Registered with the Registrar of Newspapers for India under R.N.I 53640/91
Vol. XXV No. 13, October 16-31, 2015
My first memory of Eldam’s Road goes back to the mid-1960s when, as a bride, I accompanied my mother to visit my husband’s grandparents living in Hamsa, their house on the main road. It had a small open area in front and a larger one at the rear.
There were, on either side of the road, a few independent houses with large compounds which were mostly occupied by the owners themselves.
The tall trees with their rich foliage provided shade besides privacy to the residents.
Though it was on the main road connecting Mowbray’s Road at one end and Mount Road on the other with public as well as privately owned transport plying to and fro, pedestrians had no difficulty walking along Eldam’s Road or crossing it as traffic rules were strictly observed and concern towards safety of fellow human beings was generally shown by those at the wheel.
Once we moved into our own house situated in one of the private lanes off the road, the first thing I noticed was an early morning visitor accompanied by a cow for whom my mother-in-law would eagerly wait vessel in hand. He would turn the empty can upside down for her to see it contained no water, then he would start milking the cow (at times admonishing the animal if it didn’t cooperate) and later pour out two measures of milk (one padi) full of froth into the vessel. Almost at the end of every week he would request an advance, telling my mother-in-law that it was only to buy fodder for his cow. As days passed, the requests turned into demands, invariably becoming unpleasant verbal exchanges between the two until one fine day when they automatically came to an end with the Corporation stepping in. The worst affected were the milkmen/owners of cows who until then made a living by selling milk, apart from enjoying the liberty of letting their cows loose on the roads day and night, not to speak of old-timers like my mother-in-law who had to reluctantly switch to dairy milk supplied in a sachet.
In the 1980s we began to notice the gradual transformation of the area with the rise of apartment and commercial complexes as a result of a shift in peoples’ thinking in terms of the long-term benefits of owning property. This resulted in the first part of Eldam’s Road, which was mostly residential, turning into a mix of residential and commercial complexes.
I was always curious to know how the road got its name and recently learnt it owes it to a Richard Yeldham of the East India Company, who became the Mayor of Madras in 1801, the last one appointed in the Company era. By the time he died, in 1820, at the age of 68, Yeldham had built a palatial home in Teynampet and the road leading from his house to Mount Road was named Yeldham’s Road, which evolved into Eldam’s Road. The first person from our family to live here was my husband’s ancestor, his mother’s great grandfather, P. Chentsal Rao, who was appointed Head Sheristadar of the Board of Revenue after Seshaiah Sastry had vacated that office to become Dewan of Travancore. Chentsal Rao purchased for himself and his family a 13-acre property on Eldam’s Road for Rs.26,000. It extended from Mowbray’s Road to the present H.D. Raja Street.
The drive to the big bungalow, named Baobab (was there one there?), was from Mowbray’s Road. Chentsal Rao sold the land adjoining Mowbray’s Road to Pattabhirama Iyer, Civil Court Judge and father of Sir C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar. The plot next to it on the west, with a small building on it, was sold to Sub-Judge Gopal Rao, and a plot further west was sold to Sambaiah Chetty, a family friend. As both of them changed their minds later, because they didn’t want to settle in Madras, Chentsal Rao repurchased the land. This property was called The Grove, and here Chentsal Rao later built a small cottage for himself, designed and constructed by the well-known contractor, Namberumal Chetty. In 1918, his son, P. Krishna Rao, sold Baobab and in 1959 on the advice of P. Panini Rao, his two sons disposed of The Grove which was purchased by Vunugopala Mudaliar who changed the façade of the building and named the colony, comprising a cluster of houses, as ARK colony (as he had great regard for Anantharamakrishna Iyer, who developed the Simpson’s Group). Subsequently his family members sold part of the property and, today, we have a shoddy-looking, six-storeyed apartment complex on the site with the day’s linen hanging from the balconies greeting us first thing in the morning.
We rebuilt our house two decades ago but took care to preserve the nearly century-old mango tree in our compound (a sapling of the Imam Pasand variety was brought from Rajamundry by my husband’s grandfather). It faithfully bears fruit even today.
The nearest landmarks to our residence have changed at least three times to my knowledge: Syndicate Bank, Profad, Esseen Musicals and Pizza Paradise, the last giving place recently to the Madras Coffee House which is gaining in popularity for its snacks and steaming filter coffee. On the opposite side is a pet shop which again is drawing a lot of customers, indicating an increase of pet owners. Among the various other commercial establishments that have come up in this former residential area are a saloon, an electrical shop, a dentist’s clinic, a pharmacy, a popular cake shop and an internet café.
In the past decade or so, I had noticed that ‘Street Food’ too has undergone a change. It is no longer patronised by the man-in the-street alone. It is common to see officer-goers, with briefcase in hand, standing alongside the security of the nearby posh apartment complex gulping the brew at the mobile food cart. The man serving this health drink, koozhu, is seated under a large colourful umbrella which advertises an FM channel. His Koozhu is made by boiling rice and millets with buttermilk and salt added to it. It’s quite a sight watching his clientele drinking mouthfuls of the brew even as they generously help themselves to fried green chillies, cut mangoes and shredded onions placed on the ‘table’. Seeing me watching the whole scene one day, the vendor poured a little of the koozhu into a plastic glass and said, “Amma why don’t you taste it? You will find it heavenly if it is accompanied by a bite of the green chilli and shredded onion.” People drinking it entreated me to oblige him saying it made a wholesome breakfast for the price charged, which according to them was very reasonable.
A few yards away is a licensed ‘bunk kadai’, a kind of kiosk selling sundry items, apart from snacks such as bajjis and bondas accompanied by side dishes which seem to be the main draw for customers living in the vicinity. One morning during my morning walk I noticed large stainless steel containers being unloaded from an auto and the owner of the kiosk transferring the items into tin boxes with lids. When asked from where they were sourced, the auto driver pointed to the man owning the kiosk and said, “They are all prepared by his wife in their house.”
A little distance across the road is the recently opened Kovai Pazhamudir Cholai where fresh vegetables, fruit juices and groceries are available. But if you live on the opposite side of the road, the heavy traffic must be braved to reach this all-under-one-roof supermarket.
The second half of the road, towards Teynampet where the road meets Anna Salai (Mount Road), has more or less maintained its ‘commercial’ and ‘congested’ nature with all kinds of goods and consumer items available in their modest outlets. They include shops which sell clocks and watches, gold jewellery, textiles, electrical goods, and so on. We find a 24-hour hospital and a dental clinic in their midst. Not too long ago there used to be a ‘hotel’ bearing the name of the road but today some other business has come up in its place.
However, we hope the names of the important landmarks that residents from far and near are familiar with will not change or get diluted at has happened with the name of the road. They are the CPREC Foundation at one end (nearer TTK Road) on the left and, on the right, the residence-turned-office of Kamal Haasan, the film world icon. Further up is The Christian Arts and Media Centre with a sprawling compound. Tattvaloka, a beautiful three-storeyed building in shining granite where religious discourses and music concerts take place, and the Subramaniar temple, which has been renovated recently, are at the other end, in Teynampet. A couple of mobile carts selling street food, mainly chaat, are found along the other half of the road as well. – (Excerpted from the author’s latest book Chennai Collage with her permission)
Another bit of Alwarpet heritage under threat
First it was D’Monte Colony. Now, another place of heritage and history in Alwarpet is soon to be wiped out as new development takes place. Sadr Gardens, a magnificent bungalow located off Kasturi Ranga Road, Alwarpet, is to be brought down. Preliminary work is on now.
This bungalow was once the ‘Sadr Adalat’, the chief courts of appealing from courts administering Hindu and Islamic Law for different types of castes. That was when the Nawabs ruled this part of the country.
This campus was then a hub of legal cases in the middle of what was scrub jungle and paddy fields. In fact, the area south of Parthasarathy Gardens was paddy fields till about 50 years ago.
Some people say that those condemned to death at the court were hung from a tree in an area opposite where Narada Gana Sabha’s auditorium stands.
Those courts were later amalgamated to form the High Courts in the Presidencies in British India. Later Sadr Gardens came to be the residence of Justice Basheer Ahmed Sayeed, former judge of the Madras High Court and celebrated advocate. His name and that of another luminary Bashyam Iyengar, who was a resident of this street was hyphenated to give this street the name it sports today. An odd name that puzzles someone who takes a close look at it. – (Courtesy: Mylapore Times.)