Chennai:
Cycling Yogis have been active on their heritage cycling tours for almost two years now and on Sunday, about 30 of them teamed up with the Madras Week Celebrations to ride through various historical and heritage sites of the Tamil capital.
“This is the second consecutive year that we are on this heritage ride as part of the Madras Week celebrations of this 374th birthday of our great city. It was a ride into history”, said Moulana Ramanujar of Cycling Yogis.
Starting shortly after five in the morning, the helmeted cyclists of different generations rode from the Madras university’s institute of distance education to the high court plaque at the site where the shell from the German cruiser ‘Emden’ took away a part of the wall on the night of September 22 1914, and from there on through quite a few heritage soaked places before ending the adrenalin trip at the Parsi Anjuman in Royapuram that houses a 100-year-old building near which stands the Parsi Fire Temple called Dar-e-Mehar, built 1910.
Close to the Emden spot is the Obelisk adjoining the Dare House (Parry’s Corner) that mentions the ‘Boundary of Esplanade’ as on January 1, 1773.
“I felt a lump in my throat looking at that board and knowing that was the border dividing the then Madras into two parts, the northern one for the whites and the south for the locals. I was transported to that era, even felt the choking pain of not being able to enter a part of my own country because I am not white”, said Sunderarajan, recalling the dawn of time moments.
He said the visit to the cupola of Lord Cornwallis in front of the collector’s office—his statue had been removed to the museum as they said he was a harsh ruler—showed how dirtily we preserved our historical sites.
“In most other parts of the world, history is preserved so well; not here”. And the halt at the Royapuram rail station—the oldest in India that became functional in June 1856 as gateway to the city and hit its pinnacle when Prince of Wales Edward VII visited it on December 17, 1875—showed just the other side of Englishman who had kept the natives off his north Madras.
“The rail station showed that there was some white man even at that time who took the initiative to create a transport system that grew into the most significant public facility”, said Sunderarajan.
“I felt good seeing the oldest rail station”, gushed Hussain Surti, 12, who had gone on his bicycle, with mom Zainab on her cycle. “It was great knowing that my city has so many historic places”, said the grade seven student of Hari Shree Vidyalaya, RA Puram.
source: http://www.deccanchronicle.com / Deccan Chronicle / Home> News> Current Affairs / Tuesday – August 19th, 2013