Madras miscellany

The storms of March

'THE IDEAS of March have passed. And so has March itself. And still there's been no rain.

Rain in March? Whoever's heard of such nonsense; it's about like expecting a joke like a shower on all Fools' Day, I can almost hear readers wondering as they read these words!

But a recent report of study by the SAARC Meteorological Centre in Dhaka, Bangladesh, stating that the centre had found cyclones in the Bay of Bengal increasing in frequency since 1877, had me sourcing the records. The study had stated that the increasing number of cyclonic storms over the 122-year period examined posed greater threats than ever to the coastal populations of the Bay region. The centre expressed particular concern that the frequency of storms had increased by over 20 per cent over the last hundred years. It must, however, be stated, that the greatest increase was during the traditional cyclone months of May (that's just a month away) and November. So what am I doing talking about rains in March and April, particularly when an official description of Madras weather states:

"Madras like other places on the coast is subject to severe cyclones and storms especially during the currents of monsoon winds. Thunderstorms occur during the period May to October. They occur generally towards the evening after 4 p.m. during May to August. During the other months they occur late in the night or early in the morning. Some of the thunderstorms are accompanied by severe squalls of rain in which speed of the wind may reach 50 to 80 miles per hour. May, October and November are the months in which Madras is exposed to the danger of cyclonic storms which form in the Bay of Bengal and move west or north-west towards the east coast. A number of cyclones have hit the city in the past, the maximum speed of the wind recorded during one such storm being 85 miles per hour. On an average, one cyclonic storm or depression may affect the city in a year."

That particular report also stated that, between 1891 and 1940, thirty cyclonic storms crossed the Coromandel Coast, within 150 miles of Madras city and that between 1941 and 1961, eighteen crossed the coast between Cuddalore and Nellore. Just for the record, the latest storm to hit this stretch crossed the Cuddalore coast in November 2000.

If that bit of retrenching only confirmed the study's focus period, a further search through the records revealed that the saga of Madras itself began with a cyclone battering Madras Roads (anchorage)! It was on March 12, 1640, when Andrew Cogan arrived from Masulipatam to join Francis Day and Beri Thimappa in raising the factory that was to become Fort St. George, that a storm battered Madras and two of his three-ship fleet, the Eagle and Unity, were lost. Over the next 150 years, February, March and April storms were not unusual, judging from those early records.

On February 28, 1962 "such a hideous storm that the like hath not happened in the knowledge of any man, at that time of year", led to the loss of nine ships in Madras Roads and 21 others between Masulipatam and Porto Novo. Between April 21, and 23, 1674, a storm's toll was a French ship at San Thome and two Dutch ships off Triplicane "with great loss of life". On April 7 and 8, 1717, the toll was four vessels in Madras Roads and several in San Thome. The last of those early storms I found in the records - later records may well note others - was on January 1, 1761, when Pondicherry, and the British naval squadron there, bore the brunt of it.

With such a record for rain in the past, dare we hope for an April storm well before what is generally considered one of our stormy periods, May?!

A breeze about a castle

ABOUT A year ago, there was a delightful feature leading off "Metro Plus", narrating the tale of an 1852 painting of 'Brodie's Castle from Huddlestone Gardens' by Justinian Gantz, of Popham's Broadway. I recalled the tales of both painting and castle a few days ago when a heritage enthusiast wrote asking for more information of what is now the College of Carnatic music, where waft the strains of music in what is nowadays breezily, perhaps even appropriately, called 'Thenral'. My correspondent wanted to know whether I had any idea about the ownership history of the property and from whom and when the Government of Tamil Nadu bought it. I haven't the faintest idea.

While hoping this confession will bring in more information, I can only look back to 1796 when company servant James Brodie - who also did business as Jarvis and Brodie - was granted 11 acres of land by the Adyar in what was called Quibble Island and which was, in fact, an island between two branches of the Adyar at its estuary, till it was all filled in by the late 19th century. By 1798, Brodie had built his 'castle', its twin castellated turrets flanking the entrance giving justification for its architectural appellation.

Brodie's commercial misfortunes - which eventually led to his suicide - kept him in and out of occupancy of the premises.

Whenever the Brodies lived away from their castle, it was rented to some of the town's leading citizens, starting with Sir Thomas Strange, the first Chief Justice of what was called the 'Supreme Court of Madras'.

What happened to Brodie's Castle after its owner drowned in 1802 in the Adyar he loved - going out on the river despite his wife trying to stop him taking their boat out because of a dream of calamity - is not known. But there is reason to believe that several Arbuthnots lived in it and that it might well have been owned by their ill-fated company that crashed in 1906. If that was the case, did Government take it over to settle the firm's debts or did it sell in to someone for the same purpose? Certainly, Chief Secretary Charles Cotton was living there in 1930 and embellishing its interiors with art. But what after then? Was there a Zamindari or Nawabi connection at sometime, may be in the 1950s? Perhaps the breezes by the Adyar will one of those days blow some information my way about the ghosts of 'Brodie Castle'?!

When the postman knocked

IT WAS sheer carelessness calling Dr. S. Ramaseshan of the Indian Institute of Science 'Dr. Ramanathan' in this column on March 19th and, then, forgetting that Rabindranath Tagore, India's first Nobel Laureate, won his Nobel Prize in 1913, seventeen years before C. V. Raman became the first Indian scientist to win a Nobel. My apologies to those concerned and thanks to all those who obviously read this column more closely than I do and wrote in to set the record straight.

A more significant lapse was omitting the name of S. Viswanathan, the second of the brothers who Chandrasekhar, the eldest son but the third in the family, felt "deserved the Nobel Prize for his contribution to the steel industry". Writing of the first recipient of the Bhatnagar Award for Metallurgy, a former colleague at TISCO, K. P. Mahalingam, records,

"Viswanathan, who joined Tata Steel in the late Thirties, went on to become TISCO's General Superintendent in entire charge of the works in the '70s. India's first National Metallurgist - an award instituted by the Indian Institute of Metals - he was the architect of TISCO's pioneering efforts in iron and steel research and his opinions were sought after by the Government of India on several matters of national importance.

His general knowledge in other branches of science and literature was phenomenal and he was eloquent in fields far beyond the frontiers of science and metallurgy.

'Viswi', as he was fondly known, was invariably on TISCO's Graduate Trainee Selection Committee, and was reputed to be a 'terror' to aspiring candidates. A budding CEO of TISCO, also a metallurgist, was questioned in 1967 by Viswanathan on what books on metallurgy he had read and answered 'Elliot's'. Further questioned on which Elliot, he inadvertently blurted, 'T.S. Elliot'! Viswanathan is reported to have commented, 'Young man, your knowledge of poetry excels that of metallurgy!"'

In this connection, a particularly nice letter I received was from Vidya Sankar which, apart from pointing out the lapses mentioned above and appreciating "the unusual presentation of the launch of Chandralekha's book and your observation, 'side by side, Vidya Shankar and Chandralekha were quite a contrast in appearance and manners'," recalled, "An interesting observation of a similar nature was made by a critic in Bombay two decades ago at a dance recital of Chandra, when I accompanied on the veena her guru Elappa's voice: 'The dancer tense on the stage, clad in a black saree with her flowing shining natural grey hair and the calm musician seated on the side stage with her veena, clad in her off-white saree with her natural black hair.'"

S. Muthiah

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