L.M. Menezes

The writeup on L.M. Menezes in Madras Musings (July 16-31) was quite informative. I have had the good fortune of knowing and interacting with Mr. Menezes.

By the way, the byline of the author of the piece says “Professor (Retd.) Loyola College”. To the best of my knowledge, there are no posts of professors in colleges in India. The posts in colleges are mostly that of assistant professor and associate professor. Even the principals of colleges are at best associate professors.

Dr. M.A. Kalam

kalam.ma@gmail.com

* * *

The article about late L.M. Menezes IAS (July 16-31) was a deserving tribute to the great soul who is no more with us. I had the opportunity to meet him once which is still lingering in my mind. He was then the Special Officer of the Madras Municipal Corporation (there was no Corporation Council). I was the president of the Residents’ Association in Ayanavaram and faced many problems from the Corporation for commencing the work of extending civic facilities.

Many a time I had been to the Corporation office which ended in futility. Finally, I decided to meet the then Special Officer. The meeting was exceptionally remarkable. I met L.M. Menezes in his cabin where he called the officer concerned, gave instant instructions to expedite the matter and reminded him that attending to the residents’ grievances, solving them to the satisfaction of the concerned residents and their happiness should be the Corporation’s priority. Subsequently, the matter was solved expeditiously.

Menezes was an officer who blended authentic authority with humility.

Alas! A great, responsible bureaucrat well known for swift action is no more but he has left a personal impact.

K.Rajendran

mani.rajendran23@gmail.com

Nip it in the bud

Island Grounds (the “lung space of Madras” as described by Rajaji), has been in the news, often for the wrong reasons. The latest salvo is the thinking of the bureaucracy to shift the Secretariat to Island Grounds/ Madras Race Course Grounds, Koyembedu.

Madras City is already bursting at the seams as a result of the population explosion growing density leading to traffic bottlenecks and its management, not to speak of the increasing dog menace!

If there is some vacant space available, the powers that be start thinking of how to concretise it not withstanding the disastrous consequences. Whether it be monsoon, drought, or cyclones, the city is not capable of meeting it, adding insult to injury.

Why should all the departments be concentrated only in Madras City, causing people travelling back and forth from one end to the other? We need to make railway reservations a month earlier to get the seats!

Why not shift the HRCE department to the Tanjore area where temples are concentrated? Why not fisheries to Mandapam area, and the forest range to Coimbatore/Ooty/Tenkasi? Can not the Tamil Development be shifted to Madurai, the cradle of Tamil sangam? There are several such similar instances. This way we can decongest Madras City, develop other areas in the State, and avoid problems like travel bottlenecks.

Creating many sub secretariats at different places in the State should be the order of the day!

More importantly, the remaining departments can function from Fort St. George itself, obviating the necessity of occupying the few existing vacant areas in the City! The deficit budget need not to be further bloated!

Hope the powers that be will seriously look into the matter and prevent further degrading of Madras City.

N.P. Andavan

audconp@gmail.com

A Vacation in Several Stages of Dryness

— by Cauvery Kesavasamy, cauvery.kesavasamy@gmail.com

There is a particular kind of chaos that arrives before an Indian family vacation. Not the cinematic chaos of missed passports or forgotten tickets – though we have managed those too, but those dramatic stories can wait for another day. Ours is almost entirely fabric-based.

A week before our trip to Singapore, our house looked as though a small textile cyclone had swept through it and settled permanently in the living room. Folded clothes waited to be ironed. Freshly dried, sun-kissed clothes waited to be folded. Ironed clothes sat crumpled in one corner making me wonder whether they needed one more hot treatment. Properly ironed clothes sat triumphantly inside suitcases. Another set of equally ironed clothes sat outside the suitcase because I suddenly felt I had packed too many blues.

At one point, I sent a message to family declaring, “The house is a mess like a hurricane tore through here,” accompanied, appropriately, by a laughing emoji that concealed the quiet despair of a woman who had been sorting garments by weather, occasion, duration and possible food spills for a whole week and then some extra “just in case” days.

Meanwhile, my husband and daughter wandered through the house with the relaxed confidence of people who believed holidays happened naturally.

“Did you pack slippers?”

“Yes.”

“Which slippers?”

A pause.

“Did you keep an extra pair of clothes in cabin baggage?”

Another pause.

My daughter, of course, had concerns of her own.

“Can I take this hat?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because it won’t protect you from the sun.”

“But it matches my outfit.”

This led to lengthy discussions on whether hats were meant to prevent our heads from getting fried under the Singaporean sun or merely to coordinate aesthetically with photographs that would later be uploaded with suspiciously casual captions.

This is how vacations are prepared for in Indian homes. Not through travel brochures or itineraries, but through negotiations involving footwear, chargers, unidentified cables and mysterious pouches nobody opens but everybody insists are essential.

Singapore, meanwhile, had its own ideas about rain. It arrived suddenly and without warning, usually when we were furthest from shelter, carrying backpacks stuffed with ponchos, umbrellas and water bottles that somehow never made us feel prepared enough. The rain there was not the cool, cinematic kind. It was warm rain against already sweaty tourist bodies, the sort that made you wonder whether you were becoming wetter from the weather or from simply existing outdoors in tropical humidity.

And yet, despite these dramatic downpours, the city somehow continued functioning with suspicious efficiency while we struggled to remove dripping ponchos without accidentally hitting fellow tourists in crowded queues.

By the time we returned, we fully expected to land in a gloriously rain-soaked Chennai.

Instead, the city greeted us with sunshine and humidity.

Not a drop.

Only evidence.

Puddles lingered in corners. Apartment corridors carried that unmistakable damp smell of recently retreated rain. Clotheslines across balconies displayed rows of half-dry garments — towels hanging heavily in resignation, jeans refusing cooperation, socks attempting optimism.

The rain, it appeared, had just left before we arrived.

Soon after, we drove to Bengaluru to drop our daughter off at my parents’ home for the summer holidays, another sacred ritual of Indian parenting. Summer vacations in our childhood had involved entire train journeys and steel tiffin carriers. Today they involve carefully planned road trips, snack bags that multiply mysteriously and strategic discussions about the cleanest possible washroom stop along the highway.

They also involve trying to hold conversations with teenage daughters whose headphones create an invisible but highly effective force field. Every now and then she would suddenly laugh at something on her tablet while we exchanged curious glances in the front seat, entirely uninvited into the joke.

Bengaluru too seemed to be recovering from recent rain. Fallen gulmohar flowers plastered themselves against wet pavements. Muddy edges clung stubbornly to compound walls. Auto drivers discussed rainfall patterns with the authority of meteorologists personally consulted by the clouds.

One evening, while visiting a friend, our cab driver appeared determined to locate every pothole the rain had created. Each wobble sent pain shooting through my lower back until I began to suspect Bengaluru’s roads were trying to find the perfect fit, Cinderella-style.

Everywhere we went, we encountered signs of rain but never the rain itself.

It became almost personal.

The rain seemed to move through cities minutes ahead of us, leaving behind damp staircases, reluctant laundry and dramatic weather discussions before disappearing quietly around the next corner.

Back in Chennai, the laundry situation had evolved into something between science and emotional warfare. Clothes hung indoors under fans in various stages of recovery. Some garments felt dry until folded, at which point hidden pockets of moisture revealed themselves like betrayal. Others acquired that faint smell that announces they are technically dry but spiritually still wet.

The great irony, of course, was that the carefully packed vacation clothes had behaved impeccably throughout the trip. The real battle began only after returning home.

Perhaps that is the nature of summer rain in our cities. It does not arrive grandly with thunderous declarations. It slips in mischievously, interrupts laundry schedules, creates philosophical potholes and disappears before you can properly witness it.

And somewhere in homes across Chennai and Bengaluru, mothers continue standing before overflowing clothes baskets, holding up slightly damp T-shirts to the light, wondering whether they need just one more hour under the fan.