On a humid day in July 1939, NM Subbiah Chettiar and his son, Muthiah, waited outside their Colombo home to welcome Jawaharlal Nehru. Subbiah was a prominent businessman who dabbled in Ceylon politics representing Indian interests. Nehru, who had come to study the problems faced by Indians in Ceylon, had been greeted by huge, adoring crowds everywhere he went. His strain seemed clearly evident when he finally arrived at the Subbiah residence. But Nehru’s mood immediately lightened when young Muthiah stepped forward and offered him a bouquet. Brief, as it was, this meeting left an indelible impression on the boy.

Subbiah hailed from Chettinad where Muthiah was born in 1930. Determined to make his son “a brown sahib,” the father hired Mrs. Smith to be Muthiah’s governess. She contributed immeasurably to Muthiah’s life-long fascination with the Anglo-Indian community (the subject of his best-selling book). When Muthiah was four, Subbiah moved his family to Ceylon. The son enrolled at a prominent Colombo public school, whose headmaster, WT Keble, was a big influence on the boy. Keble encouraged Muthiah to read widely, be inquisitive, and take up writing for the school paper.

After visiting Europe and the United States in the 1930s, Subbiah resolved to send his son abroad for higher studies. As a prelude, Muthiah left Colombo for the Montford School, Yercaud, and then for the Lawrence School, Muree (now in Pakistan) where he completed his intermediate.

As the Second World War was ending, Muthiah travelled to the United States to pursue an undergraduate engineering degree at Worcester Polytechnic near Boston. There was only one other Indian in his class and no African American had yet been admitted to the entire school. At Worcester, technical courses did not interest Muthiah, and he audited many humanities classes. He participated actively in track sports and helped edit the college magazine. After he was done with college, Muthiah studied international affairs at Columbia University.

Image courtesy: Muthiah family
 

Covering politics and sport in Ceylon

Muthiah returned to Colombo for his sister’s wedding in 1951. No sooner did he arrive, his British-Indian passport was cancelled. He had overlooked the fact that India and Ceylon had gained Independence. Without a passport, Muthiah was effectively stranded on the island. Indeed, he risked becoming stateless although he eventually applied for Indian citizenship.

After working briefly with Subbiah, Muthiah parted ways with his father to join the Times of Ceylon. The young journalist’s beat included both politics and sports. Sometime through luck and sometimes his resourceful connections, Muthiah broke important stories. He was, for instance, among the first to arrive at the Prime Minister’s residence after SWRD Bandaranaike was fatally shot by a Buddhist monk.

Besides politics, Muthiah covered basketball, rugby, and cricket. He sharpened his writing skills by carefully describing the state of play to readers who could not watch the games. In his sports column, By the Corner Flag, Muthiah dispensed praise and criticism as he saw fit without fear or favour. He argued that cricket and rugby ought not to be the preserve of rich players attending elite clubs and public schools. He is widely credited to have succeeded in this effort by cricket historians. As Muthiah would later point out, several outstanding Sri Lankan cricketers came from rural or underprivileged backgrounds.

Muthiah was eventually inducted into his paper’s editorial team. Yet, as anti-Indian sentiment rose, he realised he could never become the editor. Disillusioned, Muthiah reluctantly packed his bags for India. He was 38, and left behind many friends, affections, and memories. But he brought along his charming Ceylon cadence with its soft retroflexes and longer vowels.

The beginning of his love for history     

In Madras, Muthiah could not find a newspaper job easily. He was eventually hired by the TTK Group and assigned to their maps and publications division. It had just been established with German collaboration. But the TTK-German joint venture did not last long. And very soon, Muthiah was saddled with running the division. Despite no management experience, Muthiah worked hard to transform TT Maps into India’s first private cartographical company.

He focused on printing high-quality atlases and maps. But these required the Survey of India’s clearance and certification for everything. Muthiah’s persistence eventually paid off after several trips to meet officials in Delhi and Dehradun.

In marketing his wares, Muthiah discovered that a publication with just maps always attract sales tax. Yet, no tax would be levied if the maps were accompanied by descriptive text. Taking advantage of this loophole, TT Maps began producing city maps with some basic commentary.

Image courtesy: Muthiah family

It was while working on a Madras street guide, Muthiah realized he enjoyed researching the city’s history. Thus, Muthiah began hoarding books, cuttings, and notes on the subject. He used these materials for columns in the Aside, a self-styled magazine for Madras. He also hoped to use them for a book on Fort St. George’s ghosts.

Drawing again on his research collection, Muthiah unveiled a slim book, Madras Discovered, in 1981. It was, in his words, a historical guide to look around or discover the city. Now, in its ninth edition, the book has sold thousands of copies and bears the name Madras Rediscovered. Every home in South India ought to have it.

Since then, Muthiah produced a number of other Madras-related titles. They range from the folksy Tales of Old and New Madras to impressively sourced volumes about the city’s major institutions, businesses and companies, personalities, and clubs.

Muthiah’s Madras repertoire is not confined to books alone. It also includes over a thousand articles, including the widely appreciated Madras Miscellany columns in The Hindu. In addition, Muthiah unfailingly edited and contributed to Madras Musings, a subscription-based monograph, which he founded, about life in the city.

Stirring public interest in history and heritage

But Tamil Nadu’s capital wasn’t Muthiah’s only interest. He also wrote about other subjects as diverse as South Indian plantations; Kodaikanal, Udhagamandalam, and Yercaud; Chettiar heritage; and Sri Lankan Indians. He taught and lectured widely at universities, colleges, and schools. A strong votary of teaching history and geography well, he can be seen on YouTube scolding IIT Madras’s elite students for not showing adequate interest in humanities.

Writing about urban heritage transformed Muthiah into an activist for historic preservation and conservation. At the same time, Muthiah decisively rejected the idea that conservation must involve just a privileged few. Like he did with cricket and rugby in Ceylon, he was instrumental in stirring the broader public’s interest in Madras history and heritage.

Tapping into that interest, Muthiah helped conceive the annual Madras Week, an entirely volunteer-based program of events every August. During this time, Chennai’s residents attend all sorts of heritage walks, panel discussions, and cultural programs. Many of these events are organized or moderated by Muthiah’s former students or mentees. Unsurprisingly, other Indian cities have borrowed the idea to revive and retain public interest in their own urban histories and heritage.

Muthiah was, and will always, remain India’s first chronicler of city history, architecture, and life. No one has written more extensively or collected material like a magpie about a single metropolis or a town. Across the country, others are beginning to imitate Muthiah. Yet, few can command his osmotic relationship with his newspaper readers.

By email and snail-mail, Muthiah’s readers bombard their author with news, tit bits, and answers he did not know (which he himself readily acknowledged). As N Ram puts it, these “mutualised contributions” between Muthiah and his readers really makes his work sparkle.

When I went to see him last year, he had just turned 88. With a completely straight face, Muthiah told me that he had six more books to complete including the one about ghosts. “Of course,” he added, “I have got to live long enough for that to happen.”

Muthiah also told me that, unlike Colombo, Madras gave him much fame and recognition. Even so, unlike Madras, Colombo would always remain home for him and where he had spent some of the happiest days of his life.

At heart, he very much remained Keble’s nerdy and inquisitive pupil. And at his core, he was still the boy who graciously welcomed Nehru home to Ceylon.

Vikram Raghavan trained as a lawyer in India. An obsessive book collector, he spends much time fending off pointless inquiries into whether he has read all of his books.