Madras is obviously more on my mind than I admit. Randomly while searching for Madras Checks and David Ogilvy’s famous advertising stunt.
The plaids were an expression of India’s fondness for Scottish tartans of regiments occupying India in the 1800’s. The Indians reinterpreted the plaid according to the local color palette. Ellerton Jette, president of Hathaway shirts found the shirts on a trip to England and introduced the madras plaids in American in the 1930’s. Consumers started retuning the shirts when they discovered that they faded. David Ogilvy, advertising icon, publicized the shirts as “guaranteed to fade”. “Magical things happen to this shirt when you wash it1“, Ogilvy wrote, and the madras shirt and great advertising have been with us since.
I came across this article by Tishani Doshi on Madras. It’s part of a nice issue on Madras. (March 2004) Once Sri asked me something about why I didn’t call it Chennai, what was I hanging on to. You know how it is? You refer to your siblings, your closest friends with their chella peru (pet name). Odd as the names maybe. Wonderfully quirky as they may be. They are that name. Every name has its history. In the oddity of that name, you trace vague routes of personal history and the threads of space. I don’t refer to the city as Chennai, not because I have an intellectual aversion, but because the city to me is Madras. It is not a conscious decision. It slips off my tongue. At BlogCamp, one blogger asked me why I had said Madras and not Chennai when the name had been changed so many years back. I asked him if people hadn’t referred to the city as Chennai before the name had changed. It’s really about what you relate to or identify with. (Am not venturing into the politics of naming cities – this really is about identities at a personal level.) Tirani Doshi writes
Nevertheless, this is where we return to our frayed shirts and threadbare sheets. To the Madras syndrome. To David Ogilvy’s brilliant advertising gimmick – the shirt that’s guaranteed to fade, the Madras checks, the untapped magic. As a city, it has the same special qualities of the simple checked shirt lying in your cupboard. It’s what you reach for when you have nothing else to wear; it’s what you return to over and over for its blissful familiarity. It’s comfortable, doesn’t overpower, isn’t glossy, allows you to retreat or stand in the light. It’s real….
But still, it breathes, allows you to be. Still, it has the capacity to welcome, to startle. These are new days ahead of us – not of sprawling houses and coy girls in pattu pavades and ribboned double plaits. These are days of burgeoning Bollywood stars, coffee pubs, and call centres. Great romances can still be born here.
Oh, and another nice piece by Shreekumar Varma. He wrote the excellent and undersung Lament of Mohini, which really ought to be more widely read. It’s a fascinating book and was dwarfed by the Roys of his time.
He once asked me about the name Madras. He thought it came about because the British used this town to lock up all those who revolted against them. They called them Mad Rascals, in short Mad-Ras.’
There is another story with a similar twist. The British were amused by the fact that Vekatappa Naik could be crazy enough to gift away so much land to Francis Day (to build Fort St. George), asking in return only that it be named after his father Chennappa Naik (hence, Chennappattinam and then Chennai). So they called him the Mad Rasa, or the mad king. This single story explains both names, Madras and Chennai.
As for me, I half inherited my fondness for this city from my mother, and half developed it given its insanely fabulous cuisine.
- Known as Bleeding Madras, because the colours would bleed with every wash, and the shirt looked different after every trip to the laundary [back]
Posted on September 13th, 2006 by Neha Viswanathan
Filed under: Borrowed Words, Cities, Culture, India
Really nice post.
It is amazing how the Scottish tartans found their way into remote corners of India…it is interesting when you go into remote corners of the Himalayas lo and behold you are bound to clap your eyes on that famous famous Argyle pattern :-)
kamla
Very well written post, Neha. I write a series called Bombaywallah & Mumbaikar Discuss at Metroblogging Mumbai and Bombaywallah and Mumbaikar always refer to the city as Bombay and Mumbai. I, for some reason, find myself calling it Bombay in speech and Mumbai when I am writing.
Madras is referred to as Chennai only by those who politically prefer it! For me, its always been Madras and also Bombay, for that matter.
How very nicely written, Neha. Chennai rolls out rather easily from my mouth. No political ideology here, but it just works. But yes, to me Madras will always be the somewhat magical land that I came back each year for my summer vacations to. It was this overtly romanticized place inside my head. When I eventually moved here, Chennai seemed like a much better and more real way to refer to it. The memory of Madras preserved forever.
Your blog is getting better by the day, must be the air in the city! :)
By the way, everytime I visit your page I see this ad for Jeevansaathi.com. Is it just me, I wonder?! :)
Kamla: Wasn’t it the Royal Highland Fusiliers that spread tartan love wide and far? Interesting, will poke deeper into the Himalayas next time.
gauravonomics: I know of a lot of people who refer to the same city as Madras or Chennai depending on which language they are speaking. Interesting.
Janefield: Not really. Chennai has been Chennai for a lot of people. Or so I think.
Primalsoup: Oh yes! Chennai is more real than Madras is. Madras is that magic land of ripe jackfruit and raw mangoes. Madras can be pickled and had in doses with thayir saadam when desired. As for Jeevansaathi – maybe someone’s sending you signals. Cough!
Neha: Here in May/June, Old Navy (which sells budget casuals for the twenty somethings, me thinks) had this start of summer campagain (look for “Old Navy ‘Madras’ TV” in this page called “Make it Madras”. Ofcourse, like any other fine Indian name like Ananthanarayanan, they had to mangle “Madras” into something that sounded like “Mad -Russ”! And the collection was full of plaid skirts and what not.
Lovely post. Though I have been living in Chennai all these years, your post and the links, sent me into a nostalgic trance – yearning for the old Madras.