Mambalam - When a station changed forever a laid-back place

Old-timers remember Chennai as Madras, a city of horse-drawn carriages, lonely streets and men in suits. A TOI series brings recollections from a mix of neighbourhoods
In the 1960s, Vakula S Varadarajan, then in his 20s, could every night hear the last train to Tenkasi as it crossed the bridge over the Adyar in Saidapet at 10.05pm. The rattle of the locomotive, which could be heard from 3km away, came to define Mambalam in many ways.
Once a giant lake area, strewn with paddy fields, mango orchards and wood apple trees, the early signs of urbanisation in Mambalam begun in the 1910s when the railway line between Madras and Kancheepuram were laid.The Mambalam railway station, opened in 1911, became an immediate landmark and around it the locality developed.
“There were only four or five houses in my area when we moved in during the 1960s,“ recalls Varadarajan, who lives on Babu Rajendra Prasad Street adjoining the station. “The total population was around 1,000 then.“

For Varadarajan, the trains and the railway line changed the contours of the area forever. It brought the brahmins from Georgetown (old Madras) and Tanjore to Mambalam. Most of them were poor cooks and priests from Kumbakonam who, even now, live in the locality's bylanes, several of which are named after freedom fighters.
“Many people would alight at Mambalam and walk through the paddy fields to the Murugan temple in what is today Vadapalani,“ recalls Varadarajan, who is now 72. Today neither can one hear the locomotive rattle nor see the railway high tension wires. Apartments have blocked the view which once extended far and wide. In the 1970s, says Varadarajan, he would stand on the terrace of his newlybuilt house and see youngsters alighting from a train every morning. These youngsters were budding scriptwriters who wanted to meet Sivaji Ganesan, Gemini Ganesan and Savithri who would ply their trade in nearby Kodambakkam.
During the same time, textile shops sprouted east of the station -which today is the business district. Numerous unemployed youngsters boarded trains from Tuticorin, Tirunelveli and Kanyakumari find work in these shops. They also dreamt of a career in films, without much luck though, Varadarajan says.
This new populace also created a demand for meat in the bylanes which were till then were inhabited by vegetarians, says Varadarajan. But even as the culinary cartography of Mambalam changed, the rich aroma of Kumbakonam degree coffee remained. Even today it pervades the air as one rides through the Lake View Road adjoining the station. “The area west of this road was a big lake,“ says Varadarajan. And as the population burgeoned, the lake began to disappear, making way for houses.
The congested Mambalam of today, where people jostle for space, contrasts with the laid back locality of the 1960s when women and kids who would visit neighbours during Navaratri. “There would be music which would reverberate in the colony,“ Varadarajan says. But as the neighbourhood expanded, so did its civic problems. In the stagnated waters bred mosquitoes. “This is how the famous cricket team Mambalam Mosquitoes got its name,“ Varadarajan says.
Then came sewage system to Mambalam late in the 1970s. Till then, recalls Varadarajan, manual scavengers would carry the night soil from the homes. The manual scavengers left but the mosquitoes remained.
And though they forced many well-off residents towards Tambaram and Madipakkam, people, by and large, learnt to live with them.