Memories of Luz Church Road

-- by Indukanth Ragade, isragade@yahoo.com

V. Sriram’s translated excerpts from, Ambujammal’s autobiography (A Long-Lost Luz Church Road – MM, May 16th, 2022) prompts me to recollect my own memories of the road in the period 1943-1960. In May 1943, when I was five, my father died prematurely and my mother with seven children shifted from our house in T.Nagar to The Retreat, the bungalow then situated next to the Church where my grandfather lived with his wife and his sister. My late great grand-father, Dr. H. Rangappa, who had bought the 12 ground plot with the bungalow, was one of the earliest and well-established doctors in Mylapore. For his visits, he had a proper horse-drawn coach and also a smaller version called ‘Landau’! We thus had two huge rooms for their storage and stables for the horses, with the one for the coach having an 18 ft. high roof!

Both coaches were gone after he died. Grand-father was a retired government servant who was voluntarily collecting funds for the charitable dispensary run by the Ramakrishna Math. His sister, Yamuna Bai was the Principal of the Madras Seva Sadan and a hand-drawn Rickshaw took her to the school daily, stayed there and brought her back. Another Rickshaw took us younger children to school and back. The two rickshaw-men also acted as gardeners.

The spacious bungalow had a huge central hall with two big rooms on either side with an adjoining long narrow room. The flooring was about 5 ft. above the ground. A 20 ft. wide covered verandah formed the entire front of the bungalow with the central portion extended (See pic). A separate 3000 sq. ft. kitchen unit was located at a lower level behind the main house. It had a spacious kitchen with a big dining hall (where we dined, sitting on the floor) and space for hand-grinding and hand-pounding activity, a 30 sq. ft. open-to-sky area in the center with a netting-roof for drying condiments. On its side, separated by a passage, was the bath-room and a room for storing firewood as the only source of energy then for heating water or for cooking was fire-wood! A line of four Indian-type closets was located at the S.W. end with a water-tank at one end for hand-flushing. There was not even a urinal within the main house! This came only around 1955! There was a 12 ft Verandah abutting all the rooms on the south side where the servants rested. The first floor had four rooms with a covered verandah above the one on the ground floor but with no water supply.

In front was a huge garden with four huge mango trees, a huge neem tree, six coconut palms, a naarthanga (citrus medica) tree, a silk-cotton tree, several flowering trees and plants spread along the three sides. Castor oil was made at home from the seeds of the castor plant (Ricinus communis) in the garden. A continuous fence of arali (Nerium oleander) on all three sides except the gate area protected the flowering shrubs and plants from depredation by cattle. In the center was a huge maghizhambu (mimusops elengi) tree whose branches spread all around like an open umbrella. A huge number of flowers fell daily on the ground below and many a passer-by came, sought permission and collected them.

One of the games played by us along with our school-friends was one person had to catch others, with all on trees and one could move from one tree to another directly or by getting down from one and climbing on another! In the mango season, we enjoyed keeping track of mangoes ripening and eat them on the tree itself before the smart crows got to them! There was also a Rangoon Cherry tree which yielded small delicious cherries in plenty.

Only three buses were in operation in Mylapore – No.12 from Triplicane to T. Nagar, No. 3 from Mylapore Tank to Parrys and No.5 from Adayar to Parrys. The only taxi available was from Karpagavalli Taxi Service situated on the bank of the Buckingham Canal on Brodies Road (now R.K.Math Rd.). Road lighting was poor. After dark, cyclists had to fix a small kerosene lamp with a wick to the front handle as if it made a difference! Those without it were fined a royal sum of one rupee!

Luz Church Road then housed several legal luminaries. As one moved from Luz, there was a big plot on the north side which housed the Issue Dept. of the Reserve Bank. Next was the home of the then well-known cricketer, V. Baliah. Then came the home of the eminent lawyer, V. Krishnaswami Iyer and his two sons, lawyer-litterateur K.Balasubrahmanya Iyer and litterateur K. Chandrasekharan. On the next plot was YMIA and the entire area behind it, where Karpagambal Nagar now stands, was empty and an R.S.S. Shaka used meet there daily. On the south side, after a large residential plot at the junction, was the Mylapore Club followed by the Ranade Library and the South Indian National Association. Many were the meetings in the Library Hall addressed by Litterateurs and Freedom Fighters. Its neighbour Sri Bagh, adjoining Luz Avenue, was the home of Nageswara Rao Pantulu, Founder of Amrutanjan. Then came Aaraatha Kuttai, a tank which was a favourite haunt for fishing. Adjoining the tank was (and still is) Durga Bai Deshmukh’s Andhra Mahila Sabha. Next came Sir K. Srinivasa Iyengar’s house. Sir K.S., was a multi-faceted personality who had been a law member of the British Governor’s Council, Advocate-General, Vice-Chancellor of a University and a judge of the Madras High Court. Interestingly, according to Mr. Anirudh, the great-grandson of Sir K. Srinivasa Iyengar, the Tank belonged to several of the neighbouring residents. Sir Iyengar owned a 12 grounds portion of it and Sri. Nageswara Rao owned the major part of it. All donated their shares to the Corporation which filled it up with all the litter it collected and Nageswara Rao Park emerged on it.

After the branching of Luz Church Street leading to the Church came an empty plot belonging to the Church and then a passage to it from Luz Church Road). Then came our house, The Retreat. The entire area on the north of our house, up to Oliver Rd., belonging to the Church (where St. Isabel’s Hospital is now located), was full of wild trees, because of which the Church was called Kaattukkovil! It was home to wild cats, bandicoots and snakes. Many were the snakes and bandicoots that entered our compound and had to be killed. The main house was connected to the kitchen by a raised covered verandah open on both sides. This was a favourite spot for relaxing in the evenings and at night. As the roofing of the single-storeyed kitchen unit was made of curved tiles, scorpions and centipedes often visited this area and had to be killed!

Opposite our plot was a huge field, reaching Bheemanpet, on which grains were grown and harvested till the early fifties! Adjoining it was a passage leading to Sylvan Lodge, the house of Justice Sir David Devadoss, whose main entrance was on D’Silva Road. Next-door to it lived Alladi Krishnaswamy Iyer, the eminent lawyer and one of the chief architects of India’s Constitution. His son, Alladi Ramakrishna was the Director of the well-known theoretical research institution, “Matscience”. Next-door was Justice N. Rajagopala Iyengar. Then came D’Silva Rd. In the house opposite Alladi’s (and adjacent to our house) lived Justice M. Patanjali Sastri who later became the Chief Justice of India. Sastriji’s neighbour was C.S. Ramarao Saheb, a well-known lawyer. At the junction of Luz Church Rd. with Oliver Rd., lived Justice C.A.Vadyalingam of the Madras High Court and his brother.

After D’Silva Rd. came Ambujammal’s father’s mansion. My memory fails in recollecting the owner of the huge adjacent plot where the Madras State Apex Co-operative Bank and the M.Ct.M Scool are now located.

In 1960, as grand-father was unable to manage the house, we got our T.Nagar house released from Government Acquisition and we shifted back to it. The 12-ground plot was sold to Mr. Karuppan Chettiar for the royal sum of Rs 1,13,000 of which 13,000 was for the bungalow! His son, Dr. Chockalingam set up the Devaki Hospital there which has now been replaced by the Chennai Meenakshi Multi-Specialty Hospital Ltd., a corporate hospital.

After the article appeared in MM, after many, many years, I took a walk on the road from Luz up to its junction with T.T.K. Rd. The only old entities still there were the Mylapore Club, the Ranade Library, Nageswara Rao’s Sri Bagh and Andhra Mahila Sabha. At the point where Luz Church Street branches off, there still exists the old lighting depot of the Electricity Board which today looks after the lighting over a wide area of Mylapore and adjoining areas. Thereafter, I found I was lost in a road full of commercial units and not very attractive apartment complexes!

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