roll, at 90 bucks, was “awesome and a complete meal by itself” at another joint, the fish fingers for 80 bucks was a hit with his friends at a third place and elsewhere, he tried the chicken momos, at 60 bucks; ‘Okayish but had to search for chicken in momos. There are many such street food zones which feed the huge IT community of OMR; you should drive down the ­alleys after dusk to locate them!

And if you go beyond the menu cards and the food, you will appreciate the changing face of the food-makers and the character of their customers.

There trends also tell us stories of our city. (Courtesy Mylapore Times)