In 1836, T.C. Jerdon, a 25-year-old surgeon, arrived in the Madras Presidency. After training at the General Hospital, he was sent to treat troops battling insurgency in a district nearly halfway to the Calcutta Presidency.…
On a balmy winter’s day in 1954, Paul Dirac a Nobel Laureate in physics gave a general lecture at the Senate House in the University of Madras. The hall was packed. Outside, people sat in…
(Courtesy: Mylapore Times. Photograph by Ganesh Natarajan.) Sitting at my desk in Boston, in MIT where I edited strands of DNA for the Human Genome Project, I’d read S. Muthiah’s Madras Miscellany during breaks. I…
If you went to school in Chennai, chances are you have visited the Vedanthangal Bird Sanctuary, some fifty miles south of the city. As an eighth grader, I went there on a school excursion. Oblivious…
A memorable scene in the 1963 Tamil movie, Paar Magale Paar, features Cho Ramaswamy who makes his screen debut as “Mechanical” Madasamy. As a teen, this character had run away to the Tamil capital, where…
Sowcarpet is often described as Chennai’s “Little North India,” in tourist book style. Bustling and bazaar-like, this old neighborhood is not too far from the city’s iconic Central Station. This area has the city’s first…