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Where Madras embraces Chennai

Chennai turns 376 this week and though leisurely, its makeover has been incredible. these spectacular new cultural and social hotspots join the older ones to make the city a home for all reasons.

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Classical vocabulary


In a city of constant innovation and cultural transients, a few visions conserve themselves. The deep greens, turmeric yellows and vermilion reds that smear the verdant woods of Kalakshetra are an offshoot of one such vision-an idealism Rukmini Devi Arundale breathed life into almost eight decades ago, as a young dancer hungry to find herself. She ended up creating a revolution in the process. A place where art, life and education intertwine in these 99 acres of a South Indian town. For Priyadarsini Govind, 50, who took over as director of Kalakshetra in July 2013, the institution represents a space that is every artiste's dream.

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"When I walk into this campus every morning, it never fails to move me. I enjoy the high times and the challenges," she says. Kalakshetra's style of natyam birthed as an artistic and intellectual extension of Rukmini Devi's own deep understanding of the Pandanallur style of Bharatantyam in which she was trained. Though having learnt a different style of dance, Govind upholds the vision that Kalakshetra is a fantastic training ground that inspires even the youngest student who walks into the campus.

"Here it's only the very serious and passionate who are able to withstand the rigorous training. Our expectations from students are very high, which is as they should be, because the idea is to bring out their best potential," she says. Now, her own time and energies are invested towards realising vital goals such as reopening the Bharata Kalakshetra auditorium next year and enabling Kalakshetra to award a degree and amending recruitment rules. AT Kalakshetra Road, Thiruvanmiyur TEL 24520836

Dressing up Chennai

Eighty-six years since Nalli began as a tiny saree shop selling out of a home in T Nagar, it prides itself for having offered no discounts ever. And its doyen chairman Kuppuswami Chetti, 74, is contently unapologetic about it. His only explanation to this business principle is also a challenge. "Our quality is unparalleled and we are transparent about it. From a time when there was just the pure silk saree with pure zari, we brought in artificial zari, silk with cotton and polyester, as and when they hit the market. But we always chose to spell them out in labels. You'll never pay for anything less or more here," he says. Nalli brought home the zari testing machine 20 years ago-an equipment initially designed to check gold jewellery, it was later tweaked to regulate quality zari. Chetti took over the business as a 15-year-old boy in March 1956, a day after he wrote his SSLC exam.

It was also a time when the six-yard silk saree was priced at Rs. 12 and the nine-yard silk saree at Rs 18. "Our per day sale didn't exceed Rs. 90, which my father duly walked to the bank and deposited every day," he says and adds, "It was also a time when middle class families would pay for pure silk sarees in instalments like EMI, as they couldn't afford them." Silk sarees back then were bought for weddings and Diwali. And wedding saree shopping often ran into a day-long affair when Chetti accompanied his father to the bride's home with their merchandise and the whole family gathered to pick the finest of the lot. Nalli's legacy found greater validation from outside before even before reached its peak at home. Chetti remembers how once Prema Srinivasan of the TVS family walked in with an American guest, who he later came to know was Jacqueline Kennedy. "And we were predictably stunned at how the First Lady had walked unassumingly into the shop, with no security or policemen surrounding her," says Chetti.

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Today, the occasions for gifting oneself the luscious silk are clearly not as exclusive, and parallely the choice for more 'convenient', less expensive sarees has gone up. As Chetti admits, weddings are looked on as the most deserving occasions for pure silk today, with the bride bagging the cream of the lot. From unveiling saree ranges themed on movie names, the brand has now taken from Chetti's own passion for the arts and releases collections named on Carnatic ragams. "Our latest is called Kalyani," he adds. AT 100, Usman Road, T Nagar TEL 24314900

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Spin back the Yarn

If a small weaver or textile merchant's passion for his craft has to manifest into a cut-throat commercial establishment, it happens only when he's swimming with and not against the current. And the last three decades of current in the textile industry have carried with them a swift shift from handlooms to power looms, natural fabrics to synthetics and family vocations to white collar jobs. But Simrat Chadha, 43, and Nalini Sriram, 54, are the kind of handloom patrons that don't blink easy. At Shilpi, the boutique they took over from Arundhati Menon and Bamini Narayanan in 2012, they champion every truth about the saree from its brass tacks.

"We've managed to retain the beauty of the saree in its original form. Every state in India has got the most fantastic textile heritage and history and it's our larger endeavour to go back and explore them as they are," says Chadha. Because, the saree to her is not just six metres of cloth, but someone's entire life. "For example, if a weaver in Bihar has put together a beautiful Tussar; it speaks of what is happening to the state of Tussar there, its quality, his wages, his looms and his family," says Chadha. The handloom sector in India has been a great offshoot of the agricultural sector. Though there are numerous trends that can dispirit the weaver today, the responsibility of revival is multi-owned, feel Chadha and Sriram. Even if weaving- from being a secondary occupation and at times even the primary one for various communities-has undergone a metamorphosis.

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"The Jats in Gurgaon have sold their agricultural lands for skyrocketing prices. On the other hand in Tamil Nadu, the weaver, who was also a farmer in alteration, doesn't want his children to do what he's doing, and instead enrols them in an engineering college to get IT and BPO jobs," says Chadha. But with cheap imitations being churned out every day, customers too have become less discerning of something handmade, hand-woven and hand-printed. "We've seen so much of a good thing, we don't appreciate it. This is how a policy offsets something which is a bad revolution," she points out. But looking beyond all the things that are wrong, this duo is celebrating the people, skills, geographies and techniques that are still alive and only need a little push to sustain. "We are two ends of the spectrum. The weavers and craftsmen create beautiful sarees and we sell them; there are no middlemen. But people on their part, should celebrate the saree in every way they can. All the more in Tamil Nadu, to which it is native. We'd love for it to become an everyday garment," says Chadha. AT 29, CP Ramaswamy Iyer Rd, Alwarpet TEL 2499 7526

Smashing sambhar

Attempt to picture the Triplicane of the 1940s and you can only so much as conjure up an image of narrow streets leading to the temple and the mosque, mansions of all sizes dramatically lining them and their balconies filled with young bachelors-their primary inhabitants-basking in the warm, damp air of summer evenings. The Triplicane of today is miles apart from this image and old-timers around here would gladly sit you down over a cup of coffee to grieve over the many ways it is. But what they will all connect to in a moment of fondness is Ratna Cafe-perhaps one of the few places of personal significance here that stands as though preserved in amber. "Some of our customers are even sentimental about certain tables, where they have celebrated job promotions, weddings and fatherhood," says Lokesh Gupta, 25, the restaurant's third generation owner.

Ratna Cafe was started in 1948, as a place where friends met and bonded over tiffin and coffee. The anticipation and boundaries of a meal at Ratna Cafe, as most know, lie in its freshly ground sambar, whose aroma wafts through the chaos and traffic snarls typically characterising this junction. They have, over the years, reminded people to stop and smell life's tastier things. "My grand uncle, Triloknath Gupta, was the first to bring to Chennai the sambar idli (a variant of idli sambar wherein the sambar soaks the idlis and isn't just served alongside it)," says Gupta. Ratna Cafe's sambar is so popular they would charge for it and not the idli. Weekday mornings see about 1,300 litres of sambar being made at Ratna Cafe, for which the preparation starts at 4.30 a.m. In 2002, Lokesh's father Rajendra Gupta introduced jalebis too. MEAL FOR TWO Rs 300 AT 255, Triplicane High road, Triplicane TEL 28487181

Tiffin goes chic

ID didn't start out intending to be the ambitious modern-day twist to Chennai's beloved idli-dosa-coffee tradition. But it became that in time and the team behind it, headed by Bavesh Shah, 36, has played along quite masterfully. "We started this as a kitchen to provide our own staff at Sathyam with fresh, healthy food every day-something which we previously had to outsource. Then it occurred to our CEO, Kiran Reddy that there was much room for a contemporary South Indian restaurant, which could fill the gap that existed for authentic, but stylised tiffin," says Shah, head, F&B, Sathyam Cinemas. While the recipes were the easier part to source and master after a little flavour hunting by their chef, their USP were swanky Herman Miller and Philip Starck interiors, gorgeous framed photographs by Sharad Haksar and fine square stainless steel plates from Italy.

They brought home Michelin Star chef Michael Basse, who though initially didn't understand head or tail of South Indian tiffin, but later "got down to the science of it and showed us how to steam the perfect idlis. Today, he eats more South Indian than French in France," says Shah. ID's distinct ambience is primarily lent to it by its open and interactive kitchen that almost amplifies the sizzle and aroma of dosas, brewing sambar and freshly fried masala vadas. "We wanted people to watch their food being prepared, which though slightly tricky with South Indian cuisine, could redefine the way they ate it. We put bar stools around the counter where customers could sit and ask their dosas to be made more or less crispier," says Shah. The dosa grills that sizzle at ID today were actually two Teppanyaki grills that Reddy and her team brought down to start a Pan-Asian restaurant at Sathyam, but didn't. Today, ID has seven outlets in Tamil Nadu, of which five are in Chennai. Their food court format, ID Express, sees thousands of people on weekends at Forum Vijaya and Phoenix malls.

Their ven pongal, masala dosa and kasi halwa are hard-to-beat and even tastier is the sambar you would want to wash all these things down in, thanks to its spectacular recipe. ID now supplies to its branches through a central kitchen in Triplicane and plans to expand throughout India soon. "We want to take the brand up north, now that we've seen an overwhelming response both at Sathyam and at the malls, where the dynamics are very different. Of course, we'd love to have one kitchen deliver all across the country, but we're toying around the idea. Now that people love what we cook, we'd like to hear the same everywhere," says Shah. MEAL FOR TWO Rs. 400 AT 1st Floor, Sathyam Cinemas Complex, Royapettah TEL 43920346

Old time's sake

Ask any hearty old-timer and they'll tell you they spent toasting to some of their most memorable moments at Geoffrey's. One of the oldest pubs in the city, Geoffrey's is laid-back and unpretentious with warm lights bouncing off wooden furnishing, comfy leather seating, a neon blue-lit bar and a huge pool table. The walls are lined with original London Times clippings on JF Kennedy's assassination and the Wall Street crash, framed alongside old Coca Cola ads and paintings of Chateau Rouge. With a seating capacity of almost 100 people, Geoffreys' best aspect is its generous use of space, enough to move around and even dance if you please. On Saturday evenings, following a legacy that's become trademark to Geoffrey's, live acts by city-based rock bands are hosted. With a menu that gives you the classics as they should be, it scores high on creative cocktails and mocktails too. MEAL FOR TWO Rs. 1,200 At Hotel Radha Regent, 171, Jawaharlal Nehru Salai, Arumbakkam TEL 66778899

Art of the Irish

Chennai loves its beer and new pubs have faced no dearth of demand to open up in the city. But seldom does a hotel's F&B department refrain from falling back on the cushion of steady demand and offer something bold and original. When they opened discussion for an Irish pub at Hablis Chennai over a year-and-a-half ago, Rajesh Devarajan, 42, the managing director, decided it had to resonate with the spirit of an authentic Irish public house-typically large, bustling spaces, where strangers could drink, socialise and even become pals for life. And Chennai being a city that takes its pace and time, was certainly a tricky, if not an inapt market for something of this kind. "We were talking over 250 covers and flowy, ceaseless spacing, which for a pub was still unorthodox around here.

But we decided to take that chance because it was more about initiating a culture than just opening another tavern," says Devarajan. And so, The Moon and Sixpence was set up in a month's time by an Irish architectural team, who made it one of the city's most innovative
spaces for drinking and conversations. "A part of our idea was to bring back personalised evenings with live music and therefore we have some of the country's best bands playing three days a week on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays," says Devarajan. The most recent to smash the evening was the power-packed Candy Flip Sundae from Mumbai. Done up dominantly in solid wood, warm colours with hints red and gold accents, The Moon and Sixpence houses a total of 268 covers. There's plenty of room for private seating with a separate bar and a massive smoking zone, with stunning single piece wooden chairs, traditional to Ireland. It's enough to make this a service space in itself. There's no mistaking the Irish roots the bar is built on as you scan the menu, which, if not entirely, at least for a good part, brings you signature recipes that resonate with the theme.

They have the Irish rustic salad with aged Balsamic, Irish stuffed Salmon, the mind-blowing Irish coffee and of course, draught beer. "This is primarily built like a beer place, but in time we are planning to bring in beautiful liqueur-based ice-creams and wine sorbets for the finer palates. There's always scope to innovate," says Devarajan. MEAL FOR TWO Rs. 2,000 AT Hablis Hotel, 19, GST Road, Guindy TEL 30853872

Sweet endings

When you create a dessert and make it a hit in Chennai, you're sure to have a huge fan following. Ravindra Tewary, 63, ex-cinematographer-restaurateur and now perhaps the city's most popular kulfi supplier, has learnt this lesson quite extraordinarily. A Film and Television Institute of India graduate who handled the camera for films such as Sattam, Vidhi and Viduthalai, Tewary also ran a restaurant in Montieth Road, which eventually came to be known for its 'unique' kulfis. "We had a chat counter where we sold these desserts and soon word spread around town about their taste and the kulfi became our star dish," he says. But due to the rigorous schedule of the film industry, he sold the restaurant and his course further changed when he suffered a massive heart attack in 2000 and underwent a bypass surgery.

After all those years of trials and victories in different areas of passion, what stands today is his little kulfi shop in Nungambakkam-a remnant of his magic recipes that had scores visiting his restaurant. Set up in 1982, even today, about 80 to 100 people pull up here every day, typically post lunch or dinner, to satiate their sweet cravings. "I have always retained the original preparation and used only the natural fruits, saffron and cream. The growing demand must not be a reason to compromise on these things. It should on the contrary encourage you to do better," he says. His kulfis are not only supplied to hundreds of walk-ins but also high profile hospitality clients like ITC and Taj. Taking his legacy and the business forward now is his son Abhishek, 30. Their best fare includes the smooth and decadent banana, strawberry and saffron kulfis. "About a thousand of these are prepared in eight hours. It's quite a feat but absolutely worth it," says Tewary. PRICE Rs 40 to 80 AT Corporation Market Building, 4th Cross St, Lake Area, Nungambakkam TEL 9384055557