My saga with the City – ‘MADRAS’

The city that we all now know as Chennai is fondly remembered by me as ‘Madras’ and people who belonged to the city before the years of 1996 would also like to refer it to ‘MADRAS’.

The name Madras is from the word Madraspattinam, a fishing village that lay to the north of Fort St. George. History has a lot of confusions as to what is the origin of the name, what its name should be and what it is to be called, whatever this place of Tamilnadu is to be called, I do not care and will always call this place of my life as Madras and will still love it being called by this name.

The reason of change from Madras to Chennai has been connoted to many historical reasons such as the name Chennai is etymologically derived from Chennapattinam or Chennapattanam. When the British landed here in 1639 A.D. it was said to be part of the empire of the Raja of Chandragiri. The British named it Chennapatnam after they acquired it from Chennappa Nayaka, a Vijayanagar chieftain. [source: Wikipedia]

The first instance of the use of the name Chennai is said to be in a sale deed dated August 1639 to Francis Day, an agent for the British where there is a reference to Chennaipattinam. But as you see, History is history and who is bothered about history.

My major part of my life has been in Madras and it has seen me grow into a beautiful lady with a unique combination of brains and beauty [Sorry!! People could not avoid blowing my trumpet]. I came to madras when I was in 7th standard of my schooling and had been in this city till my under graduation and had loved every minute of my stay in this city.

I had seen the growth of the city along my growing years, the traffic, the roadways, the railways; the aviations, the buildings, the streets, the people, everything and I carry various fond memories of this city.

Even before I came to live in this city my relational with this city dates back to the days when I had to travel from Calcutta (now Kolkata) by the then only Howrah-Madras Coromandal Express and get down at Madras and take the Kovai Express to my hometown, Salem during my holidays from school.

I never knew at that time that I would be in the city for several years but even at that small age had a wonderful feeling of this place Madras, as it was close to my hometown at an about 4 and 1/2 hours from Madras.

I remember sitting in the train Coromandal express and ask my dad, how far is Madras even after knowing the fact that it was about 2 days journey to Madras. He used to patiently, tell me the time and show me the various stations that we pass through and to keep me quite he used to make me memorize the station names that we passed through and I still vaguely remember those stations and how they looked.

It was quite a journey those days; we used to carry homemade food to avoid eating outside food for at least by a day, with lots of homemade snacks such as murrukku, laddoo, adirsam, poli, all possible things and the bags used to be in huge numbers.

It was also fun buying and savoring food that were sold like jilabies, samosas, vadas, mango jellies, coffee, tea, and it looked like every other vendor saw a promising buyer looking at my wide open eyes of the tray of food passing by.

It was all fun travelling like that….that is how I picked my habit of reading at a very young age. I used to make a hue of cry if I was not given my quota of Amar Chitra Katha’s and Tinkle, the comic books with stories about Indian heritage, Mythology, stories of moral, Fables, Panchatantra, Motivating stories of animals …it was fun reading them and narrating it my little sister who was very young and could only comprehend of half of what is said.

Lot more interesting tales of this city along with my experiences of the city is to be shared with all the people who fondly call Chennai, Madras….Nalla[good] Madras.