Those Were The Days, My Friend!

Cheeniya · Feb 20, 2017

My dear Syamala
Thank you for your laudatory words which inspire me to write more.
Love and concern for children are more among animals than human beings. I have seen some amazing TV shots of animals going to the extreme to protect their young ones. From the Polar bears to the African elephants, the story is the same. I love the Animal TV channels only for this reason. If you ask me, human beings have inherited this quality only from animals. But the modern life and its pressures have taken their toll on this divine bond. It is not unusual to see news items on sons killing the parents on property disputes! The pressures of modern life have indeed taken their tole on the most sublime relationships.
It is strange that the passing time has not affected the mother-children relationship among all beings except the human beings. Lucky are those who have doting children but it is not a matter of luck. If the elders treat their parents badly, the children will follow suit. May love be the pivot of all our relations!
Sri

iyerviji · Feb 20, 2017

Cheeniya said: ↑

My dear Viji
What a wonderful walk through memory lane! We seem to have had almost identical childhood. Both my brother and I were good at studies though I was not as heard working as my brother. He was always first in the class and would get lots of prizes for his high ranks. I took life a bit easy and being seven years younger to him, I was the darling of all. Intensive petting by everyone made me take life easy. Prizes were never in my mind and all I worked for was to pass with decent marks. My father was extremely good in English and my brother too. I was initially an average student in English and my love for the language began with my reading of PG Wodehouse. I soon became a crazy fan of Wodehouse. I read his novels again and again particularly when my mood is down. There is an episode in the Mr. Bean series in which he travels in a train with a single co-passenger. The passenger is reading a book and starts smiling. Soon the smile becomes open laughter which grows in volume every second. Bean can't stand it and tries to shut his ears from the man roaring with laughter without any success. Whenever I see this episode I always think that the book that the man is reading must be a Wodehouse novel. Only he can have that kind of effect on his readers. Please watch this episode here:

Sri
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Glad to know hat your brother always came first in class and thatyou were darling of all. Glad to know you are Wodehouse's fan and thanks for sharing the video. Enjoyed it. I think I should also read Wodehouse's novel. Now a days dont have patience to read novels, younger days I used to read a lot of novels, tamil magazines like Vikatan etc. Used to wait for the weekly magazine but would get to read only after m father reads it. Used to read English magazines and novels too but novels which were easy to understand. Like Shyamala has mentioned missed your posts and replies to nominations since sixmonths. Very happy to see you back. My prayers for your speedy recovery

PushpavalliSrinivasan · Feb 21, 2017

Cheeniya said: ↑

Dear PS
I am grateful to you for your concern about my health. I am getting better though at snail's speed. But don't grudge it as long as I am making progress. Your Masras connections have only firmed up now. I was rather surprised to hear that your sister lives in NSC Bose Road. It is a predominantly commercial center with traffic snarls and congested. Haven't you fully settled down in Chennai?
Sri
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Dear Mr Cheeniya,
My sister and bil are no more. My nephew has sold the house now. My sister was the eldest in our family and she was nearly 13 years older than me and was married off to a person twice older than her as second wife due to poverty.

We also after very hard work now are leading a comfortable life. You have well said that happiness is in our mind, not in our lifestyle or living in a palatial house.
After retirement we got settled in our own house at Pallikaranai. Later we shifted to Kilpauk to be close to my daughter's house and now we have shifted again to RA.Puram to be close to my daughter who has now shifted there.
I hope now we have finally settled here.
PS

jennycee · Feb 22, 2017

What a beautiful account of the good old days Cheeniya. My parents were born and raised in Chennai and spoke the southern languages fluently. My father had a travelling job which was another advantage and we (5 brothers and 3 sisters) were born in different States. I too have fond memories of childhood spent in Chennai, Bangalore, Vishakapatnam, Pondicherry and other places eventually working as Secretaries in Assam! Things have changed drastically. All we have to look back to is memories and happy times.

Cheeniya · Feb 22, 2017

Dear jennycee
Thank you for your lovely response. Of the places you have mentioned, Vishakapatnam is really on top. I was there last year and found it to be spotlessly clean and well laid-out. Bangalore has become too congested and driving there is a nightmarish experience. The changes that have taken place in Madras break my heart but that's what my childhood friends will tell me when they look at me now!
Sri

Viswamitra · Mar 8, 2017

Cheeniya said: ↑

If anyone asks me for my most unforgettable experience of my past life, I would unhesitatingly mention about my rides in the trams of Madras (Chennai). I lived in the Triplicane High Road and studied in the nearby Hindu High School. The trams ran right in front of my house and it was great watching them move around at snail’s speed making a huge grinding noise like the modern mixies. The tram driver would operate it standing all day and by way of horn, he would stamp on the bell at the bottom with his feet. I loved travelling by them with my dad. How many times I would have travelled by them in my childhood! I was around eleven years old when the tram services were withdrawn for financial reasons. The company cited huge losses as the reason to close down and you know how much it was? Rs.50000 per month! It is the equivalent of an average monthly salary of a software employee today!

It was in 1953 and I even remember the day. It was just a couple of days before the Tamil New Year’s Day in April. We were all extremely sad and nobody was in a mood to celebrate New Year. My grandmother called it as ‘Vinaasa Kaalam’ in a choked voice. We were all standing outside the door to bid final farewell to the last tram at midnight. The conductor offered us free rides as a parting gift. The whole city looked dead without the trams the next day. The rails on which the trams ran were left undisturbed until the successive road laying covered them!

The other novelty was the hand-pulled rickshs. The burly riksha pullers would pull us with ease over long distances. I loved travelling by them but my mother considered it a sin to travel in a vehicle pulled by another man. Whenever I fell ill, my mother would take me to the Doctor in it but she would prefer to walk alongside rather than riding in it. Our Medical miracle-man was Dr. Krishnamurthy Rao who lived some two miles away close to Parthasarathy Temple. He had a phone in his room that always kept me spell bound seeing him talk over it. Occasionally he allowed me to say hellow to his wife whenever he received a call from her. After he examined me with a stethoscope and thermometer, he would call his compounder Ranga Rao and give him a prescription. Ranga Rao would go to the adjoining room and prepare the concoction. It would be invariably a pink fluid with awful taste. It would be given to us in a flat bottle with the dosages marked on a piece of paper stuck on the side. My mother would grab my head and pore it in my mouth despite my tearful protests. She would then give half a spoon of sugar as a palliative for the awful-tasting medicine. There were hardly any medical shops in those days and Dr.Krishnamurthy Rao had no faith in them either.

There was the Star Talkies right in front of my house which is closed now. The lowest ticket was priced at 4 3/4 annas (30 paise in modern terms). Whenever the old news papers were sold, my brother and I would make a beeline to Star Talkies. I saw Madhumathi several times in this Theatre and was madly in love with Vyjayanthimala who was some ten years elder to me! There was a ‘chettiar’ shop near my house where we bought buy our stuff for credit on a weekly basis. The Chettiar was very fond of me and every time I went with my mother there, he would offer me a toffee on condition that he should pop it in my mouth himself. My mother was never happy with this arrangement as she always had a morbid fear that I might swallow it and choke!

My school celebrated its centenary when I was in the 6th Class. It must be racing towards its bicentenary now! There was a nickname for every teacher based on his appearance, name or practices! For example, there was a teacher who used a single finger to hit us with telling effect to submission. He was nicknamed ‘verladi’ (Finger beater!) My association with Triplicane was the happiest part of my life. It keeps me going even now! When I was sick recently, I spent most of my time joyfully recalling my Triplicane days! I just recall the lines of a popular song,

‘Those were the days my friend
We thought they'd never end’

PS: My uncooperative right eye is responsible for all mistakes!
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Dear Cheeniya Sir,

How did I miss this wonderful piece of information from you in the form of thread about your childhood days? You are compensating well with your wonderful snippets for the days we missed you. I don't look at Cheeniya's Ramblings every week and I look at it only once a month but now I am pleasantly surprise to see four threads in two months. I have a feeling your uncooperative right eye will being cooperating seeing your determination and enthusiasm to write!

I missed tram by a year as I was born in 1954 but I have heard about tram in Chennai from my parents and grandparents. But I had the fortune of seeing the hand-pulled rickshaws. My dad is the same and he won't let us travel in it because it is unfair to expect a human being to pull the weight of another human being. I used to argue with him about the carts being pulled by the horses and bulls and also about how they would make a living if everyone prefers not to ride such hand-pulled rickshaws. After hearing my passionate arguments, he took me to Dr. Raju's clinic in T.Nagar by walk after asking the rickshaw puller to accompany us with his rickshaw by our side after making full payment. I remember MGR replaced all of the hand-pulled rickshaws with tricycle rickshaws by donating a huge amount out of his personal income. Dr. Raju was a young man and was beginning his practice at that time. He also used to give those syrups and he used to pull out his penicillin injection as my fever and cold always cure only by penicillin.

We lived in Tanjore Road in T.Nagar and my mother's brothers used to live with us as they were going to college at that time. Each one of us had a time to go to bed and the discipline used to be each one should study up to a particular time. The time is fixed based on passing of a particular train. My oldest uncle used to go to bed when boatmail passed Mambalam Station. Rita Ice used to be my favorite as it was manufactured in Mylapore/Rayapettah area and sold throughout Chennai. The guy comes with a small push cart that is filled with dry ice to protect Rita Icecreams. We didn't have branded ice-cream parlors those days.

My parents and brother used to make fun of me as I offered an ana to the headmaster when he refused to admit me into Ramakrishna Mission Elementary School as I was only 4 years old. Seeing my action, he misunderstood I should be academically brilliant. The very first day of school, I came home showing my slate proudly to all and I never knew why everyone was laughing. Later, my mother told me that I got a zero on the school work and without knowing what it was, I showed it to everyone on the road proudly. As zero with a dash on either side looked funny, I didn't realize it was no score.

Viswa

Cheeniya · Mar 8, 2017

My dear Viswa
What a wonderful feedback that is! T.Nagar used to be like Triplicane except that the people were more affluent. It was a favourite area for many film stars and most of them were Telugu film stars. M. K. Thyagaraja Bhagavathar, T. R. Rajakumari, N. S. Krishnan, Vyjayanthimala, N. T. Rama Rao, Thangavelu, Manorama, Savitri, Sivaji Ganesan and T. S. Balaiah were all residents of T.Nagar. Of this elite lot, only Vyjayanthimala is alive. T.Nagar had a greater share of Telugu people than Triplicane. My area was (and is even now) Muslim populated. It was the domain of Arcot Navab. Most of the Government offices in Triplicane belonged to the Islam royalty. My own house owner was a Mulim gentleman who always impeccably dressed. He was always upset that his sons were not as good in their studies as my brother.When my brother passed his IAS exam, the house owner bhai, as we always called him, was the happiest of all. I lived in Thanikachalam Chetty street for a couple of years during my graduation in Presidency College.

Channai has none of the character of the old Madras except in places like Triplicane. During my recent visit to Pycrofts Road, I was delighted to find some places still carrying on. The old marundhu kadai and the sweetmeat shop continue to do roaring business. Whenever I hear the old movie song Madras nalla Madras , I get lost in my childhood thoughts!
Sri

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