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Vol. XXIX No. 16, December 1-15, 2019

Pavithra’s Perspective

The Lonely House

Page 3
One of the weird things about my childhood was that while I lived in Velachery, my school was in West CIT Nagar – maybe not a huge deal in these days of vast commute, but an exhausting journey in those years when Velachery was pretty much consigned to the wilds and could be reached only by PTC buses (“I cannot do savaari to another town, Amma!” – Autorickshaws). I’d leave home at 6.15 in the morning and by degrees, learned to enjoy the hour that took me past Guindy, Saidapet and eventually, school. And one of the areas I passed, was St Thomas Mount.

Not that I did, technically – more like skirting the edges. But the name stuck in my memory and eventually became ingrained into my school-commute-psyche, so much so that I could no longer think of my school run without simultaneously remembering St Thomas Mount too. As an adult, though, I realized that I’d seen woefully little of the area, and set out to repair my omission (more of that later). But as I crisscrossed the streets of this very English settlement, with its huge trees, the Mount looming in the distance, once the epicenter of what would eventually become a British identity in North Tamil Nadu, I gleaned a sense of majesty. These old homes, now blackened and sometimes crumbling, with their wide windows, large corridors and shallow steps had housed a very different population. And their aura still remained.

Particularly in a corner bungalow I saw, shaded by trees. It somehow seemed to epitomize the space and time, which I felt I had to record. And I did.

Details about the miniature: Black and White; Pen and Ink.

Dimensions: Approximately: 3.5” X 4.5”

Pavithra Srinivasan is a writer, journalist, artist, translator, columnist, editor and is fascinated with History.

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