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Madras on paper and metal
How would Generation Z respond to souvenirs from the past, those connected with the city they live in but are light years removed from their everyday realities? This Madras Day, an exhibition at a city college sought answers to this question
Mapping the changes
A 1970 map in antiques collector V. Prabhakar’s stockpile of time-worn articles is as riveting for what it does not show as for what it does. Anna Nagar is missing from the map — much of it, the way we know the locality now. In its nascent phase, the locality was yet to emerge into the light, let alone the limelight as a meticulously planned urban space. The map does not display what Anna Nagar is still associated with, despite commercialism marring the picture: a tracery of broad avenues. It traces the built-up part of the locality up to Chinthamani, and the vast beyond that it depicts is a landscape predominantly characterised by cultivable fields and open scrub. The picture is in stark contrast to the late-evening commerce now — the mobile briyani shops that spring up in the dark and disappear with the dawn.
As Prabhakar focusses the magnifying glass further across the map, one can sense how the waterbodies have now shrunk to blobs of insignificance. Even from the one-dimensional map, one senses a grandeur about the Korattur Lake and Peravallur Lake that has now clearly dimmed. Taking the lens off Prabhakar’s map — which he says he serendipitously discovered while looking for other vintage items in the “stables” of a kabbadiwalla — and focussing it on another map, a survey map of Madras from the same year that is in the public domain, a Gen Z would be struck by the absence of East Coast Road along the Madras coastline. Tiruvanmiyur is the last fishing hamlet within city limits and is called Tiruvanmiyurkuppam. Now, the last fishing outpost within the city is closer to Uthandi, which marks the outer limits of Greater Chennai Corporation on the south.
Yellow pages
Put it down to the vice-like grip of the audio-visual format on the human mind, Kannadasan is now more heard than read. When the city was Madras, the poet enjoyed a greater balance between being read and being heard. V. Prabhakar has the copy of an edition of the Tamil newspaper “Thendral Thirai” from 1964. This edition gives a poem by Kannadasan a prominent place. Dog-eared and yellowed, the pages help one visualise old, mechanical and laborious typesetting methods. Another leaf out of Madras’ past lodged in Prabhakar’s collection is an edition of “New India”, an English daily from 1919. The pages of the edition have the fragility of a centenarian, and Prabhakar unfurls them with utmost care, and would not dare let anyone feather-touch them — forget being allowed to riffle through them and read the contents. In the flush of youth, when they emerged fresh from the typesetters, those pages were fire and brimstone. Founded by Annie Besant, the publication ardently championed the cause of Indian self-rule and social reform.
The past in a grand light
Sitting among the curated showcases of history and craftsmanship were two sturdy and rare pieces of metal — the Bradley and Hubbard car lamp from 1916 and the Lucas “King of the Road” lamp from 1914. For Gen Z eyes, these lamps provide a glimpse of overengineering, which is in blinding contrast to today’s throwaway culture. When they acted up (which they seldom did), these lamps would have been easily coaxed back into service. They had been engineered to last lifetimes and they have, having travelled from the “Lost Generation” to Generation Z. Though crafted in England, these lamps shine a light on Madras’ automotive history. As a major British colonial outpost, Madras mirrored developments in the Island nation. The story around these lamps in John Moses’ antiques-collection chronicles is enhanced by a footnote — he discovered them at a marketplace steeped in history and renowned for its eclectic offering of antiques and historical curiosities. Well over two decades ago, within the atmospheric corridors of Moore Market, amidst the remnants of the city’s colonial legacy, Moses found these treasures. The Bradley and Hubbard lamp and the Lucas “King of the Road” lamp, though born in England became naturalised in Madras, becoming an indelible part of the landscape. In their heyday, these two lamps in Moses’ collection were casting their light on the roads of Madras, and now they are casting a light on the legacy of Madras for Gen Z eyes to see.
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