Adyar & Me

I had shared the news that my article titled `Adyarum Naanum (Adyar & Me)` in Tamil had appeared in the Kalaimagal magazine`s Diwali issue this year. For those who cannot read Tamil among my FB friends, I am reproducing below the English version of the article. The article describes my long association with Adyar, a popular residential area consisting of many colonies. I have been a resident of Sastri Nagar, one of the colonies forming a part of Adyar, for the last 49 years.

Adyar & Me

by R.V.Rajan

A few weeks ago a team from Federal Bank accompanied by executives from their advertising agency landed in my home. As a resident of Adyar for the last 49 years, they wanted to know what it meant to me and the highlights of my long association with Adyar. I was told that this was being done as a part of `I am Adyar. Adyar is Me` campaign that celebrates people and their culture in Adyar. This gave me an opportunity to go down memory lane.

It was on my first official visit to Chennai in 1967, I had to visit Sastri Nagar in Adyar, responding to a dinner invitation from the Branch Manager of my company. I remember that I had to cross a narrow one-way iron bridge over the Adyar river connecting Gandhi Nagar and the areas beyond, with the city. A traffic constable was stationed to allow vehicles from either side to go over the bridge alternately. My Branch Manager’s house was one of the dozen independent houses in the area, with plenty of open space all around. I was told that during the rainy season, the entire area would be flooded and Sastri Nagar would look like a lake dotted with houses! I never imagined that within seven years I would move to Chennai and settle down in Sastri Nagar, a beautiful little colony with lovely houses built by retired bureaucrats, upcoming businessmen, and a few professionals. By the time I moved to Sastri Nagar, the area had seen some development, with more independent houses.

 
Besant Nagar, lying between Sastri Nagar and the beautiful Elliots beach, was fast developing, with a complex of Housing Board flats serving different strata of society. For all our daily necessities we had to go to Besant Nagar or walk up to Lattice Bridge Road (LB Road). Laxmi Sagar, the Udupi Restaurant dishing out delicious South Indian snacks, was the only restaurant serving the entire area and it was located (and continues to exist) diagonally opposite Adyar Telephone Exchange. Today, Adyar, with several well-developed colonies, has a choice of multi-cuisine restaurants offering Indian, Chinese, Italian, Korean, Japanese, and Continental flavours. You can get everything- from `pin to elephant`- in Adyar today.

 
In the last two decades, greedy builders have managed to tempt the owners of the beautiful houses to go in for joint development of plots, with the result that Sastri Nagar has become a concrete jungle. This is true of many other colonies in Adyar. Many of the streets are witnessing the appearance of commercial ventures in a primarily residential area, transforming the profile of the locality. My home, which is one of the few independent homes in Sastri Nagar, was a peaceful place tucked inside a small lane facing the colony’s only Corporation playground. Today, we are surrounded by multi-storied apartments on three sides leading to a feeling of suffocation.

I will, however, not think of leaving Sastri Nagar because of its strategic location. Just a ten-minute walk from my home to the lovely Elliot’s Beach where I can watch the sun rise and breathe fresh air every morning. It is another matter that I go for a walk in my car! Though I have been walking on the beach road in Besant Nagar, popularly known as `Bessy` among the younger generation for the last 49 years, I had never bothered to befriend strangers crossing my path in the old days. It would at best be a courteous `Hi` and `Bye` to some acquaintances I bumped into! It was only after I had completely come out of my active professional life that I started cultivating new friends during my walks because I was not in a hurry to get back home.

The two groups of walking friends I am now associated with consist of people who are in their seventies or eighties. It is a mix of retired professionals from the private/public sector, bureaucrats, and even educators. Every morning the groups meet at a fixed time – exchanging the latest gossip in town or the political situation or a few jokes. Jokes at the expense of some members are not uncommon. You can judge from the boisterous laughter emanating from the groups from time to time that everyone is having fun. I make it a point to spend 60 minutes between these two groups every morning and indulge in some throaty laughter considered good for the mind and body. Laughter a day keeps the doctor or the `blues` away! A brisk walk followed by a dose of healthy laughter and a good cup of filter coffee sets the right tone for the rest of the day for me. I come back fully charged to spend an active day ahead; which also involves interacting with a whole set of new friends I have made in the literary world as a writer/author. One of them is Kizhambur Sankara Subramanian, the editor of Kalaimagal.

I first met Kizhambur when I went to hand over a short story in Tamil written by my late wife Prabha, twenty-five years ago. However, I got closer to him only after I started the Prabha Rajan Talent Foundation ( PRTF) in memory of my late wife Prabha, which has conducted a few literary contests in association with Kalaimagal. His association with Tamizh Puthaga Nanbargal of which I was one of the founders, cemented our friendship. I am grateful to him for inviting me to contribute this article for publication in this year`s Diwali issue of Kalaimagal.