Registered with the Registrar of Newspapers for India under R.N.I 53640/91
Vol. XXVIII No. 5, June 16-30, 2018
(Continued from last fortnight)
A Madhavaram street reminiscent of the Royapuram days
I soaked in the familiar land marks as I drove down North Beach Road in Chennai on my way to meet the last of the Anglo-Indian families in Royapuram. They remained amidst ruins of the Royapuram of old, refusing to migrate or leave. My heart sank when I saw the iconic SBI building in ruins and falling apart. How could this ever happen? I thought. Our house in the early 1950s, with its large compound and jamoon trees, towards the end of the Kalmandapam Road, had been demolished and replaced by awful looking flats. I never expected to see the old house; I just wanted to stop there awhile. The emotions of a person’s early days are difficult to fathom. The old gives way to the new but ever so often the new has so little charm.
Hartland, the home where I grew up, on West Mada Church Street, had also been demolished after we had sold it to a builder in the late 1980s. I stopped the car and got down for a while. I could see in my mind’s eye the cemented courtyard where we used to play tennis ball cricket and the ring of Ashoka trees that I loved to clamber upon and read or study in solitude. I walked down West Mada Church Street keen to see the institutions that were an integral part of my youth; the Parsi Club, the Mada Dolorosa Church, St. Kevin’s School and the convent where the nuns used to live, the Parsi Fire temple and the Sistes of Charity Home further down the street. My mind was abuzz with fond memories of the past. But this was a bygone era, only memories remain.
The Anglo-Indians had long gone from Royapuram and so had the Parsis as well as most of the families we grew up with. I drove into Mariadas Street where Daphne Sharman, a classmate from class 1 to 4, and her family live. They are one of just a few Anglo-Indian families left in Royapuram. Daphne had demolished their 125-year-old house in 2011 and built a three-stories house in its place. The memories of the old house with its front verandah and tall pillars are now only captured in the old photographs she has retained along with some exquisite memorabilia. She brought out from the storeroom an ancient cardboard box, forgotten and unattended. In it was this beautifully maintained marriage proposal dated 1926 along with a formal letter of acceptance. Many families would have similar letters of a beautiful Anglo-Indian tradition tucked away in a treasure chest.
The buzz of conversation and jokes went on as we sat around the lunch table. Daphne and Sharon had cooked a sumptous meal of coconut milk rice, chicken vindaloo, Andhra chicken, meat and potato cutlets and an onion and ginger paste chutney. To cool our palates, we had grape juice and the dessert was mango ice cream, both Kunhiraman’s favourites. It was a thoughtful touch by Daphne.
We talked about the Anglo-Indian families migrating to Australia and other countries. With the faintest of resignation in her voice, Daphe said, “When you have family responsibilities and have to take care of elderly family members, you never think of going away and leaving them alone to fend for themselves in a home for the aged”. With conviction, she adds that the financial health of the family was strong and they had the ability to lead a comfortable life in India. The family’s decision may have hung in the balance for a while, but with the situation having changed for the better in India and job opportunities as well as the potential to earn a decent wage being quite good, the family voted to stay. I say it was a family vote as the children too were clear that they would not choose to migrate.
Sharon works in the World Bank in the HR Department and has a bachelor’s degree in literature from Stella Maris College. Clinton graduated from the Government College of Fine Arts and, equipped with a course in graphics design, currently works for a graphics design firm. Sharon has never experienced negative stereotyping as an Anglo-Indian. Clinton too is very comfortable with his friends circle and is bemused when asked if he misses the company of Anglo-Indian friends. Daphe claims to be a bit of a recluse not given to an active social life and does not miss the Anglo-Indian dane and jam sessions. She says tongue in cheek, “If all the Anglo-Indians go away then to whom can the visiting Anglo-Indians boast about the glorious land of opportunity they have migrated to”. In keeping with the changing times, Sharon has married a Malayali from Cochin.
Ruth Williams says, “Anglo-Indians in India today are willing to compete with everyone else for jobs. Reservations are a thing of the past. We are no longer laid back and now study beyond high school and make the most of the opportunities. We too now aspire to own houses and make a mark in society”. This sentiment is echoed by many Anglo-Indians I spoke to. They see increasing evidence of Anglo-Indians competing successfully and doing well in various fields.
Ruth had this to say of the time when almost every house in Royapuram was an Anglo-Indian home. There were family members living a few houses away and across the street. It was natural for the community to remain cloistered and cling to their way of living. Now there are just a few Anglo-Indian families in the whole of Royapuram. My young children are growing up in the midst of other communities and seek to dress and speak like them. We are not worried that they will lose their Anglo-Indian identity. The children in school tend to speak in Tamil and learn Tamil mandatorily. They also watch Tamil or Hindi TV serials.
Today Royapuram is no longer an Anglo-Indian town and residents follow their own customs and practices. All of them tend to celebrate festivals across community lines, Ruth says.
In August 2016, Ruth and family finally moved from Royapuram to Madhavaram. Attachments to places grow on you and in spite of the pollution, congestion and the menace of lorries, Ruth refused to shift. She felt that Madhavaram was the back of beyond and she didn’t want to go to such an isolated place. When finally she did agree to move, she found it heavenly. As Ruth says, “Madhavaram is far less polluted and we have the luxury of an independent place to stay with more play area and space for the kids and us to stretch around. There are many more Anglo-Indian families here. The New Year’s dance at St. Sebastians’s church hall was strictly for Anglo-Indians only. It was lovely to be part of something like that after ages”.
Madhavaram is the new Royapuram. Back in the 1980s and 90s, Anglo-Indians from Royapuram and other parts of Chennai found Madhavaram an ideal location to settle in as land values were still resonable and many could afford to invest in houses. But, many Anglo-Indians who bought houses in Madhavaram have since migrated to Australia; while some have sold their houses, others have retained them and given them out on rent or leased it out for fixed periods of time.
Over 30 Anglo-Indian families still live in Madhavaram and the morning and evening services at the church have a high presence of the community. The broader Christian community, which includes Tamil Christians besides the Anglo-Indians. meets every month at each other’s house by rotation in each area. At Christmas, each area is abuzz with activities and carol singing. Ruth’s joy knew no bounds when after years she witnessed a bandwagon going around the streets of Madhavaram distributing gifts to the children.
There is little need to moan the loss of the lifestyle of yesteryear, but there is definitely a need to preserve the heritage of the past and it is sad that in Royapuram there is no heritage site that keeps alive the memory of the Anglo-Indians. It is heart-wrenching to see the degradation in the quality of life, the loss of the higher values of good living to material craving and the disregard as well as irreverence for the heritage of the past.
The extension of the harbour and the creation of an iron ore handling port are examples of the deterioration of the quality of life. It impacts the demographics of Royapuram almost as much as the migration of the Anglo-Indians. This development completely wiped out the beach. The ideal setting for social conference had been consumed by the march of industrialisation. The iron ore loading and unloading created a major crisis of iron ore pollution. This led the upper middle class and the affluent to move to other parts of Chennai or the rest of the country. In their wake came the traders and the real estate agents with their penchant for demolishing old houses and building multiple dwelling units where once stood proud bungalows.
After a high court order banning the handling of dusty pollutants such as iron ore and coal by the Port Trust at the Royapuram harbour, the iron ore handling facilities were shifted to the Kamarajar Port at Ennore in 2011. Pollution levels at Royapuram are lower now but nowhere near what is desired.
With the modernisation of the port facilities, many labourers lost their jobs leading to a search for alternate sources of livelihood. They moved to trades relating to logistics and the food grain polishing industries that came up along the major roads. The expanded industrial activity around the harbour and the growth of the industrial belt north of Royapuram led to a steep increase in lorry traffic. The din of speeding lorries with blaring horns ran through the night. During the day it was common to see row on row of lorries parked at vantage points; the compound wall of St. Peter’s Church is one such. Royapuram has inexorably become Lorrypuram.