Kovur Sundaresa Mudaliar’s House
41,
Bunder Street, George Town |
This was the town house of Kovur Sundaresa Mudaliar, a dubash of the East India Company. The mansion is accessed from a typical narrow street entrance. A wide-open courtyard flanked on both sides by large warehouses is at the ground level. The walls made of chunam stand on granite floors. A grand staircase leads to the upper residential floors. These have rooms along the four corridors, all of which overlook the courtyard. Sundaresa Mudaliar was a patron of the arts. Acceding to his request, Tyagaraja (1767-1847), the great composer, came to Madras and stayed in this house for a week. He also travelled to Kovur, Mudaliar’s native village on the outskirts of Madras, and composed five songs on the presiding deity of the temple there. These are today referred to as the Kovur Pancharatnams.
Sundaresa Mudaliar’s son was Ekambara Mudaliar, one of the trustees of the Pachaiyappa’s Trust which even today runs several educational institutions in the State. When the Trust’s Pachaiyappa’s School moved into its own building with a Greek-styled facade in 1850, in nearby Esplanade, the inaugural procession left from 41 Bunder Street.
In the 1950s, one of the rooms here became home to the Indian Music Publishing House, run by Professor P. Sambamurthy, the eminent musicologist. It was from here that most of the textbooks he wrote, which still remain part of the University music syllabus, were published.
Today, the mansion is a warren of shops, totally decrepit and crying for maintenance. (Courtesy: KalamKriya.)
Sriram V.
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