There is a SOS from St. Bede's.
Father Rector wants to make sure a book I borrowed has got back to his library.
It is a precious book of sorts - a rare copy of a souvenir of St. Bede's silver jubilee event held in 1932.
We at Mylapore Times have been literally grabbing old tomes with pictures of local people. Because we hope to archive all that is about Mylapore at least from the 1900s.
So when I drove my photographer Saravanan to bore into the dusty drawers of local studios, he landed at Sathyan Studios which survives on the fringe of the Thirumailai MRTS railway station.
(Hopefully, it will need another post to retell Sathyan's history)
We have not found a treasure trove but we do get a few simple pictures which should make it to the photo exhibition we planned for the Mylapore Festival.
We wish we had some enthusiatic Visual Communications students from the city campuses to do the dirty work to raise such an event. Saravanan does it tirelessly though I drive him hard.
In the end the exhibition, mounted off the fence of the Sri Kapali Temple tank, is a huge success. Every evening scores of people stand to stare.
They laugh at a 60s portrait of Cho Ramaswamy who still had a mop on his head then; They wonder how Lal Bahadur Sastri could have driven to Mylapore and stood inside an open car at the east gopuram of the temple here and sought donations at war time.
Saravanan has also displayed pictures of Mylapore Festival 2006 and keeps posting fresh ones of the Fest as it rolls.
I only hope more Mylaporeans will spare their lovely old pictures for the archives we have in mind - pictures of weddings and trams, of Luz Corner and Bazaar Road.
If you do have a treasure house of them, email us at mylaporetimes@vsnl.com
1 comment:
I missed the Mylapore festival this year. Work kept me out of country. But the blog and the web site kept me posted. One of my friends who is involved in the festival narrates the four days events with large expressive eyes, every year. I heard about the performance by CSI school children and the story of a proud grandma teaching her grandson how to play pallanguzhi.
Business have their hay and bay times.They cannot dampen the spirits of a dedicated team. I wish the festival become a household one in every street of Mylapore and the spirit gets to the nerve of other neighbouring areas.
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