A mission to Tiruvottriyur
S. Duraiswami Iyer (MM, March 1st) was living with his brothers and eldest sister, Thayammal, at 89 Ramaswami Street, Mannadi, George Town, before he rose in the legal profession and shifted to Mylapore. They were all the grandchildren of the illustrious Veena Kuppier, a principal disciple of Saint Thyagaraja. My father, who had a close rapport with S.D., as they both were of the same age group, used to narrate many anecdotes about him, a few of which I include here.
While he was studying in Law College, he worked as a part-time Lab Assistant in the Medical College to earn some money. His job included demonstrating dissections of dead animals to Biology students! S.D. kept this a secret from the ears of his devout sister, Thayammal (my maternal grandmother), fearing her wrath if she came to know that a brother of hers was doing abhacharam, by slicing animals like a butcher!
Every Friday, my father and S.D. would go to Tiruvottriyur to worship Thripurasundari. One Friday, S.D., who was learning to drive a motorcycle that was lent to him by his friend, Dr. Krishna Reddy, took my father on the pillion and, while negotiating a sharp bend, rode into a tamarind tree! Both youngsters were in bandages for several days thereafter.
S.D., who was in harmony with Extremists in the Indian National Congress, had a long and close association with Subramania Bharati. The nationalist poet found the upstairs at 89 Ramaswami Street a congenial place to compose poetry. Once, when they were going by car, S.D. jocularly remarked that in a moving car Bharati had lost his poetic imagination. When the car stopped on the road near a teashop, Bharati got out of the car, got on to the bonnet and started reading out a new poem composed extempore!
After Bharati escaped to Pondicherry, information regarding the freedom struggle used to be sent to him there through paper slips that were dropped as though they were alms into the hands of couriers, who were in the guise of beggars seated outside the Tiruvottriyur temple! That was another reason for the weekly visits to Tiruvottriyur. This stealth became necessary because S.D.’s house was under police surveillance – a constable in mufti was always sitting on the thinnai.
My father used to say that there was a saintly atmosphere pervading the house all the time. S.D. was always attracted to the saints. Thus, he was a regular visitor to Ramana Ashramam (and to Aurobindo, whom he got to know through the freedom movement). Every Saturday, he would drive down to Tiruvannamalai, stay in the Ashramam doing service to Maharshi and return on Sunday night. One Saturday, Thayammal, who had been ailing for a long time and slowly sinking, had a premonition and felt she would not last long. She asked S.D. not to make the trip to Ramanashram that weekend, but S.D. said, “You are OK, Thayye, nothing will happen to you,” and left. That evening at the Ashram, Bhagawan chided S.D. telling him, “What are you doing here when your sister has breathed her last and her soul has already reached here!” It was quite true – just then, Thayammal had passed away in Madras!
After a twin tragedy (he lost his younger son, Thyagesan, who had joined the Royal Air Force, in action during World War II, and his elder son, Mithran, who held a short service commission in the Indian Army, due to an unknown illness), S.D, to assuage his grief, used from time to time to sojourn at Parthasarathy Gardens, the Thirumullaivayal residence of his mentor, S. Srinivasa Iyengar. While he used to visit Parthasarathy Gardens and the Vaishnavi Koil there often, it was at the Pondicherry Ashram that he breathed his last.
It was indeed great reading about him in Madras Musings!
Cdr. R. Ganapathi (Retd)
116, Defence Officers’ Colony, Chennai 600 032
A sage’s emissary?
In the course of my assisting Rajmohan Gandhi in 1973-75 (for his maternal grandfather’s biography) I came across material from persons who had known Rajaji in one way or another. Among papers dealing with the period 1878 to 1972, I found an interesting fact of history. Sri Aurobindo, the Sage of Pondicherry, had sent S. Duraiswami Iyer as his emissary to Mahatma Gandhi to request him to accept the Cripps’ proposals in the interests of a united India. But Gandhiji had called Sir Stafford Cripps’ proposals a ‘post-dated cheque’. Rajaji had openly disapproved of the ‘Quit India’ programme of August 8,1942 and earned the opprobrium of ‘August Drohi’ from the majority of the Madras Congressmen of those days.
Are there papers throwing light on Sri Aurobindo’s most unusual initiative of the time (after his giving up of active politics) and Duraiswami Iyer’s role in that episode?
I would like one of your readers to let us know when and where Gandhiji declared, “Rajaji saw at least six months ahead of me.” It was, of course, after 1943. Dr. P. Subbaroyan, then a member of Pandit Nehru’s Cabinet, told me of this when he came to the then 60 Bazullah Road to meet Rajaji sometime in 1960. He enjoyed the liberty of ‘gatecrashing’, as an old friend of Rajaji’s family, and had come when Rajaji was taking his morning bath. In those days, I used to give my spare hours to assist Rajaji’s elder daughter Namagiri Ammal whenever her bachelor brother the late C.R. Narasimhan was out of station. I was introduced to Dr. Subbaroyan by her and in a mood of nostalgia he recalled that statement of Mahatma Gandhi. Later, I found it in quotation marks in one of Dr. K.M. Munshi’s birthday tributes to Rajaji in the Bhavan’s Journal. But to this day I have not been able to trace its source.
K.Vedamurthy
“SriKrishna”, 62/44, 28th Cross Street
Indira Nagar (Adyar), Chennai 600 020
A clock in need
Similar to the defunct clock in the tower situated at the traffic intersection of Royapettah (MM, January 16th), another heritage tower clock, in the Ayanavaram Railway Joint Office, is also left in the lurch now.
It is a beautiful clock installed by the then Madras and Southern Maratha Railway in 1927 and is part of a huge and admirable building on Porteous Road, Ayanavaram, with a first of its kind underground accommodation that even now is functioning well. The Southern Railway has been showing great interest in its heritage in recent years. Will it restore the lost sheen of the heritage tower clock?
K. Ramadoss
4/1, PE Koil West Mada Street
Ayanavaram
Chennai 600 023
Laughed aloud
This letter should have been written a long time ago, and I shall not be at rest until I am done with it. I just want to say that the piece by MMM on the (un)musical stylings of the animate and inanimate (MM, January 1st) had me laughing out really loud. Something that happens very rarely.
The sundry ravings of MMM always have me chuckling, but this one was a classic. One for the ages I should think. Hats off to him (or is it them?).
Maria Anjani
mariaanjani@yahoo.com
Improvement needed
The Kapaleeswarar temple tank is well maintained and guarded, whereas the Chitrakulam off Kapaleeswarar tank, a property of Adhikasava Perumal Koil, needs to be maintained. Of course, the steps to the tank were repaired, but the shops at the northern and western sides of the tank pose the threat of contamination to the water source.
The Devasthanam authorities should ensure that this tank is as good as the Kapaleeswarar temple tank.
P.A. Ranganathan
16/24, Vedachala Garden Street
Mandaveli
Chennai 600 028
A nightmare area
Your lead story ‘CZMA puts a stop to beautifying beaches’ (MM, March 1st) was heartening to read.
As one who has been living in Besant Nagar for decades, I am pained to see the destruction and degradation that is taking place in the name of beautification. Now the beach road is really a mess.
With the pavements all dug up and the tiles and mud piled all over the road, it is difficult for even young persons to walk safely on the beach roads. For senior citizens, walking on these roads is a nightmare.
The only silver lining is that the young bikeriders who once zipped past at fantastic speeds now have to negotiate the boulders and concrete. This puts a brake on their flying machines and ambitions.
Now that summer is here we can see a number of film shootings on the beach roads. Traffic disruptions, high level of noise pollution with their generators, and mounds of rubbish strewn around after shooting will be the result.
Perhaps we will never ever get back the once idyllic beach where evening walks were a pleasant experience with the rays of the setting sun glistening in the distant waters being a treat to watch. Where children skipped and played on the sands without a care and old people like me felt like Keats, Wordsworth and Shelley. Gone are those days.
Today, all that we see are mounds of dug pavements, stalls selling contaminated food, all kinds of shops, youngsters zipping past in their ‘mean’ machines, and other youngsters cooing up in their flashy cars, and here and there an old couple thinking about the days gone by.
Sad to see, Poetry has gone out of Besant Nagar and Commerce has stepped in.
Chandrasekhar Viswanathan
profvc@gmail.com
Correction
I wish to point out one correction in the editing in the article ‘Flight of fancy’ (MM, February 16th). In item 1 in the third paragraph, the words “to construct” have been changed to “by constructing”. It changes the entire concept of the article. My contention was that we are compromising the ability of future generations to construct the Tube Railway at a later date.
Rabindran Vannamuthu
vrabindran@hotmail.com
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