Egmore ; Egmore railway station gets more passenger friendly

Four escalators, digital announcement boards and wi-fi soon

Egmore railway station is one place city residents dread boarding a train from, due to the lack of digital announcement boards and the difficulty in accessing platforms.

But all that is set to change soon as, in the coming months, the station will be spruced up.

Every day, Egmore station caters to over 2.5 lakh passengers travelling by 38 pairs of express trains and over 100 suburban trains. But it does not have enough commuter amenities.

Soon, the station will get four more escalators, two lifts, four big digital boards, coach information boards and wi-fi facility.

“All theses facilities will be introduced in a phased manner,” said a senior Railway official.

At present, escalators are present on platforms 4 and 5. But passengers, especially senior citizens, still have to climb stairs to reach other platforms,” said the official.

The wi-fi facility is expected to be inaugurated in a few days.

Digital announcement boards that display information on trains will also be installed in different parts of the station.

“Two boards have already been put up on platform 4 leading to the portico. Two more will be placed outside the station so people on the road too can see train timings,” said the official.

Smaller digital boards will be placed near the ticket counter and passenger waiting area. “Earlier passengers had to run about to find which platform their train would arrive on. These boards make life easy,” said K. Manjunatha, a passenger who was at the station to board a Madurai-bound train.

Coach position information boards will also be installed. “Passengers will not have to rely on porters for such information,” the official said.

Some commuters, however, are sceptical of the maintenance of such facilities. “MRTS, for instance, is a perfect example of the Railway’s negligence,” said B. Somnath, a senior citizen from Sowcarpet who is a regular train commuter.

H November 5,2014

Chennai Explorer :Tamil Nadu Archives,

PRESERVED FOR POSTERITY At the Records Office

A fine example of Indo-Saracenic architecture, the Madras Records Office, now known as the Tamil Nadu Archives, has a wealth of historical and government documents, preserved carefully over centuries

“Meet me at the Records Office opposite Egmore station,” Hemchandra Rao told me when I asked him for some information. “I'm working on the bridges of Madras.”

 I walked into the large compound and stood transfixed in front of the Indo-Saracenic building. The Gothic columns, exposed brickwork, arches, stone steps, the board above the doorway (Madras Records Office 1909), the 1938 annexe, polished wooden stairway to the right — together they made a gentle announcement: I am a heritage building and I have a story.

I would get it from Commissioner Siddique. But outside his office I bumped into officials who had researched its past. Just strolled down the corridor to find out, they said, with a sweep of hand.

 “In 1672, Governor William Langhorne decided to record all government decisions.

 In 1801, the East India Company took over the Madras Presidency and in 1805, Governor William Bentinck saw the need for organising and preserving Secretariat records, and centralised them at Fort St. George, appointing one Muthiah of the Political & Military Department as the Record Keeper.

 The files piled up, overflowed from the shelves, were moved to a “pillar-godown” and, in 1888, shifted to the Secretariat's ground floor.

That's when Grassmere was spotted. The officials believe it was a cemetery, but one version says it was a garden house to be turned into a hospital, but the station across squashed the idea. Grassmere would be the new Records Office.

 The Rs.2.2-lakh-plus contract for its makeover went to T. Loganatha Mudaliar of St. Mark’s Church fame.

 In October 1909, the office became functional. C. M. Schmidt, Registrar of the Secretariat, kept an eye on it till Henry Dodwell, Additional Professor of English, Presidency College, took over as curator in 1911. 

In 1973, it was renamed Tamil Nadu Archives.

Records Office

It's hard to find a place so fastidiously built for preserving documents. 

The iron girders, stacks and ladders were imported from Birmingham and fabricated locally. The building has a research hall and nine stack rooms, with a Commissioner's office on the first floor.

 The stack rooms branch off on either side of a central corridor, the space between them ensuring air and light.

 Their perfect three-level symmetry allows one to see through the windows all the way to the last room. 

The walls are tiled. The records are stacked on floating shelves, with legs placed in small moats that were once filled with oil. T

he stacks are arranged in chronological order, department-wise. The oldest book is from 1633, the oldest record dates back to 1670.

Boards proclaim the presence of Dutch/Persian/Danish/English/Tamil records and palm manuscripts. Records include those of the arrest/hanging of Kattabomman, history of Pudukkottai, sati, details of Gandhiji, his letters…

. The records of Tipu were displayed at the World Exhibition in 1986. 

You can go through the entire electoral rolls since 1960, freedom-fighters' list, jail-slips, land records and gazettes from all across Tamil Nadu, read the first issue of the Madras Courier (1795), and check out innumerable maps.

Most official records are written in Indian ink, the neat cursive writing a teacher's delight. Researchers come from all over the world and a regular visitor could have spotted Balakumar, Vairamuthu and actor Kamal Haasan, who researched on Marudanayagam.

A separate library has a remarkable compendium of information — a heritage gazetteer — on the districts of Tamil Nadu.

The speciality of this place is the preservation of records. Preservation clerks and binders fumigate and de-acidify old files in special chambers, sandwich the pages between handmade, translucent chiffon fabric using a maida/glycerine/copper sulphate paste, press them to remove undulations, and dry them on racks before binding them into books.

 In the digitisation room, the pages are scanned, microfilmed, checked on a reader machine and stashed away on racks. Lamination is done only for new books and files.

 “Tamil Nadu Archives... has evolved into a repository of invaluable historical and administrative records, dating back to 1670 AD,” says Commissioner Siddique. “It is engaged in preserving these treasures on scientific lines and making them available for historical research.”

This story won't be complete without the mention of Dr. B. S. Baliga, the “Architect of Archives in Tamil Nadu.” 

Historian, trained archivist and scholar, he was curator for 25 years and made the Records Office a mine of information on government work, adding explanatory notes to the files. 

Following McQueen's efforts, he established scientific management, administration and conservation of the Madras Archives.

 When the threat of a Japanese attack loomed during World War II, he moved the records to the Chittoor office so efficiently that the British government gave him the title ‘Rao Bahadu

Geetha padmanabhan H 16 Sep 14

Udupi hotels, an ode to way of life

The Mathsya hotel waswas once Udipi Home

Long before the invasion of international cuisine and even north Indian food, Madras was home to a network of hotels that served pure vegetarian fare rooted in the Udupi region of Karnataka. Though there were several hotels under different names that had cooks from the region preparing the fare, the tag line ‘Udupi Hotel’ was a benchmark for quality.

One of the unique features of these hotels was that almost all of them employed natives of Udupi as head cooks and had a very strict regimen about their kitchens. The food was tasty and affordable.

P.J. Chandrasekar, proprietor of Murudi’s Lunch Home, one of the last remaining Udupi restaurants in Chindatripet, said his father P. Janarthana Rao ensured that the cooking was similar to the tradition followed in Hindu temples. The menu was limited and even the food was served at specific times.

Udupi hotels thrived across the city, even till the 1980s, with old Madras localities such Egmore, Chintradripet, Purasawalkam, Ayanavaram, Villivakkam, Mount Road, Triplicane and Royapuram boasting of many such outlets. They gradually shut up shop unable to compete with swanky restaurant chains such as Saravana Bhavan and Adyar Ananda Bhavan.

Dates in History

Before 1947

Mathsya earlier known as Udipi Home, was established

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1950s 

Udupi hotels started becoming popular across the city

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1980s

Many Udupi hotels started downing shutters in the city

Standout Dishes

Idli, vada, dosa

Several factors like the younger generation not willing to take over the mantle of the business, paucity of cooks and change in the food preferences of residents led to the once thriving family-run hotels closing down. Others were sold off.

Mr. Chandrasekar recalls at least four hotels run by his family in Chintadripet alone.

“This hotel was started in 1954 by my father and is the last of the Udupi hotels here. The three establishments run by my cousins have all shut down.”

Another Udupi hotel that stands tall amidst the decline is Mathsya that was started before Independence and is still going strong. The restaurant, located near Egmore Railway Station, went by the names Udipi Krishna Bhavan and Udipi Home when the city was still Madras.

Ram Bhat, a partner of the family-run Mathsya, finds people’s preference for north Indian dishes to be the reason for several Udupi restaurants, where only south Indian dishes were served, closing. 

While he did have to include north Indian dishes in the menu, he is proud of the fact that the restaurant is one of the few to have a separate Udupi fare.

The Hindu   R Sri Kanth 9 Aug 2014