When asked by Karthik Nagappan to do a heritage walk in conjunction with The Hindu LitForLife 2025, I immediately said Muthiah on Mount Road. To me, none other than that peerless chronicler of the city brought alive in writing the heydays of that arterial road. It was for me an emotional and a fulfilling exercise to put together the list of books he wrote in which Mount Road buildings and people were central characters. S Muthiah’s writings on Mount Road proved to be a rich subject.
Muthiah on Munro and Simpsons
We began at the Munro statue, which was always a favourite of his. He wrote about Sir Thomas Munro several times, as also on his statue. In his Madras Rediscovered, which still remains the key resource to understanding the core city, he dwelt at length on Munro and why his statue ought to be retained where it is. From there we proceeded to Simpsons, whose sesquicentennial volume Muthiah penned. Titled Getting India on the Move, it was not just the story of the company but also that of S Anantharamakrishnan and the empire he founded. It was also the first comprehensive account of how Madras became an automobile hub.
When Muthiah tried to save Government House
Among the many heritage buildings Muthiah fought relentlessly to save, Government House on Government Estate was perhaps one that disappointed him the most. To him it was unbelievable that one of the oldest precincts in the city could be done away with to make way for an unimpressive assembly-cum-secretariat building that became a hospital. And it was a twist in the wound that he was asked to work subsequently with the South Zone Cultural Centre to create a coffee table book on the Raj Bhavans of Tamil Nadu. This publication, with some brilliant photographs by Kombai Anwar, begins with that Government House which by then was history.
Muthiah and his Madras Miscellany
Our next stop was The Hindu, for which Muthiah wrote his Madras Miscellany column, which held a record of sorts – it ran for twenty years. I have personally seen the way Muthiah worked on it, week after week, and the way he made it a people’s movement, with his Postman Knocked section. The first ten years of that column became a book titled Madras Miscellany. At the Round Tana we stopped to look at Madras, Its Past and Present, which with a set of early 20th century black and white photos of Madras as its core, looked at how the city had changed. Round Tana and buildings around it feature on several of its pages.
Muthiah on LIC Building and MCt Chidambaram Chettyar
Our walk then went past other heritage buildings that Muthiah admired and featured often in his writings – The Mail, P Orr & Sons, Lawley Hall, Higginbothams, Bharat Insurance Building and the lost Saraswathi Stores – before we came to LIC. To Muthiah, LIC was a monument to MCt Chidambaram Chettyar, and his uncredited biography, Unfinished Journey is a poignant tribute to that industrialist who died tragically in an air crash, far before his time on earth was over. As Muthiah never tired of reiterating, it was at MCt’s Reliance Motor Co that Ashok Leyland had its first innings as Ashok Motors and so his book, Moving India on Wheels was our exhibit.
Muthiah’s Ace of Clubs, Spencers and Connemara.
Our final stop, Club House Road, was from where we looked at three books. Muthiah’s Ace of Clubs is on the Madras Club, which was in its first century at the end of Club House Road. Opposite is Spencers on which he wrote the Legend of Spencer’s and by its side is Connemara for which he wrote A Tradition of Madras that is Chennai. That last title could well be a fitting description of Muthiah and his writings as well.
This was featured in the The Hindu Article. CLICK HERE to read it.