Of late the Man from Madras Musings has taken to the electronic medium to hold forth on what he has gleaned over several years on the city’s history. The redeeming feature of these episodes, in MMM’s view, is that they are brief – ten minutes apparently being too long in today’s world where the average attention span is that of an ant. It is history in bits and bytes so to speak. And so MMM prepares for these accordingly but let him assure you that the stress he goes through is nothing less than what he undergoes before full-length presentations. The butterflies are in full force in the stomach on a permanent basis.

Why Avadi?

The post-release phase of these videos does have its amusing moments though. There was a recent one on Avadi where MMM held forth to debunk the oft-held view that the name is an acronym for Armoured Vehicles and Ammunition Depot of India (can you imagine a country of our size having one ammunition depot?). Many lauded MMM’s efforts but a good measure of how many actually saw the episode was had from the number of comments that said Avadi was an acronym for (you guessed it) Armoured Vehicles and ….

Clearly fake news rarely dies in India. 

Mount Road History in a Minute

But that was not all. There was a call from a journalist that went as follows – 

Sir, I want to speak to you on history of Mount Road

MMM – Ok, what do you want to know? 

That only sir, history of Mount Road

MMM – What aspects?

That only sir, history 

MMM – (sigh) Have you done any reading?

Yes sir, we saw your video

MMM in complete silence hung up. But then if there are people who assume that history can be doled out in ten-minute bits or is bytes, who is MMM to complain? 

This article appeared in Madras Musings dated March 16, 2023 and can be read here

The video on Avadi can be seen here