“Go via Pycrofts Road, turn into Nalla Thambi Pillai Street, turn left again into Singarachari Street and stop at the second house on the left, the one with the green grill.” For years my father gave these instructions to the jutkakkaran (the horse-cartman) at Egmore station.
It was the early 1940s and we — four kids with amma and appa — would have arrived by the Trivandrum Express after a 28-hour journey from Trivandrum, to spend our summer holidays at ‘Patnam’ (city), which is what we called Chennai.
The British name for the neighbourhood my father’s family lived in, ‘Triplicane’, was for official use. For Tamil speakers it was always Thiruvallikkeni — which took its name from the ancient water-lily pond at the Parthasarathy temple. The tottering jutka would take us to our two-storied joint-family home, stretching the length of the block. The front door was on Singarachari Street, the back door opened out on Easwara Das Lala Street.
Visits to the Parthasarathy temple and to the Marina beach were part of our summer-holiday routine. You just took a short walk through Easwara Das Lala Street onto Pycrofts Road, and you could see the sea and the sand in the distance. Easwara Das Lala Street was something out of an R.K. Narayan story, with its buffaloes, clamour and chaos. We would giggle non-stop while negotiating our way through, avoiding cow dung and vendors’ carts. Appa would grudgingly buy us the sundal at Marina. The taste of that sundal is still with me.
My grandmother never ate anything brought from outside, unless it came from the temple. The sweet pongal from the Parthasarathy temple was a treat that the entire household looked forward to.
Walking to the temple with paati was a memorable experience. She would stop periodically to talk to her friends, then show me off proudly saying, “My son has come from Anathasayanam (that’s how she referred to Trivandrum — by its temple); this is his eldest child.”
These introductions would continue inside the temple as well. Paati would show me the vahanams — the different vehicles of the lord. For on special days, the lord would be taken in procession around the four streets surrounding the temple. At one end of Singarachari Street, the entourage would stop at Gangana Mandapam. The nadaswaram music would herald the deity’s arrival even as it entered our street. There would be excited calls from one to another to assemble in the front; sometimes with a plate of coconut, bananas and camphor as an offering. I would run frenziedly from the front door to the kitchen at the furthermost end of the house, shouting, “The procession is just a few houses away; come, paati, come!” The running commentary on the procession’s progress would be taken up by my cousins, too, and one by one, the ladies of the house would assemble in the front verandah. The sons of the house would already be there, while the grand old gentleman, the great-grand-father, would have his darshan from his balcony upstairs.
All the ladies in their nine-yard saris would adjust the tail ends of their saris to go around their backs, in a show of modesty as well as reverence to the deity. The plate with the offerings would be given by one of the uncles to the priest perched atop the vahanam with the lord, and after the camphor was lit and waved before the deity, the coconut broken, the fruits offered and the plate returned to my uncle, the procession would move on. People from other streets who did not have the advantage of having god visit them at their doorstep would gather in front of the houses on our street.
After the procession had moved away, and with the faint nadaswaram music still in the air, continuing the magic, some of those visitors would stand around making small talk with my uncles. This ritual of watching the procession would often take place in the mornings, too, but with less attendance and less lingering on after it had passed. On some special festival days, stories from the Puranas would be enacted on those streets.
On one of my later visits to Chennai, I got to meet the grand, legendary lady of Thiruvallikkeni, Vai. Mu. Kothainayaki Ammal, nationalist and social activist who was also a prolific writer. She was editor and publisher of the family-owned magazine Jaganmohini and her house was diagonally across ours, on Car Street. I had avidly devoured all her novels and so was keen to see the author in person. I was at that age when all writers had halos around their heads. I ventured into the house under the pretext of joining a Hindi class. I knocked, and the door opened to the strains of Kalyani ragam, followed by a lady in a nine-yard sari with a prominent kumkumappottu on her forehead. I had occasion to meet her a few more times and in my memory now I always associate the gracious lady with music.
Sometimes we were taken to visit an aunt who lived on Triplicane High Road. That meant a tram journey. The clang of bells would send us all into fits of giggles. The aunt’s house was right on the main road and we spent most of the visit standing at the doorway watching trams go to and fro. There were a few trips outside Thiruvallikkeni as well but we were nervous about getting in and out of the electric trains, much to the amusement of my cousins. I do not think I have got rid of that fear to this day!
