Tiru-k-kannapuram Vijayaraghavan was born in Adoor Agaram in the Madras Presidency in 1902, the son of a famous Tamil and Sanskrit scholar, Tiru-k-kannapuram Pattappa Swamy. In the mid-1920s, Vijayaraghavan got an opportunity to work with G.H. Hardy at the University of Oxford, and the gist of his D.Phil. work is recognised by the world as the Pisot–Vijayaraghavan numbers. He had been a member of the London Mathematical Society from 1925 and had been, successively, Secretary, President, and Librarian of the Indian Mathematical Society.

T. Vijayaraghavan

Vijayaraghavan’s early career bears some resemblance to that of Srinivasa Ramanujan. Vijayaraghavan failed to get an Honours degree at Presidency College. Fortunately, his talents were recognised by K. Ananda Rau. Ultimately, on the recommendation of Hardy, the University of Madras awarded Vijayaraghavan a scholarship enabling him to go to England. He spent 1925–1928 with Hardy at New College, Oxford. They were fruitful years, judged not only by the work produced at the time but also by the influences that are apparent in much of Vijayaraghavan’s later work.

On his return to India, Vijayaraghavan got a job at Annamalai University. He later joined Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). At AMU, he worked with the eminent Alsatian mathematician André Weil, who tried to wean Vijayaraghavan away from the British approach to mathematics and got him to adopt the continental European approach. But Weil was unsuccessful. However, an extraordinary professional camaraderie between Weil and Vijayaraghavan blossomed. When Weil’s contract was terminated at AMU, Vijayaraghavan quit AMU in protest and joined the University of Dacca as a Reader in 1931 and remained there until 1946. He was appointed professor at Andhra University, which he left to join the University of Madras to direct the newly set up Ramanujan Institute of Mathematics. It was his ambition to make the Institute a renowned research centre, but he died before his ambition could be realised.

Vijayaraghavan died in Madras in 1955. World mathematicians rate Vijayaraghavan’s work to be of high quality and his analysis precise and scholarly. His approach was strongly influenced by Hardy, and most of the problems he was charged with arose out of the work of Hardy and John Edensor Littlewoods (1885-1977). Similar to Hardy and Littlewoods, Vijayaraghavan was interested more in theorems than in theories. Vijayaraghavan, in the words of Weil (1984), “was a mathematician of great penetration; unfortunately he had been too much under the influence of Hardy at the outset of his career to have learnt to broaden his outlook.”

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Damodar Gardens, a heritage building in the news during the past few weeks, once belonged to the Arcot nawabs and is said to be well over 150 years old (its actual age is not known). It was Annie Besant who acquired the 17-acres property and named it Damodar Gardens after a Theosophist liked and blessed by H.P. Blavatsky and admired by Col. H.S. Olcott for his mystic powers. It was in this property that the educationist Dr. G.S. Arundale, the then President of the Theosophical Society, established, in memory of Dr. Annie Besant, the Besant Memorial School on June 27, 1934.

Damodar Gardens

Adyar was then a distant suburb of Madras with few facilities and the staff and others who worked at the Theosophical Society could not send their children to school in what was far off Mylapore, as there were no bus services to help them. Founding the school was the answer. It started with just 33 students and the first SSLC batch had only 11 students, two of whom passed the examinations. At the time, the Olcott School, which was started with just Rs. 100 by Olcott in 1894 as a free school for Harijans, was on the main road near the police station, facing present-day Gandhi Nagar. Olcott, the founder president of the Theosophical Society, was a practical educationist who had established 200 schools in Ceylon catering to some 20,000 students in the 1880s. Annie Besant followed her mentor’s example and established the Central Hindu College in Benares, which was to be the genesis of the Benares Hindu University. Dr. Arundale was the second Principal of the Central Hindu College.

H.S. Olcott – and the Buddhist flag he designed in Ceylon

Under Arundale’s stewardship, the Besant Memorial School did grow to a strength of over 350 students within a few years and had a sizeable number of boarders coming from all over India. Seshamma, mother of Rukmini Devi, used to be in charge of the hostel that was in Besant Gardens. Rukmini Devi’s brother  N. Sriram and his wife Bhagirathiammal were on the Governing Board of the School.

The Damodar Gardens building was the pride of the school, which in course of time changed its name to The Besant Theosophical School, reflecting the active support the Theosophical Society gave it. Those were the days when there were no cars in Adyar except the one Humber belonging to Arundale. Cars used to come from the city right up to the portico and their occupants had come to the Headmaster’s room on the ground floor as soon as they turned right from the entrance. The school bell was in the portico, near the ceiling, and Jaganathan the attendant used to ring it to start the day, mark the periods and at close of the day. The main room on the first floor, just above the portico, was a huge hall, 30 by 70 feet, and housed a well-stocked library with 6000 to 7000 books. Another such hall of the first floor was home to the science laboratory. The halls on the ground floor were as big. The teachers had one of them to themselves and the other was used for special meetings.

Sited around this magnificent building were several coconut leaf fronded cottages supported by round steel pillars. Cudappah slabs were used for the floors, and the windows were of bamboo slatting, shaded by thatti-s of woven bamboo strips. The cottages were electrified and in some of them the boarders were accommodated. Even though K. Sankara Menon, the first Headmaster, secured a scholarship for
Rs. 250, he agreed to work for Rs. 125 to please Dr. Arundale. Sankaran was to help make the dreams Rukmini Devi had of setting up Kalakshetra, and other institutions, come true.

There were about another dozen such cottages in which the classes were held. These had a blackboard each, and low desks for students who used to sit on the floor and place their books on the desks for study. Usually no class had more than 30 to 35 students.

The hostellers started the day with a PT class by half past five in the morning, then had to run around this iconic building as part of their morning routine. They then had to get dressed by seven o’clock and be at the prayer session at Besant Gardens, then have breakfast and come back to the Damodar Gardens, and attend another prayer under the mango trees where there was a Cudappah slabs paving to sit on. This time prayers were of a different religion each day of the week. The bell then announced periods one, two, three. After the lunch break there was rest time and then Session Two. Tea would be in Besant Gardens, followed by games at the present games field of Olcott School. By 7 p.m. the lights would dip to say it was time to go for dinner at Besant Gardens. The Besant Theosophical School was closely supervised by Rukmini Devi and Dr. Arundale. He would come for moonlight dinners on the terrace of the Besant Gardens buildings wearing kurtha pajamas just as the students of the school still do.

During the great floods of 1942, all the huts and cottages were badly affected with waterlogging. The main building sheltered the students for several nights. When World War II was in full swing and Japanese aircraft raided Colombo and Trincomalee in Ceylon in April 1942, the half a dozen students from Ceylon were stranded at Damodar Gardens, when the other students were evacuated. Arundale and Rukmini Devi came every evening to dine with them and keep the morale up. When things calmed down in Ceylon, they deputed the Headmaster, Felix Layton, and
P.S. Krishnaswamy, the Principal of the Arundale Montessori Training Centre, to escort them up to Dhanuskodi with instructions to the ship’s captain to deliver this special human cargo safely to the Ceylon Railways at Talaimannar from where they reached Colombo, to be welcomed by their anxious parents.

Dr. G.S. Arundale

The Besant Theosophical School made its students learn the hardships of life by staying in those spartan cottages. The prevailing living and classroom conditions promoted the concept of simple living and high thinking.

S. Krishnaratnam, who was the Headmaster of BTS from 1942 to 1976 and, later, its correspondent, was a fitness freak. He started the Arundale Tennis Club, but encouraged all other sports. Like Felix Layton, he was popular with one and all.

Sankara Menon in his recollections of Dr. Arundale says, “Shortly before her death, Dr. Besant stressed the need of a school at Adyar. She herself had created a school at the Headquarters, but that had been handed over by her, along with other schools and colleges founded by her, to J. Krishnamurti, to be conducted under his direction and according to his educational philosophy. The school thriving at Adyar has been removed with her approval to the beautiful Rishi Valley, a hundred and fifty miles away from Madras. So, Adyar was without a school and Dr. Besant was acutely conscious of the lack of educational activity so essential to the growth and nourishment of a spiritual centre (like) the Theosophical Society.” Arundale then established the Besant Memorial School. In 1934 he stated, “The Besant Memorial School is actually the nucleus of a College and a University, an educational centre in which the young citizens of India may become great citizens and some of them perhaps great leaders to help India onwards.” His vision and dreams to establish a Theosophical University in Adyar remained unfulfilled. He, however, advised Rukmini Devi, before he passed away in 1944, to secure land to establish Kalakshetra and other institutions. Rukmini Devi formed the Besant Centenary Trust, bought over 150 acres at Tiruvanmiyur and, to raise new buildings, sold some surplus lands to plough the proceeds back into infrastructure. She redeveloped the Besant Theosophical School, moving it from Damodar Gardens in 1976 to Tiruvanmiyur.

The J. Krishnamurti Foundation then approached the Theosophical Society and was leased Damodar Gardens from 1979 to run what was named The School. With the Foundation’s lease expiring in 2014, The School is expected to be re-located. But with the Theosophical Society’s long connection with education, the acreage in Damodar Gardens could well continue to serve this purpose thereafter, but in a different form.

P.S. The author was a hostel student from 1939 to 1950. He has co-compiled with K.R.N. Menon the book South of the Adyar River (2007), dedicated to Olcott on the centenary of his death.

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Workers from different States board a bus at Choolaimedu to work on the MRTS line.

Chennai has a large migrant population, which mainly comes from other parts of Tamil Nadu. In 2001, out of the 937,000 migrants (21.57% of the city’s population), 74.5% were from other parts of the State, 23.8% were from rest of India and 1.7% were from outside the country, according to a study by M. Amirthalingam. The second figure would have changed considerably, judging by the number of out-of-State persons I have come across working here in a variety of occupations.

In his 20s, Pradeep of Allahabad runs a paan stall in a busy market area in central Chennai. While some of his customers take his fresh gutkha, crushed areca nut, paying him in loose change, others ask and get it for free. Speaking a smattering of Tamil, he laughs at such freeloaders. All the ingredients of his juicy meetha (sweet) paan are from outside the State, he informs me in Hindi. Though he has cultivable land back in U.P., he says that he has no sense of pride in farming or even running a paan stall near his home. Here he has no time for leisure.

Workers from West Bengal and Bihar working on the Koyambedu grade separator.

Less than a five-minute walk away are the brothers Alok and Sandeep Pandey, paanwallas from Varanasi. Speaking to the younger of the two, I learn that work takes all his time, and entertainment is only watching television.

Shy and reticent, Sachin sells cotton candy at one of Chennai’s beaches. He waves a bell to hawk his wares as he strolls along. He stays in Little Mount, but is from UP.

Rajesh has a refrigerated box mounted on a four-wheel cycle to sell his kulfi and badam milk. He is from Bhilwara in Rajasthan. And the lanky Kallu from Mahoba District in UP sells pani puri on one of the roads leading to the beach off East Coast Road. On the busy road opposite the Kapaleeswarar tank is another youth from his State, Rahul from Kanpur, also selling pani puri.

Sateesh and Rahul work at the Pazhamudir Nilayam juice shop in Anna Nagar West. They belong to Chhindwara District in Madhya Pradesh, but have been here for two years.

A restaurant owner, who set up in NSC Bose Road, has now moved to Kelly’s. He says his kitchen staff are from Garhwal in Uttarakhand, Maharashtra and Nepal, and the cleaners from Bihar.

Akash from Darjeeling in food ­business here for 17 years.

Toy vendor Mohamad Robial (many, including Mohamad, were able to spell their names for me in English) from Assam sells plastic choppers in the subway near Central Station. He sources them from the city itself, and says he goes to wherever business is good. He has also sold his toys in Kerala. He too speaks Tamil.

Jessica, a salesgirl, and John are from Manipur and are working in a jeans showroom and a salad outlet respectively at a glitzy mall. Jessica has cousins and friends in the city.

S.K. Pradhan from Orissa started working as a security guard in a mall under construction and has continued to work there for the past four years. Mohan Miah is a sweeper in the same mall, but he has only recently come from Tripura.

At the site of a neighbourhood hospital, where renovation is going on, I met several workers from out of State. The youngest and most garrulous was Ravi from Siliguri, near Darjeeling. Nothing of any consequence ever happened in his hometown, he said. Here, he is gaining experience in masonry and can soon work as a maistry. The others are Naidu from Andhra Pradesh, Rakesh from Orissa and Thomas, who is an electrician, is from Goregaon near Mumbai. Thomas has been moving from site to site from Delhi to Goa to Chennai.

Mohan Miah from Tripura, working in a city mall.

Shyamalal Das and Sandeep Das are two young Assamese security guards at a workers’ colony in Nandambakkam. They told me they are in the city less than a year and have not been able to stir out of the neighbourhood, because they have 12-hour duty shifts.

Masroor and Abu Nasar belong to Araria zilla in Bihar and work as electrical helpers. They wish to gain experience so as to work in foreign countries “where we can earn more money.” They had worked as zari workers earlier.

Mohd Samir from Malda District in West Bengal does marble floorings. He has been here for the past two years, and had previously worked in Orissa.

The project manager of Simplex Infrastructures, which is building the Koyambedu flyovers, told me that its workers were skilled and moved along with the company’s projects.

Bicky Sharma and Dasarath, not colleagues, are from Gorakhpur District, U.P. Bicky, whom I met while travelling in a bus from Guindy, is a carpenter, and has been in Chennai for two years. He stays in Otteri and spends 20 rupees commuting to work and back but saves enough money to send home. He has absolutely no time for leisure. The bus conductor said these workers, who almost fill the bus on certain routes, are very sharp and have a working knowledge of Tamil.

Kumar and Roop Singh from Chhatisgarh are construction workers laying slabs in MRTS stations near Indira Nagar. There are workers from Jharkhand too.

Rajesh from Bhilwara, Rajasthan, in the flavoured milk business.

Meghnath and others work on the airport expansion site of Consolidated Construction Company in Meenambakkam. He is from West Bengal, but his co-workers are from other states, like Bihar. They had earlier worked in buildings constructed by DLF at Ramapuram and a 7-Star Hotel project at MRC Nagar.

Abhishek, an employee of Tata Consultancy Services, says very few people in Chennai speak Hindi and he has had to take the help of colleagues while attending to the nitty-gritty of settling down here.

Giving his perspective on the “rampant labour migration across the country,” Prof. C. Lakshmanan of the Madras Institute of Development Studies says people from the southern States go up north. The reasons he outlines are the step-motherly treatment given by governments to agriculture and false expectations that the labour class may have about the jobs they are to be employed in. Once they start working, they are paid wages for eight hours but work for 12 hours.

Architect Durganand Balsaver says awareness levels among the youth have increased and they would rather work in lower paying jobs than put in much harder work at construction sites.

I can’t help but conclude by stressing the fact that Cinema in Chennai has opened its arms to northern influence. Singer Udit Narayan, a Bihari, has sung more than 75 songs in Tamil films over a decade and more!

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