Madras miscellany

Quest for old photographs

SOME weeks ago (Miscellany, July 9), I had mentioned that I would get around one of these days to asking readers of this column for help with a project I'm working on. Today's when I ask whether you have any old pictures that may be linked with the Indian contribution to Ceylon/Sri Lanka over the last 200 years.

The project is not looking at age-old contributions, but it is looking at the numerous ways Indians from all parts of this country contributed to the island from the time when Britain took it over from the Dutch in 1797. From the beginning, there were contributions made by Bharatha boat-owners from the Tuticorin area, the Nattukottai Chettiars in the rice and textile trade, the Mookavar from southern Travancore (Nagercoil) in fishing, and the Moplah and Kilakarai Muslims and the Borahs and the Parsis in business and trade. From the 1820s, there was that long-suffering workforce from the Ramanathapuram, Tirunelveli and Thanjavur districts that first opened out the hill country, first for coffee and then for tea during which time they also helped build Ceylon's roads, railways and Colombo harbour. They were followed by the Malayalees who brought their skills to the railway, harbour and other workshops and who also became the senior domestic staff in many an elite home.

In the 19th Century, catechists and priests played their part in the spread of Christianity and education in the island, Olcott and the Theosophical Society helped in the revival of Buddhism and in the 20th Century the Ramakrishna Mission put down roots and particularly helped pilgrims to the Kataragama Murugan shrine. Throughout the pre-Independence years of the 20th Century, Malayalee teachers in particular were a significant presence in many of the leading schools in the island and professionals from all parts of India graced the civil service, accounting, engineering, medicine and law.

The first films made in Ceylon were in Indian-owned studios. In dance and music, art and literature there have been important contributions. And the contributions in sport has been no less, with persons of Indian origin representing _ even captaining _ Ceylon in such sports as cricket, football, rugby, hockey and table tennis. The latest in this line is Muralitharan of Kandy, one of the world's greatest spin bowlers of the day.

Last but not least, there have been the contributions to politics, which interests me the least, and in trade unionism which has always attracted my attention. It's a record of suffering and anguish, tragedy and, at times, hopelessness and disappointment, but it is also a proud record of contribution and achievement that deserves recording. Which is why The Indian Heritage Foundation, Colombo, is looking for old sketches, paintings, photographs and documentation on the activities mentioned above and others in which Indians have participated over the years. The Foundation hopes to use a selection of these pictures in a pictorial volume supplemented with a factual text. Pictures of families, institutions, businesses, workaday life and activities involving Indians in Ceylon are being sought. If you have any such pictures or know where I might find them, please write to me or e-mail me at smuthiah@vsnl.com.

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The chains of unexpectedness

Looking for a delightfully refreshing speaker? Get hold of G. B. Prabhat, director of a Sathyam company and a mechanical engineer to start with, but who now thoroughly enjoys talking about writing, building around his recently released first novel, Chains, a talk that reflects how widely he has read. Chains is a slim, easy-to-read book that's almost spartan in its economy with words but tells an absorbing tale that R. K. Narayan had thought could not be narrated when he had once told Prabhat, ``You just can't write a story with its focus on the world of Indian business''.

Prabhat, who thinks writers are born _ with an innate but similar compulsion to deliver, well not a baby, but a book _ certainly has the genes to support such faith. His father, G. Balakrishnan, is a well known and prolific Tamil short-story writer and novelist who also writes English `middles'. Using those genes, his experience of working with corporates in India and the considerable time he has spent with Indian families in the U.S. during frequent visits to America's computer suburbia, he's welded Chains. And it tells the story of what happens when the long and well settled Janakiraman family decides to leave the comforts, efficiency and fun-filled life of the West as well as workaholic Janakiraman's top-level corporate job in order to give the children their Indian heritage and more quality time. They soon find it is another world, at home, school and play and in the family-run conglomerate that Janakiraman joins. Speaking of both experiences, Prabhat points out that the moment you buy a house in the U.S., you mortgage yourself to America and as the years pass, you grow used to the comforts there, particularly that things work. On the other hand, in India, there is this strange mix of brilliant corporate decisions as well as deep faith in things like Vaasthu and offerings to the pantheon to make things work. The question was inevitable. Why didn't you put down roots in America? And I cheered when he said, ``Because I love Madras, warts and all''. And he went on to explain in a bit of storytelling. There was a VIP from the U.S. whom he was hosting in Madras one day and they started with the car being grazed, proceeded to a traffic jam when the signal lights did not work and no policeman was visible, discovered the visitor had had his pocket picked as they entered a five-star restaurant for lunch and got stuck in the lift when they returned to the hotel. It was an abashed Prabhat who rather diffidently asked his guest how he had enjoyed Madras, as he was about to leave.

A broadly smiling visitor warmly replied, ``I've never had a more exciting day in my life! You don't know how monotonous life can get when everything works and you do the same thing routinely every day!'' Yes, the unexpected is what makes Madras exciting _ and a place to live in, says Prabhat as he promises not to stop writing, particularly about this part of the world. I look forward to the rest of India and an even wider audience catching up with that writing.

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Well met, in and around town

The evening began with a wedding reception that had its beginnings on the greens and browns of Madras's golf links and which united not only two golfing families but also two of the city's well-known business families. Rupa, the bride, is one of the better women golfers in the State and the bridegroom, Gurunath Meiyappan, is perhaps the leading amateur golfer in Tamil Nadu. His mother, Lalitha Balasubramaniam, was for years, the women's golf champion in the South and was among the best in the country. Rupa's father, N. Srinivasan, president of the newly formed Tamil Nadu Golf Federation, was a good golfer, better tennis player and is passionate about cricket; the grounds he developed in Shankarnagar in Tirunelveli district are second only to Chepauk. Srinivasan heads the India Cements family and M. Balasubramaniam is a part of the AVM film world. Coincidentally, both families had their roots in finance; now they are a formidable golfing combine.

Later that evening I was at the latest adda in town having a couple of days earlier missed another new discussion group in Madras, that one organised by the local representatives of the International Federation of the Cinematographic Press, FIPRESCI. Cine-buffs listened to Sundar (`Dhritiman') Chatterji talk about and discuss with them the man who had named him Dhritiman, Satyajit Ray, and clips from a few Ray films, in a couple of which he had acted. The adda I did get to, meeting by invitation at `Amethyst' that is fast becoming an all-purpose gathering place in the now better maintained Jeypore Mahal _ ethnic shop, art gallery, rehearsal hall, informal meeting venue and soon-to- be coffee shop _ also had to do with a visual art, photography.

I discovered that Fulbright Scholarships are available to people like professional photographers who might, whatever else their focus, use the opportunity to build up a collection that would sell in the salons of the U.S. as, mind you, NEVER decorative pieces, but as art. Displaying some of this art collection and addading (!) about it was Abby (she doesn't favour Abigail, please) Robinson. The presentation by this lecturer from the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, was in three parts. The first, striking black-and-whites of bits and pieces of humans caught against bits and pieces of buildings _ a combination resulting possibly from her experience as a private detective agency's photographer and as a student of architecture appreciation.

Part two was a riot of blazing colour from her travels abroad that began in Vietnam and focussed on $3.50-a-night hotel room interiors _ pillows and bedspreads in raucous cherry red and walls in screaming cyan blues! _ bazaar studio backdrops, and steps _ including some inside the Madras High Court. These belong to the current phase when she has given up on people in pictures _ except for self-portraiture, which was the third part. Cleverly and imaginatively executed black-and-white self-portraiture in a variety of unusual settings was the pick of the collection _ but in none of it could I identify anything of Dakshinachitra, with which she is associated on the scholarship.

Instead, in Madras, she's busy shooting backdrops in photographic studios, sets in film studios and those dangling dummies and gourd faces that are not scarecrows but warders-off the evil eye. All this will sell as art in the U.S., she told the sceptics, several of whom tended to look at her art as reproductions of the Eastern exotic for Western consumption.

S. MUTHIAH

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