My first trip to my ancestors' land began on a hot summer's day in May 1964. We were at the New Delhi Railway station on platform no 1.
My parents and an assortment of friends and relatives came to see us off. My grandfather took me on a five-week vacation to Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
We travelled by the Grand Trunk Express to Madras. It would take us 50 hours to complete the 1361 mile journey. After 91 years, it now covers the same distance in 35 hours and 55 minutes at an average speed of 62 Km. Quite an achievement.
The G.T. Express commenced operations in 1929 and initially connected Peshawar (the then capital of the North Western Frontier Province) and the seaside town of Mangalore in Karnataka, which was then part of the Madras Presidency. For the curious, until 1900, there was no direct route to Delhi and Chennai.
It would take an epic journey of 2500 miles by a military train from Peshawar to Cannanore (Kannur) in 1921 and thus precipitate the need to shorten this distance. And it did.
It propelled The Nizam's Guaranteed State Railway into overdrive, and the missing link between the towns of Kazipet and Ballarshah was completed, which opened in 1928 and further shortened the distance between Madras and Delhi by another 322 Kms
But I was more interested in the steam engine that would pull the 18 carriages behind it. A mighty locomotive that was all fired up ready would burn 25,000 Kg of coal and guzzle nearly 200,000 litres of water to get us to our destination.
Back in those days, people weren't worried about words like sustainability and the environment. They weren't as fashionable as yet.
But all that's changed. The G.T. Express has twenty-four rakes and is hauled by a WAP 7, the most powerful electric locomotive in the Indian Railways rolling stock.
Off we went to Madras. I had to write down the names of every town we passed through and look for historical connections—a challenging task for a six-year-old. Thankfully my live ad-free Google engine was at hand. My grandfather. And here are some of the names I wrote down—Agra, Gwalior, Jhansi, Bhopal, Nagpur, Wardha, Warangal, Guntur and oh yes, how can I forget Basin Bridge?
I Googled "Basin Bridge", and here's what I found.
Basin Bridge Junction is the confluence on the Otteri Nullah and Buckingham Canal in Chennai, India. The Madras Boating Club operates rowing events in this place.
So here we were at Madras Central after 50 gruelling hours on a humid morning in May. My granddad's co-brother in-law received us, and we took a Taxi.
In 2019 Madras Central Railway Station was re-named Puratchi Thalaivar Dr M.G. Ramachandran Central Railway Station.
With 57 letters, it missed the honour of having the longest railway station name by just an alphabet. 'Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch' in Wales, with 58 letters, continues to be on record for having the longest railway station name by just a whisker...
Madras Central was built in 1873 at Parktown as a second terminus to decongest the Royapuram harbour.
The station was built on the open grounds that had once been called John Pereira's Gardens, belonging to Joao Pereira de Faria (John Pereira), a Portuguese merchant in the port town Negapatam (present-day Nagapattinam) who settled in Madras in 1660. The garden had a house used by Pereira for rest and recreation. Having fallen into disuse, it had become a gaming den, with cock-fighting being the favourite sport at that time.
The station was designed and built in Gothic revival style and four platforms that could accommodate up to 12 coaches. It was redesigned and eventually completed in 1900; a clock tower was added, which still chimes every quarter of an hour and has four domes called the Travancore Caps and is a mélange of Gothic Romanesque styles. It is a heritage building and India's first Railway station to be put on a cyber map.
We stayed with my fathers' aunt and her husband, who lived in a one-bedroom apartment with shared toilets and a bathroom. These were low-cost but effective housing units, which the somewhat poor but gainfully employed folks who had migrated from other parts of Tamil Nadu in search of a better life.
My first tourist outing was to the Marina beach.
Marina Beach is India's longest natural urban beach, stretching 7 Km, South from Fort St. George to Foreshore Estate. In 1881 the then Governor of Madras Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff had a promenade built along the coast and named it the Madras Marina.
Since then, there have been several additions to the stretch. They established the country's first aquarium, erected Mahatma Gandhi's statue in salt march stride and soon erected a pantheon of Icons of 'Tamil literature.
A memorial to honour the memory of Anna Durai came up in 1970, and it's become the favourite necropolis of Tamil Nadu's politicians,
most notable among them puratchi thalaivi (revolutionary leader) Ms Jayalalitha, who was laid to rest next to her mentor MG Ramachandran popularly known as MGR. Both had prolific acting careers and dominated Tamil Cinema for decades.
We took a bus and had to walk some distance before we got to the packed beach. The beachgoers, here, unlike the Westerners, were fully clad, the ladies had garish makeup, their ample bosoms covered in gold jewellery, they wore silk sarees and occasionally got drenched.
The men were dressed in white. Half sleeved cotton shirts, a multipurpose headgear, a sarong that had been deftly tied around bulging waists and cleverly pulled up just above the knees. Almost everyone carried a hideous multicoloured handbag made out of plastic. Back then, it was a fashion statement.
Hawkers were selling sundal, a delicious munching snack made of chickpeas, mustard seeds, curry leaves and grated coconut. The gool (yes, that's how cool is pronounced in T.N.) bars selling Orange Ice Pops and gool drinks Coca Cola and Fanta. Bisleri hadn't yet appeared, neither had plastic bags. I loved eating those carved Mango slices that have been generously sprinkled with salt and red chilli powder and getting drenched in the sea surf. We were at D+4.
We spent the next few days visiting near and far relatives, and Raja was showcased and spoilt rotten.
A pulled rickshaw was a typical, inexpensive mode of transport and a human-powered two-wheeler. Most rickshaw drivers were peasants who had come to big cities in search of better prospects. They offered door-to-door service.
Commonly believed to have been invented in Japan in the 1860s, rickshaw pulling became an inexpensive, popular transportation mode across Asia.
Mutthu was my grand uncle's favourite rickshaw puller. Naked up to his torso with a towel wrapped around his head, he'd run like an athlete with his precious human cargo, dodging bicycles, pedestrians and shoppers to deposit Mr Ramaswamy each working day at the Madras high court. It was a risky profession.
One morning Muthu turned up with his partner, and my grandpa, my grand uncle, and I ran the gauntlet through the narrow lanes with a portable Underwood typewriter on my lap. It was a hair raising experience.
These days we offer rickshaw rides to the amused tourists who are taken for a spin through the rabbit warrens of Old Delhi. All in the name of experience.
We ALSO visited the shore temple in Mahabalipuram, the Mylapore temple, the rock temple in Trichy, Srirangam and the big temple at Tanjore, where we stayed for a week visited the temple, daily, twice a day to offer prayers.
I went back to Tanjore after 40 years, and this time, I stayed at the newly opened Svatma Heritage.
Someone described it as follows.
A Bharatnatyam dancer swirled her uncles 150-year-old heritage home into Tamil Nadus most ingenious boutique hotel. The Svatma is about Tamil Nadu's age-old arts.
Krithika Subramaniam has many avatars. Mum, wife, an accomplished Bharatanatyam dancer and a distinguished architect. And a taskmaster.
I met her through my friend Sanjay, and she let me visit the heritage home in Tanjore that she was renovating. Circa 2016.
It's challenging to visualise how the final product would look. I am thrilled that it turned out to be a perfect one. We can't think of putting our guests anywhere else.
Rewind. 1964
We returned to Chennai by intercity bus, and the following day we boarded Blue Mountain Express for an overnight journey to Coimbatore, 550 Km southwest of Madras.
A relative received us. We showered, ate breakfast and took a bus to Ooty. The English collector John Sullivan visited the area in 1817 and proposed to develop it as a hill station for sick soldiers.
On the recommendation of Governor Sir Thomas Munro, the Board of Control of East India Company gave its stamp of approval to establish a hill station. Ooty, as we know it today, was settled on July 6 1827.
Strangely I have little or no recollection of this visit; the only thing I remember is it was nauseous. Around the same time, a French boy was studying at the Lawrence School in Lovedale, founded by Sir Henry Montgomery Lawrence.
Twelve years later, that boy would give me my first job and expose me to the world of hospitality. It changed my life forever. I would hire him nineteen years later.