Madras miscellaney

Still active on bail

He is an accused in two murder cases and ten cases of attempted murder. He has been convicted of a murder. Yet he is on the loose, having been granted bail. And he'll, no doubt, be granted bail again for his most recent offence that captured the headlines, namely driving through a police post and then attacking and injuring a police officer with a deadly weapon.

That numerous persons accused of criminal acts do not call a halt to their careers in crime after being arrested and while out on bail or even after release from prison is something few people think of.

But it is a sad fact of life that was pointed out rather amusingly only a few days earlier by former Madras-based journalist Anita Pratap at a meeting in Madras in connection with the release of her book, "Island of Blood".

The book, topically, looks at one man's terrorist and another's freedom fighter in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, the two theatres of action where she made her mark as a frontline reporter.

Answering a question on the difficulties law enforcers faced in the context of a judiciary acutely conscious of a citizen's rights, be it a terrorist's or a lawbreaker's, she related a story her former father-in-law, the late Director General of Police, K. Ravindran, had once told her.

He had been a young officer in the districts when he arrested a thief four times, only to find him released on bail each time and have him strike again no sooner he was released. Fed up with the magistrate's sympathetic attitude, Ravindran had the thief brought to his office the fourth time he was let out on bail and made him an offer.

"You like to rob homes, so I want you to rob a particular house for me. Take what you want and then leave the district. I will not trouble you thereafter, so long as you stay away from my district," offered Ravindran.

A few days later, Ravindran got a call from a fuming and frothing District Magistrate. "My house has been burgled," he shouted, and launched into a tirade against policemen who could not prevent crimes and who failed to bring criminals to book Ravindran, meanwhile, quietly went about his investigation and, at the end of it, reported, "The modus operandi indicates you've been robbed by the same chap you released on bail four times. Shall I bring him in and will you be granting bail again, Sir?"

Silence reigned, as Ravindran left to look for the thief who had kept his word and vanished from the district.

Those encouraging wrong-doers through leniency, those offering support to individuals or groups taking the law into their hands will only discover the fire they've been playing with after they've been burnt, was the moral of Anita's story, apocryphal or otherwise.

The Americans are now learning a story India learnt a few years ago in Sri Lanka.

Anita Pratap, now married to a former Norwegian ambassador, is more philosophical in outlook these days and is more into social causes and social injustice than frontline action that she sought during those days when she was, as she described herself, "a typewriter guerrilla".

* * *

A builder of landmarks Being celebrated more publicly today than the more private observance a fortnight ago is the 75th birthday of the builder of many modern landmarks of today. B. S. Abdur Rahman's contribution to the skyline of post-Independence Madras is every bit as significant as the Indo-Saracenic contributions Thaticonda Namberumal Chetty made over a century ago.

Among the landmarks Namberumal Chetty's contracting firm raised were the High Court and Law College buildings, the headquarters of the Madras Bank that is now the State Bank's Main branch and its neighbour, the National Bank building, now sadly no more, the Victoria Public Hall (Town Hall), the Victoria Technical Institute's first home which is now the National Art Gallery, and the Victoria Students' Hostel in Chepauk. At the inauguration of the hostel in January 1900, Governor Sir Arthur Havelock said, "Mr. Namberumal Chetty will have his name recorded in Madras in connection with many large and beautiful buildings in stone, brick and mortar. It should be a proud remembrance for him and his descendants that he had had so much to do with the beautifying of the city.'' The same could be said of Abdur Rahman, affectionately known to friends and business associates as `Sena Aana'.

East Coast Constructions and Industries that Abdur Rahman founded in 1962, has been responsible for such Madras landmarks as the Gemini and Kodambakkam flyovers, the first in the city, the Viswesarayya Tower in Anna Nagar, the M. A. Chidambaram Stadium in Chepauk, Valluvar Kottam and the Marina Lighthouse. There are several other major constructions by ECCI in other parts of the State, including the spectacular mosque in Sena Aana's home village of Kilakarai.

For centuries, the ports of Kilakarai and Kayalpattinam, in Ramanathapuram district, traded with Ceylon. They were long associated with the pearl and chank fisheries of the Gulf of Mannar as well as with the export of rice and textiles to 19th century Ceylon. But it was through the expertise gained in the pearl fisheries that many merchants of this stretch of coast became well-known experts in the international gem trade. It was to find his fortune in the gem trade that Abdur Rahman quit school before matriculating and went to Ceylon. But refusing the protection and comfort offered by the business his father had already established in the island, Sena Aana attempted to strike out on his own, having learnt from his father how to evaluate gemstones. A loner, however, he was not welcomed by the trade and Abdur Rahman, to make ends meet, was forced to work as a messenger in a chummery, serving other Ramanathapuram coast traders who lived there. A contact made through one of them got him his first consignment of gems to sell - and Abdur Rahman was on his way... to Penang, Hong Kong, Belgium, the U.K., the U.S. and Latin America.

Today, his business empire stretches from Hong Kong to Dubai, where ETA-Ascon is a major conglomerate focussing on construction, shipping and related businesses. In Madras, ECCI is now part of the Buharia Group, but the flagship of the Asia-wide operations is ETA-Ascon, which has most recently been associated with raising another Madras landmark, Raheja Towers. But with family and kin to look after the group's far-flung operations, Sena Aana now spends much of his time on improving the lot of the community.

Almost every year since he founded the Seethakathi Trust in 1967, he has helped develop a school, a college, a technical training institute, a medical centre or a children's home. Scores are the other such institutions he has aided.

Now, with a nursing college and a hospital established for it in Madurai, he would like to develop a medical college on the same vast campus.

Whatever we earn, we must give back a substantial part of it to develop the community, he tells one and all. And he does what he says.

* * *

When the postman knocked

Recalling happy days in the acres where the Hotel Oceanic (Miscellany, October 1st) was developed in the early 1950s is former IGP, Tamil Nadu, K. R. Shenai. It was his father, also K. R. Shenai, an advocate, who around 1917 bought a 5-6 acre plot with an old house in its southwest corner here. In an eastern corner of the plot, and facing San Thome High Road, he built a house in 1922 and it was there that the future Police Chief was born. The family occupied the house till the threat of Japanese invasion in 1942 had them moving out and M.S. Ramaswamy Chettiar of Mahalakshmi Films in due course bought a parcel of the acreage from the Shenais, thereafter developing the Oceanic on it.

A neighbouring property to the northwest was the Maharajah of Vizianagaram's palace, a garden property called Admiralty House dating back to 1892 - when the senior naval officer in the growing city occupied it. The garden house was acquired by the Maharajah around 1914. The Maharajah had a host of problems that gossip still thrives on, but Reader Shenai recalls the poignant words of the maharajah of Vizianagaram who, arguing his case against the Government and the Court of Wards in the 1930s when they planned on taking his children away from him to London, is said to have stated, "Just as a polar bear cannot survive in Madras, my children cannot survive in London". Not long afterwards, the Maharajah fell off the balcony and died.

In more recent years, an Admiralty Hotel was run in the premises of the palace midst much new construction.

But that too has folded up. Both properties have proved ill-fated ones, writes Reader Shenai.

Admiralty House, Mandaveli, is the second major property with this name. The first, where Robert Clive once lived, is in Fort St. George, across from St. Mary's Church.

It is now occupied by the Archaeological Survey of India. Many call the mansion in Government Estate, which was occupied by successive British Governors from 1752, Admiralty House.

But Mrs. Antonia de Madeiros' house that Governor Thoas Saunders bought, and which Edward Clive and others developed, was NEVER called by this name; it was first Governor's House, then Government House, which is still its official name even if it is occupied by the Police.

S.MUTHIAH

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