The civic body began its Coimbatore Guinness Championship Campaign on Sunday to clean up the city. Despite facing a shortage of sanitary workers and push carts, the civic body officials roped in hundreds of volunteers and college students to go around the city collecting litter and promote source segregating.
The championship will begin on Wednesday after officials purchase push carts and begin to evaluate workers, said K Vijayakarthikeyan, corporation commissioner. The challenge will end on March 11, he added.
On Monday, officials inspected six wards and instructed sanitary workers to begin the championship. “Around 20 volunteers from NGOs have been allotted to each ward. Each zone will have a non-governmental organisation leading the effort. A team of sanitary inspectors and corporation officials will monitor them and evaluate their work.
“A jury will judge the best zone, best ward and best team,” said Suresh Bhandari, co-ordinator of Clean Cities Foundation.
Each ward would require at least 15 push carts but have been provided only seven push carts, said an official.
The civic body aims to create awareness about source segregation through this championship, as volunteers will go door to door to educate residents on segregating waste at source into three parts-wet, dry and hazardous. “The dry waste which is plastic waste will be weighed at collection centres such as ward offices and sold to companies. Workers will earn 4 per kg. The wet waste will be transported to Vellalore dump yard,” said Sri Rangaraj, sanitary inspector, central zone. Officials will evaluate every sanitary worker based on five criteria such as appearance, work skills, segregation, weighing and cleaning.
The volunteers have informed hotels, residents of apartments and other commercial complexes to segregate waste and hand it over to workers. “We have distributed around two lakh contest cards to school students who will get it signed by their parents. They will receive certificates from the corporation at the end of the championship,” said a higher official.
Registrations are taking place through a website and a missed call service-814436000-has been activated. As on Sunday evening, 2,500 residents had registered on the website and 300 had registered through the missed calls service. “We have already reached the two lakh mark so far. If the numbers increase, it will help us win with a bigger margin,” said Suresh.
On March 5, Dr Sanjay Gupta, coordinator of the Guinness Book of World records will visit the city to instruct them on the methodology. “Since the verification of two lakh contest cards will take a few weeks, we are hopeful that by the end of March, we will get the results and will enter the Guinness Book of world records,” added an official. While activists said that the championship was a gimmick to divert attention from the Vellalore dump yard issues, corporation officials maintained that they were planning to set up at least 15 segregation sheds after the championship ends.
“We will make sure that the drive continues even after the championship ends,” said a higher official.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Coimbatore / TNN / March 03rd, 2015
At a quiz I conducted recently, one of my questions was: What were the railway companies that were combined to create the Southern Railway in April 1951? The majority of answers recorded South Indian Railway (SIR) and did not proceed further. A few put down Madras Railway Co and SIR. Still fewer said Madras & South Mahratta Railway and South Indian Railway. And only one person got it right saying Madras & South Mahratta Railway, South Indian Railway and Mysore State Railway. I recalled these answers a few days later when, thanks to new traffic regulations, I saw the Egmore Station after a few years and found it looking as handsome as one of a city’s prime heritage buildings should look.
Egmore Railway Station today.
Purist conservationists will undoubtedly sniff at what red and white colour washes have done to the building’s red brick, Tada sandstone and Pallavaram granite. But I have always held that they should be thankful for little mercies; after the latest ‘restoration’, many a layperson or a visitor is sure to stand and stare for a while at a building which stands out midst all the tawdry construction surrounding it. Certainly I did — and as I did so I wondered what the answers would be to another quiz question: The South Indian Railway had five stations in Madras; what were the three main ones? I wonder how many would have got Tambaram, Egmore and Beach. Egmore may have been the main Madras SIR station, but Beach was the end of the line and Tambaram and Beach were the two termini of the SIR’s electrified suburban railway system established in 1931 and which in its very first year handled nearly three million passengers.
Trichy Junction in 1935
The SIR’s main railway station, however, was in Trichinopoly, where its headquarters was. The first SIR headquarters was in Negapatam (Nagapattinam) from where its first train ran to Tiruvallur on July 15, 1861, then in December that year to Tanjore and on March 11, 1862 to Trichinopoly to which the headquarters began moving from 1865 and went on till 1880. Remodelling of the old station began in 1900 and went on till 1935, T. Samyanada Pillai of Bangalore responsible for the work. Pillai, based on his splendid work in Trichinopoly, was given the contract for building the Egmore Station we see today. Work began on it in 1905 and it opened for use on June 11, 1908. The station was designed by Henry Irwin, with specialised engineering work being carried out by Arbuthnot’s Industrials and the entire supervision being done by SIR’s company architect E.C.H. Bird.
Beach Station interior (1929)
Handsome stations were also built at Beach (which also received M&SM traffic) and Tambaram befitting their status. That handsomeness can nowhere be seen in these two stations today, given surrounding construction, lack of upkeep and all the grime. They too could use the attention and facelift given to Egmore.
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The houses by the Adyar
The other day I was reminded of a story I had told in these columns some years ago (Miscellany, July 13, 2009) when reading something about the Andhra Mahila Sabha. The Sabha’s nurse-midwife training scheme had to find accommodation for increasing numbers of trainees (120) in the 1950s. The Sabha had put down roots just north of the Adyar River and on the western edge of what is now Durgabai Deshmukh Road — named after the Sabha’s founder — and was then Adyar Bridge Road. Fortunately for the Sabha there was a garden house abutting it to its north, reaching out to the southern edge of Greenway’s Road. The owner was offering the large house and its 171/2 acres for Rs.1.75 lakh. Which the Sabha did not have. But he agreed to rent it at Rs. 500 a month.
When Union Health Minister Rajkumari Amrit Kaur came to inaugurate the children’s ward of the Sabha in 1950, Durgabai Deshmukh told her the problems she was facing with accommodation for the trainees. At the time the trainees were in the rented house, but the Sabha needed to own it to expand further and the owner was not willing to bring down his price. Let’s go and see him, the Minister promptly said. They found him sick and in bed, but overawed when his visitor introduced herself. She told him that she was willing to grant Rs. 1 lakh to the Sabha if they could acquire his premises for that amount. He agreed and Yerolyte came into the Sabha’s hands. The building still stands and is the administrative centre of the Sabha. Next to it has come up a modern hotel run by the Sabha.
Discovering what Yerolyte is the other day is what led to this item. Having discovered what Yerolyte is now being used for, I began to search for information about other garden houses that had come up on the north bank of the Adyar. To the east of Elphinstone Bridge, now supplemented by Thiru-Vi-Ka Bridge, are Brodie Castle dating to 1798, at present home to the Tamil Nadu Government College of Music, Underwood Gardens, now the residence of the Regional Manager of the State Bank of India, andSomerford that’s been incorporated into Chettinad Palace.
To the west of the Bridge, going west from the Adyar, the first block of buildings comprises, from river inland, Bridge House, Government property which I think has now been replaced with a newer building,Cranleigh, named after an English village in Surrey which has been replaced by the Andhra Mahila Sabha Hospital, and Yerolyte. The next block west once comprised Riverside, Hovingham, Greenway, Cherwell and Ardmayle, the three aside from Riverside and Greenway probably taking their names from villages in Yorkshire, Oxfordshire and Tipperary (Ireland) respectively, all no longer in existence and replaced by Government bungalows for Ministers. The next block includes Adyar House, used as a Police commando training centre (a glimpse into which shows an old building, possibly the original house), Beachborough, named after a hamlet in Kent, a house now built over it, and Ben’s Gardens, once leased to Parry’s by the Diocese of Madras-Mylapore and where Parry’s built a few more houses for its Directors. Then come, Serle’s Garden, no longer in existence, like neighbouring Pugh’s Garden. Still surviving, however, is what was Norton’s Garden (1853), built by the lawyer John Bruce Norton, and which c.1907 was re-named The Grange. With a Government management training institution in it,The Grange is fairly well maintained, but could take lessons from the last building on this stretch,Moubray’s Garden/Cupola (c.1790), and the first modern house to be built on the banks of the Adyar. Today it is beautifully maintained by its owner, the Madras Club.
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The tank that vanished
Was there a huge tank in the middle of Madras that has vanished, asks schoolgirl S Prema who tells me that she is interested in the environment. Yes, indeed, there was a tank called the Long Tank which once stretched about 6 km from the Adyar River to Loyola College, following the western side of Mount Road and Nungambakkam High Road. Reminders of it are found in such names as Lake Area and Tank Bund Road. It was in reality two tanks, the Mambalam/ Mylapore Tank in the north and the Nungambakkam Tank in the south, and spread through parts of Saidapet, Mambalam, Nandanam, T. Nagar and Nungambakkam.
To meet the demands of a growing population, plans were drawn up from 1923 to reclaim land from the Long Tank and this was done from 1930 to create the 1,600 acres for the Mambalam Housing Scheme that gave us Theagaroya Nagar or T. Nagar. From 1941, further reclamation gave us the Lake Area in Nungambakkam. At the westernmost end of the Tank, 54 acres were reclaimed earlier for the Loyola College campus and in 1974 what was left of the Tank was reclaimed to give the city the Valluvar Kottam campus alongside Tank Bund Road.
Map showing the Long Tank
Once, when the Long Tank had water for most of the year, it was home to the Madras Boat Club’s activities. In fact, there was a Long Tank Regatta. It’s first recorded in 1893 that this was held “on the fine expanse of water that starts from the Cathedral Corner (once where Gemini Studio’s property was) to Sydapet”. Till any kind of boathouse was built by the Long Tank, the Club used the spacious premises of Blacker’s Gardens — kindly lent for the occasions by whoever the occupant was at the time. The Club’s first Boathouse, a temporary one, was inaugurated on December 5, 1896 and a permanent one in 1899. The Tank also hosted sailing events, the Boat Club at that time also nurturing yachting.
The earliest record of competitive rowing dates to November 21, 1875, ‘Scratch Fours’ races being held in the Long Tank. The first regatta held there was on February 4, 1884 on a course that was about half a mile. These continued till 1904, by when the Club had firmly put down roots in its present home in Adyar. The Long Tank, however, continued to be used by some oarsmen till work on reclaiming land began in the late 1920s.
There would be 200-300 “ladies and gentlemen (present, representing) the fashion and beauty of Madras,” as well as the Governor and his Lady and their retinue, the Band that would play through the evening and night, refreshments aplenty, and dinner and dancing. Now where their ghosts waltzed, there is no tank, only a congested clutter of buildings just as what you’ll see where the other important tanks of the city were. Once, the ten most important tanks of Madras were Vyasarpadi, Perambur, Peravallur, Madavakkam, Chetput, Spur, Nungambakkam, Mylapore/Mambalam, Kottur and Kalikundram. None of them exist in today’s concrete jungle.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by S. Muthiah / March 01st, 2015
V S Aarthi, a Class 9 student from SBOA Matriculation School and Junior College at Anna Nagar, won the first prize at an extempore speech competition conducted by the British Council here on Thursday.
Amrutha Desikan and Akileah Raman (both from PSBB school at K K Nagar) won the second and third prizes, respectively.
As many as 50 students from 10 schools in the city participated in the competition. The contestants for the competition were chosen based on their performance in a computer-based English language competency test held last week.
The British Council has launched an English language competency test — Aptis — in Chennai and Delhi to test the reading, writing, listening and speaking skills of students aged between 13 and 17 years.
“The test content has been designed based on the day-to-day activities of teenagers, and the topics reflect the scenarios that they go through every day,” said Gwen Caudwell, Aptis product development manager.
Caudwell said the test content had been designed based on global parameters but the topics had been chosen based on the activities that are carried out in India.
Mei-Kwei-Barker, director, South India, British Council, said, “The response for the test has been good, both in Delhi and Chennai. The students have performed well in speaking.”
Aarthi said, “Winning this extempore contest has given me a moral boost. I can now do public speaking anytime, anywhere.”
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Chennai / by Adarsh Jain, TNN / February 26th, 2015
Satyajit Ray astonished me at our first meeting. I had trotted out various Santiniketan connections I expected him to know. He looked at me for a moment while I felt his brain darting through the lanes and bylanes of the genealogical network. Then he said, “You must be related to Bussa Susheila Das!” It was the last name I expected to hear from the Maestro. Bussamami – whose death last week, three years short of a century, must be counted a merciful release – was the most fashionable, Anglicized and probably richest of my relatives. In georgette and furs, sporting a long cigarette-holder, she was a vision of elegant grandeur, the Last Burra Memsahib. When I told her about Ray, she said, “It must be because of Keshub Sen!”
If so, the Brahmo Samaj meant more to Ray than anyone imagined. Although neither Bussamami nor her husband, Mohie R. Das, had set foot in a Brahmo temple for many years, she was Brahmananda Keshub Chunder Sen’s great granddaughter. She was also the great granddaughter of General Sir Edward Barnes, India’s commander-in-chief and governor of Ceylon. That connection was embarrassingly highlighted when Bussamami stayed with us in Singapore. On the day she arrived, the afternoon tabloid, New Paper, which normally confined itself to sensational local tidbits, went to town with an unexpected cover story on Barnes and his Ceylonese mistress. As governor, he lived in what is today Colombo’s Mount Lavinia Hotel from which a secret underground tunnel snaked away to his inamorata’s dwelling. Bussamami wasn’t disconcerted.
She had flown in wearing a saree. It was her habitual garb when travelling abroad she explained. “I get better service.” At one time people laughingly called her “Susheila please!” because of her strenuous but unsuccessful efforts to banish the Bussa nickname. She was indignant when a British Indian woman in Singapore asked why she didn’t have a British passport. “Why should I?” she retorted. “India is my home. I’m Indian. I have property there.” The patrial clause in British immigration law would at once have granted her British citizenship. But people like her didn’t need to emigrate to raise their living standards or become Westernized. They easily did both in India. Her sister, Moneesha Chaudhuri, whose husband was the first Indian head of Andrew Yule, the biggest British managing agency in India, and an army chief’s brother, was also like that. She once refused the then whites-only Saturday Club’s invitation to play the piano in a concert under her English mother’s maiden name. “After all, you could pass for English,” they pleaded. She didn’t take it as a compliment.
Singaporeans found it intriguing that Bussamami and I were related twice over. She and my mother were second cousins, great granddaughters of Annada Charan Khastagir, who presided over an All-India National Conference session in 1883, preparatory to the Indian National Congress being launched two years later. Her husband, Mohiemama, and my mother were first cousins, grandchildren of Bihari Lal Gupta, who was responsible for the Ilbert Bill, which led to the AINC and INC. She and her husband being related, the marriage presented difficulties: one version for which I can’t vouch was they went to French Chandernagore for the registration.
Mohiemama’s father, S.R. Das, founded Doon School. He himself was the first Indian head of Mackinnon Mackenzie, the Inchcape shipping giant. When he joined Mackinnon’s exalted band of covenanted hands (UK-based officers who had signed a contract with the company) in England, the Numbers One, Two and Three were known in inverse order as Three, Two and One. Those figures indicated their monthly salary in lakhs of rupees. Mohiemama’s ways were upper-class English, the legacy of public school in Britain and Cambridge. My son, Deep, quoted Bussamami in this newspaper (“Learning To Speak Like The Masters”, October 13, 2004) as saying when asked if her husband went to Mill Hill or Millfield school, “Mill Hill of course. Millfield was only for the post-war nouveau riche!” Being dark and heavily built, he borrowed a turban from Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II of Jaipur – husband of the beautiful Gayatri Devi, who was Bussamami’s cousin – to visit America in the Fifties. He enjoyed describing how he clamped the turban on his head before entering restaurants in the American Deep South.
They settled down in a gracious villa called Faraway in remote Coonoor. But their world straddled Calcutta, Darjeeling, Hong Kong, London and the south of France. Or rather, small gilded niches in all these places, with extensions to Simla, Colombo and Singapore. World War II and the 300 Club had lent zest to their cosmopolitan set. Not everyone could come to grips with this dizzy diversity. Raj Thapar, wife of Seminar magazine’s Romesh Thapar, betrayed her own provincialism by dismissing Bussamami in All These Years as “an erstwhile crooner”. Yes, she, Moneeshamashi and their only brother K.C. (Bhaiya or Kacy) Sen were all gifted musicians. In her youth, Bussamami had indeed given music lessons in Calcutta, and Moneeshamashi continued to do so for free at St Paul’s School, Darjeeling. But the sleaziness that Thapar’s comment sought to convey just didn’t go with the Ingabanga (Satyendranath Tagore’s term for Anglicized Bengalis) elite.
Kacy called his delightful memoirs The Absolute Anglo-Indian. He wasn’t “a person whose father or any of whose other male progenitors in the male line is or was of European descent, but who is a native of India”, which is how the Government of India Act, 1935, defines Anglo-Indian. Nevertheless, his was the culture of the Rangers Club, Grail Club and the club of which he says “if ever there was a place that separated the men from the boys, and no angels feared to tread, it was the good old Golden Slipper”. I was struck as a child by his imaginative wedding invitation, “Bridgette and I are going to be married at the Golden Slipper Club.” His Cavaliers was a popular band. He frequently compered at the Oberoi Grand Hotel’s open-air Scherezade night club, which occupied the space now taken up by the swimming pool.
He provided Ray with Devika Halder aka Vicky Redwood for Mahanagar “over a cup of tea on the verandah” of his flat. The voice off-screen in Mahanagar was Devika’s, but the song was a ballad, Time Gave Me No Chance, he had composed in his rowing days. Major Sharat Kumar Roy of the American army was an unusual wartime buddy and surely the only Indian to be commemorated by a mountain in Greenland: he discovered Mount Sharat. Laced into the light-hearted banter of Sen’s memoirs was the fear that the “Absolute Anglo-Indian” would become the “Obsolete Anglo-Indian”.
Bussamami built personal bridges to very different milieus. Cooch Behar, Mayurbhanj, Jaipur, Nandgaon and other royals, some also descendants of Keshub Sen, were relatives and intimates. When I mentioned the novelist, Maurice Dekobra, she told me she had known him as the Paris-born, Maurice Tessier. Axel Khan, whom I met as India’s ambassador in pre-unification Berlin, was another old friend. Rumer Godden produced a flood of memories, which were borne out by Ann Chisholm’s biography, Rumer Godden: A Storyteller’s Life. Her apology for arriving late for dinner with my wife and I in our Calcutta flat was that she had got lost in the suburban lanes to Kanan’s house. Kanan who? She meant the legendary star, Kanan Devi, whom the young Bussamami had taught her dancing steps in the Thirties. They had remained friends ever since.
The real burra memsahib didn’t need to keep up appearances. Neither did she have to try to be stylish. To adapt the Comte de Buffon, the style was the woman herself. There won’t be another like her.
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph, Calcutta / Front Page> Story / by Sunanda K. Datta-Ray / Saturday – February 28th, 2015
A view of flowing of the Vaigai river and pathway for pedestrains at Madurai. Photo: The Hindu Archives
Curious explorers, a two-member dance company that visited beautiful Madurai and a page out of the archives…. Dr. Swarnamalya Ganesh shares her findings.
India was a place of great curiosity and interest to many westerners in the early parts of the 20th century. Notwithstanding the threats about epidemic diseases and unhygienic surroundings, many from America and Europe dared the adventure and lived to write their own memoirs.
Ted Shawn and Ruth St Denis, who formed a company and was a couple in real life, known as Denishawn, were American dancers. Today considered the founding parents of American modern dance, they travelled to India as part of their grand tour of the Orient between 1925 and 1926 CE. Their interest in the East and particularly in India owed it to St. Denis’s obsession with the Nautch and the dancer. Initially Ruth’s disciple, Ted Shawn became her dancing partner and husband. Shawn was also drawn to Indian dances. He was especially interested in the Nataraja Tatva and the dance of Lord Siva.
In May 1926, towards the fag end of their Indian tour, the company travelled to Madras, to perform. They had visited many North Indian cities like Lucknow, Benaras, Calcutta and Hyderabad in the South, before coming to Madras. Wherever the company travelled they dressed themselves in native costumes and posed for pictures, shopped for Indian artefacts and tried to see the local dances. Shawn and Ruth’s particular interest in Nautch had them always searching for performances, perhaps to absorb more from the ‘authentic’ into Ruth’s already staged Radha and Nautch repertoire. But in the 1920s it was rather difficult for foreigners to go into the interior dwellings of dancers and watch their performances, unless invited. In his account, Shawn laments that they could only see some street performers. He of course, calls these as nautch too but remarks that they are “quite not up-to-the-mark.”
However, when they come to Madras they are greeted by, one Mr. Krishnaswamy Rao who, as the last leg of their Indian trip before taking the ship to Colombo, arranges a visit to Madura (Majura or Madurai). Upon the recommendation and arrangement made by Dr. A.K. Coomaraswamy (whose writings and guidance Ted took to create his Indian dances like the Cosmic Dance of Siva), Ted Shawn, Ruth St. Denis along with their company dancers which had Doris Humphery and her likes in it, readied themselves to watch the dance of a devadasi named Kamalambal in Madurai.
Here is his observation:
“Kamalambal, a temple deva-dassi, danced for us for several hours. She was technically very fine and attractive in a plump way, and an extremely wonderful pantomimist. She was quite the finest we had seen in all of India,” Shawn exclaims. He also admires the beauty of Madurai and compares it to Benaras calling the city a “dream or something read in a book.”
Madurai Kamalambal during one of her performances.
The beauty of Madurai with its teeming South Indians seems to have really captured the dancers. Records Shawn, “The men with their heads shaven half way back and a bush of hair on the rear half, wearing the scantiest bit of goods in the way of a G-string that I ever saw, as their only garment, the women heavily swathed in thick, but richly coloured cotton saris, made the city itself exciting.”
During my recent research of the Denishawn archives, parts of important ethnographic details such as these pictures emerged. One of the missions of the company during the travels to the Orient was to take pictures and video footage (film reels) of Indian lives, music and art. Their visits to the bazaars of Calcutta, Palaces in Lucknow, tea party gardens where Ruth is dressed as a Nautch dancer and is posing are all archived. Photograph and video filming were done by Ruth St. Denis’s brother who was called “Brother St. Denis” or simply “brother.” His actual name was Rene St Denis and he was their travel manager as well for this tour.
The photo here is a picture taken a few days after May 10, 1926, which is when the company gave their last performance in India at Madras. Then they travelled to Madurai to watch Kamalambal (picture). She is seen here with her team (Sadir melam) comprising a nattuvan, a pilangrovi player, a muttukaran and another player with what seems like a clarionet. This photograph has been doing the rounds for years now as part of Sadir archives, but it is only now that we get to know the name of the dancer, date and the place it was photographed in and the photographer’s name.
Kamalambal and her team with the dance constumes.
The other photo with many girls clad in dance costume and posing, sitting and standing in front of a large tent, which is an often seen image of 20th century Sadir dancers, seems also a photo courtesy of Brother St. Denis taken. during this trip.
We thus put a name to the face in the picture and a name to the man behind the lens too. That’s the story of how Brother brings us our own Madura Kamalambal after an incredible eighty years.
(The author is a dancer, choreographer and dance historian. She is the Director of Ranga Mandira School of Performing Arts and Research Academy. As a recipient of the Fulbright fellowship, she is currently researching and teaching at University of California, Los Angeles, in the World Arts Cultures department.)
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> Friday Review> History & Culture / by Dr. Swarnamalya Ganesh / February 26th, 2015
S. Thabuna, a former student of Cluny Matriculation Higher Secondary School, has won the Bal Shree award for creative writing at the national level for 2011-12.
The Bal Shree Honour Scheme was constituted by the Centre in 1993 to recognise and tap creativity in children in the age group of 9 to 16. Ms. Thabuna, now an MBBS student at the Government Kilpauk Medical College received the honour for her talent in creative writing.
She told The Hindu that topics were given just before the competitions began.
“The national competition went on for four days, and each topic was challenging,” she said adding that she wanted to become a medical writer.
She wanted more school students to participate in the competitions.
Her parents A. Sivaprakasam and S. Girija said that they were proud of their daughter winning a national level award.
B. Hemanathan, Regional Assistant Director, Art and Culture Department, Salem Zone, said that the competitions were held in painting, collage designing, formations from waste materials, clay modelling, c classical vocal, and Bharatanatyam.
Union Minister for Human Resource Development Smriti Zubin Irani presented the Bal Shree award at a function held in New Delhi recently.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> National> Tamil Nadu / by Staff Reporter / Salem – February 25th, 2015
Head of the $100 million Kothari Group and brother-in-law of business tycoons Mukesh and Anil Ambani, Bhadrashyam Kothari, breathed his last in the US on Monday. He was 54, and was undergoing treatment for what sources say was cancer.
B Kothari (1961-2015)
Son of the late industrialist HC Kothari, a stalwart among Chennai industrialists, Shyam Kothari headed the Kothari Group, an umbrella group that held under it such diversified interests like sugar, petrochemicals, fertilizers, chemicals and textiles to name a few.
Several condolences for the third generation entrepreneur were doing rounds on social media from Monday evening, the most prominent being a tweet from A R Rahman which read: “May God bless your soul dear friend Shyam Kothari. You were a gem of a friend who will always be remembered – love ARR and family.
A graduate of Chennai’s Loyola College, Shyam Kothari took over the reins of the company after his father passed away in the mid-nineties. Over the years, he expanded the group considerably, focusing especially on sugar, textiles and financial services.
In fact, Shyam Kothari is credited with setting up what was India’s first ever Mutual Fund – ‘Kothari Pioneer Mutual Fund’ through a partnership with the American Pioneer Group.
Shyam Kothari was also part of a big legal battle over the control of the Kothari Industrial Corporation, owned by his father’s brother DC Kothari. Allegations of Shyam Kothari using his connections with the Reliance Group to take over the sister group ran rampant after DC Kothari passed away, until it culminated in a legal battle in 1993 with Pradip Kothari, son of DC Kothari. The cousins later patched up their differences, but not before taking the case through both the High Court and the Company Law Board.
The Kothari family also has close connections with some of India’s largest business families. Besides being married to Reliance group patriarch, Dhirubhai Ambani’s daughter Nina Ambani, his daughter Nayantara Kothari is also married to Shamit Bhartia, son of Shobana Bhartia, chairman and Editorial Director of the Hindustan Times Group.
Shyam Kothari’s grandfather, CM Kothari, is also considered a legend among the Chennai entrepreneurial community, having founded Madras Stock Exchange – which incidentally closed shutters last year. He also ran the Madras Safe Deposits Company. The Kothari Group currently has control of Kothari Sugars and Chemicals, Kothari Safe Deposits, Kothari Biotech, and Kothari Pioneer Mutual fund including others, with a gross worth of over $100 million and 800 plus employees.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Chennai / by Express News Service / February 24th, 2015
Here’s what you can expect to see at The Hindu Chennai-Pondy Heritage Car Rally
The cars headed for Puducherry illustrate the march of automobile technology. Some signify its baby steps, some others its giant strides.
Here’s what one can expect. The fleet includes a Citroen Traction Avant 11B. The Traction Avant is French for front-wheel drive. Citroen may not have introduced the world to front-wheel drive – Alvis, Cord and DKW beat Citroen to it – but it definitely popularised the concept, especially in Europe.
Hand-crafting is the mark of many cars from the past. Visitors to the rally will get to see a Volkswagen Karmann Ghia, which is one of the most exciting hand-crafted machines to emerge from the classic period.
In its days, it was a benchmark in styling.
And the traditional rivalry between British and American cars continues, with both camps being adequately represented.
A Chevrolet Fleetmaster (for representational purposes only)
The American machines on the trip include a Chevrolet Fleetmaster, Chevrolet Styleline, Chevrolet Impala, Studebaker President, Dodge Kingsway Convertible, Ford Model A, Dodge Brothers, and Packard Clipper.
The other flock includes Morris 8 Cutdoor, Morris 8 Series E, Morris Minor (Convertible), Austin Seven Chummy, Austin 8, Austin 16 and Triumph Herald.
An Austin 8 (for representational purposes only)
“The bar has been raised this year with many 5hp, 7hp and 8hp cars joining in,” says Kylas Swaminathan, secretary, Madras Heritage Motoring Club. A small group of bike owners has signed up for the rally as well, with their Matchless G3L, Royal Enfield G2, BSA C11, Triumph 3H, Suzuki RV 90L, and an MV Agusta 150 cc.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus> Society / by Prince Frederick / January 28th, 2015
A display of vegetables and fruits intricately carved to resemble flowers and animals, and ice sculptures bravely weathering Chennai’s heat greeted visitors on the lawn of the Institute of Hotel Management Catering Technology and Applied Nutrition in Taramani on Friday. It was awards night, and the place and the students were decked up suitably.
Students and faculty of the institute bagged nine national awards of excellence in hospitality education, including best award for operational performance and special award for all round performance. Secretary of tourism R Kannan gave away the awards to the students and faculty. He distributed prizes to the winners of various competitions held during Kalakriti Sangam 2015, a three-day national level inter-institute competition on culinary and table placement skills, held at the institute.
The institute, established in 1963 and inaugurated by then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, has been sending graduates to the hospitality industry within and outside India from inception.
Institute principal and secretary S Rajamohan said, “The biggest challenges we face is Chennai’s climate, and the orthodox mentality of south Indians that prevents them from encouraging students to join this industry. There is a lot of opportunity in the hospitality industry with ample growth.” He said that the institute has been seeing a 100% placement record for the last seven years. The starting salary for a graduate ranges between 16,000 to 28,000 in India and around 40,000 overseas.
R Rangachari, advisor to South India Hotels and Restaurants Association, said one of the main aims of the institute was to upgrade the quality of life of rural people, teach them skills and provide them with employment opportunities. Shabin Sarvotham, senior general manager of GRT Grand Hotel, said, “We have seen the institute grow from offering a three-year undergraduate course to various certificate and craft courses and capacity-building programmes for professionals. It will continue to grow.”
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Chennai / TNN / February 14th, 2015
Thousands of people gathered at Sri Muniyandi Sami temple in the village of Vadakkampatti, in Thirumangalam, Madurai, for the biannual festival.
The village’s claim to fame is the restaurants named after the temple by the people here. Explaining the family practice, P Ramasany, who runs a hotel at Poonamallee in Chennai, said, “When the children reach their teens, they go to a hotel run by a relative. From the basics like cleaning tables, they graduate to supplier, master, cashier and eventually leave and start up their own hotel.”
Priests performing puja at Sri Muniyandi Sami temple in Vadakkampatti village in Madurai district. Biriyani is distributed as prasadam for devotees during the temple festival | N Vajiravelu
Hundreds of hotel owners from the village, like Ramasamy, who owe their success to Muniyandi Sami, gather at the village every year to organise the grand two-day festival, a thanksgiving of sorts that has been on for the past 80 years. “The first bill each day in our hotels is in the name of Muniyandi. The money we save through those bills is donated for the festival,” said M Jeyaraman, whose ancestor was one of the first to set up hotels and also played a role in setting up the temple.
The young generation of hoteliers are, however, moving to other professions. But the hoteliers are hopeful that the festival never loses its grandeur. “Though our children may not get into this business, we teach them never to forget their roots,” said Ramasamy.
Until a few decades ago, the festival remained an annual festival. Difference of opinion between the Naidus and Reddiars led to the festival becoming a biannual festival.
While the Naidu community celebrates it on the second Friday of the Tamil month of Thai, the Reddiar community celebrate it in the next Tamil month of Maasi.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> Tamil Nadu / by Pon Vasanth Arunachalam / February 23rd, 2015
