Registered with the Reg. No. TN/CH(C)/374/15-17 Registrar of Newspapers Licenced to post without prepayment for India under R.N.I. 53640/91 Licence No. TN/PMG(CCR)/WPP-506/15-17 Publication: 15th & 28th of every month Rs. 5 per copy (Annual Subscription: Rs. 100/-) WE CARE FOR MADRAS THAT IS CHENNAI INSIDE • Short ‘N’ Snappy • How about pedestrians? • Alwarpet memories • The ‘Fishing Fleet’ • 2 pages of happenings Vol. XXV No. 13 MUSINGS October 16-31, 2015 And still more Know your Fort flyovers? better recent video uploaded on make a bigger and more mon- four years of its existence. The AYoutube went viral. strous flyover. new structure, it claims, will re- A computer generated simu- The Corporation of Chennai duce the travel time from Anna lation, it demonstrated the recently gave its nod for a Rs Salai to Mahalingapuram to less space freed up on a vital New 290 crore exercise that involves than two minutes – for car users York road if everyone gave up the linking of the North and of course. The problem is that their cars and took to alter- none of the local residents want natives such as bicycles, buses any of this flyover or even the and streetcars. World over, the G by The Editor earlier flyovers. They have, in trend is to replace private cars fact, written to the Corporation on the roads. Our city, however, South Usman Roads flyovers demanding the demolishing of appears to be on a completely and creating what it terms the both the existing structures. different trajectory. The Ad- Anna Salai-Mahalingapuram It is the contention of the ministration continues to Connector. The civic body is residents that they had objected Elizabeth Baker’s tombstone. Agent Greenhill's tombstone. pander to the interests of car understandably excited about to the North and South Usman owners. The latest, mani- flyovers even at the design Before you walk into the Church of St Mary’s and admire its trea- its plan – it has had no large sured possessions, pause for a while and look around the yard. It is festation of this malaise is the project to showcase in the last stage. As many as nine alterna- proposal to link two failed tives were proposed to residents paved with some of the oldest British tombstones in India. All of them rectangular, several of them broken and re-assembled like a flyovers in the T Nagar area and (Continued on page 2) but there were objections to each. Yet the Corporation jigsaw, these have a story of their own to tell, for some of them date decided to go ahead with its to a time when St Mary’s was not yet thought of. plans. The end result, according A high rate of mortality was one of the features of early colonial to the locals, is that there are life in India and, today, the sole remnant in many abandoned settle- 30 years huge traffic pile-ups, before, ments is a graveyard. Madras is different, for its first British grave- after and even on the flyovers. yard has completely vanished, the Law College standing on that The Corporation concedes this site now. The early records speak of ‘the English Golgotha or Place and has offered to make certain of Sculls’ as having been near “the North West angle of the Native of consumer structural modifications to Town” – not to be confused with present day George Town but the allow for better access to the old Black Town which straggled to the rear of the Fort and occu- side roads when the new flyover pied much of what we would today recognise as the High Court is built. The civic body is also, Campus. A vast guava garden existed west of this spot and from Dr activism Fryer’s writings based on his stay in the city in 1673, we do know for perhaps the first time, considering introducing pedes- that the last resting place of the first English settlers here was no (By A Staff Reporter) trian subways in the proposed open yard but an enclosure with distinctive architectural features. structure. H D Love, in his Vestiges of Old Madras (1913), has it that the group of professionals Electricity Regulatory Commis- Residents, however, contend tombs ”occupied the floor of a long battlemented cloister. This had A came together 30 years sion), Shyamala Nataraj (devel- that the new flyover will only arches on each side, supported by pillars, which also carried a ago in Madras to form the Con- opment journalist with the add to their woes. The new vaulted roof. The roof consisted of a series of domes, each dome sumer Action Group (CAG, South India Aids Action Pro- structure will further restrict rising from a square base of four columns, and terminating in a ball later renamed the Citizen Con- gram) and of course Sriram the side roads, and access lanes carrying ornamental iron work”. The last named has been de- sumer and Civic Action Panchu. will become highly constricted. scribed by Dr Fryer as a globe riveted by ”an iron wedge sprouting Group). CAG was promoted to Several months down the They fear that in the event of a into a Branch”. All the monuments and funerary slabs were of help the consumer take care of line, a photography exhibition fire accident, there will be no Pallavaram gneiss, the local stone. his interests even before the was held in 1986 that high- space for fire tenders to make In 1680, when Streynsham Master was in charge of Madras, the Consumer Protection Act was lighted the significant civic their way to the site. Residents burial ground was cordoned off from the rest of the guava garden enacted in the country. The problems ordinary citizens faced also point out that even with by a wall. The garden itself was handed over for development and moving spirit behind this move- in Chennai. The exhibition re- the existing flyover the space on it came up Garden and Merchant Streets, Merchant Lane and ment was a young lawyer, vealed the ambitious goals of its beneath and along the sides is Back Lane, none of which survive now. Arriving in Madras in 1702, Sriram Panchu, who roped in organisers and also that CAG practically unusable. Civic Charles Lockyer penned a detailed account of our city and in it his senior Govind Swamina- meant business. CAG’s found- maintenance in these areas is also included a description of the burial place, which, according to dhan, Senior Advocate and ing trustees took a much more also wanting, as conservancy him, was “adorn’d with many stately Tombs in honour of the De- former Advocate General of expansive view of the consumer trucks find it difficult to move funct. Some with lofty Spires carved into different Fancies, after Tamil Nadu, to be one of the than traditional consumer pro- about. the Indian manner; others in a lower Sphere gravely express the governing trustees. The initial tection organisations. Rather Local opinion has it that the Merits of the Person for whose sake they were erected; and all in trustees were S. Guhan (former than focus only on the rights of Corporation is looking at the general have the most curious Workmanship in India bestow’d on Finance Secretary, Govern- those who paid for particular them.” Lockyer also evidently attended a couple of burials there ment of Tamil Nadu), S.L.Rao (former Chairman, Central (Continued on page 2) (Continued on page 2) (Continued on page 8) CMYK 2 MADRAS MUSINGS October 16-31, 2015 CONSUMER Going Global (and Green) he Global Investors’ Meet Another panjandrum, with Clearly the bling was not allow- ACTIVISM Tgot (GIM) over last some affinity to those in the ed to cling. month. Sadly for The Man opposition, said that the ones It was, however, the liberal from Madras Musings, he had out of power were quite sick at usage of yellow paint that was a (Continued from page 1) nities through public meetings to miss it, what with his having the way the GIM turned out. dead giveaway. MMM had half and educational materials. to be elsewhere. If only he had Their own future they opined expected that this colour of the goods and services, CAG saw Since CAG’s inception, quali- been around, he is pretty much was likely to be grim and they sun would be vetoed for road all residents of Chennai as con- fied legal professionals have sure that he would have were apparently very glum signs and replaced with that of sumers of goods and services provided free counselling to enough material to fill several about it. This rather puzzled tender leaves but he presumes provided by the Government. consumers seeking redress. columns of this size for months MMM. After all, everyone in that this idea may have been CAG was created to fight for a The Group is best known for on end. For instance, as he politics is supposed to be work- given up out of considerations city that was more responsive to could see from the newspa- ing for the welfare of the same of visibility. And so yellow and important public interest litiga- pers, there was this laser dis- State, no? white colours were used to the needs of all of its residents. tions it filed in the city’s courts play on the riverside, a speech mark the borders of the lanes. Over the years, the organi- and the Supreme Court, espe- by a certain minister that drew Roads (not) global This however was done in such sation has been a leader in is- cially on issues affecting public much traction and titillation a hurry that nobody noticed health and the environment.