Welcome to Chennai, aka Madras (I still prefer to call it Madras), the not so ancient city with a jurassic past!

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MADRAS

The name evokes a mixture of occidental and oriental charm! A slight Spanish tinge to the name, the feeling of British presence of the past still in the air, occasional whiff of the inevitable French and other European footprints in its beachy sands of yore, and the quintessential, inescapable contemporary flavor of americanisation. Yet, the age-old traditions, the early morning kolam drawing in front of the street houses in the cluttered residential domains of the city remind you - this is Chennai.  The city which came into existence not 400 odd years ago as a result of a gifted piece of land to the commercial travelling British; a small fishing hamlet harbouring a natural haven against the unexpected gale or storm or cyclone or sea-based mishap for the sea-faring denizens of its neighbouring Pallava port-city Mahabalipuram, aka Maamallapuram, which in turn has today become an outskirt must-see-for-travellers-to-India place next to Madras.  The vagaries of fate could not have worked much better.  The dear old Lady Fortune who sits with blinded eyes and eternally spinning her potters wheel could not have had it much smarter had she her eyes open!  But history takes its course and Madras, variously called as Chennapatnam, Chennai, Madarasa, etc. is an example of horses for the courses! 

Madras came into existence around the 1680s.  Various stories sorround its antiquity. The most prominent and widely believed one being the following:  In the summer of 1639, the Raja of Chandragiri, one of the last known Humpi ruler of the Vijayanagar dynasty, gifted (to be tongue in cheek about the attitude of some of the historical figures of India) a strip of land on the south eastern shores of Bay of Bengal on the Coromandel Coast.  Like most of the rulers (who mainly were small tribal, dynastic dukes, nobles or chieftains lording their own domains and constantly warring to expand their confines circumferentially), the Raja was no exception and this is in no way belittling.  The exigencies of circumstances.   Also, part of the so-called aspect of pride of the high and the royal.  When the East India Company wanted a site for establishing their trading post, the Vijayanagar ruler had this little fishing hamlet on the shores of the south eastern part of India to give away. Thus came the first British settlement in Tamilnadu. The current state of Tamilnadu itself was then a large, nebulous conglomerate of partially roughly divided geographic boundaries that made up innumerable little centers of power. 

Over a period of five years, the settlers went about the process of building a fort to serve as their warehouse, settlement, trading post, whatumightcallit... In 1644 came up the area that today is called George Town with its Fort St. George, which houses the state's current assembly and legislature proceedings and is the official address of the state Chief Minister.

Over a period, the little two-bit area developed and spread its tentacles to web itself with the important, individual sorrounding areas such as Mylapore, Tiruvottriyoor, Triplicane (Tiru[v]alli[k]kéni) and the present day Thiruvanmiyoor, to give birth to what was largely geographised some 3 centuries back as Madras.  Even today, areas such as Saidapet, Alandoor, a lot of little hamlets in the extreme north of Madras around the region of Madhavaram and Sholavaram stand as instances of individual landposts with its remembrance of the days during the early British settlement period when these places themselves existed and were spectator to the evolution of Madras. Of course, today the city has spread to encompass some of these areas, and has mushroomed itself to occupy an approximate 180 sq. kilometers. 

The city is the fourth largest metropolis of India, populated by more than 5 million people.  The city could be best described thus: it is a mid-way point to the migrants abroad, looking at the current rate of in- and out-migration it is going thru.  A teeming, bustling hub of southern and specifically Tamilnadu's business wheel, Madras at first sight could seem to be in a Mad Rush!

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