The Crumbling Inscription
As a child, I passed through the Marmalong Bridge literally hundreds of times: I lived in Velachery and my school was in West CIT Nagar, which meant that a long, rumbling ride over the busy bridge was a crucial part of the more-than-hour-long journey. For me, it was always the beginning of a stomach-churning nervous ride (because, you know, school?) and the trundling across a river was, well, just the pointer that we’d arrived at Saidapet.
Years later, when I began to learn and understand the city of Madras, I realized that not only had I been passing through a piece of history (renovated and reconstructed more than once), but also a forgotten piece of stone with words etched in some unknown language as well. That this was an honest-to-God proclamation of history – a record that the bridge had first been commissioned in 1726 by a wealthy Armenian merchant called Coja Petrus Uscan (and who knew that Armenia had such a strong connection to our city?), who put up 30,000 pagodas for its construction – was unknown to me.
I hunted down the slab, the sides of which had now been painted a pale green, slowly chipping off, in a bustling corner as people hustled about while a dirty river flowed underneath. I couldn’t believe that I’d crisscrossed the area more times than I cared to count, but had never noticed this sentinel to Madras’s past.
But once I did, I had to record it as a miniature. And it was more than worth it.
Details about the miniature: Black and White; Pen and Ink.
Dimensions: Approximately: 3.5” X 5”
Pavithra Srinivasan is a writer, journalist, artist, translator, columnist, editor and is fascinated with History.