Madras Quiz

References:

• This style of vimanam is exclusive to later-Chola Shiva temples in the region that is now Chennai. Many temples in present-day Chennai, like Thirisulam, Padi, Kodambakkam, Thirumullaivayol and Thiruvotriur have this.

• What is it called?

Answer follows

Gajaprishta vimanam

• The ‘Public Assembly Rooms’ was acquired by the Government in 1830 from E.S. Moorat. The Museum, the first Government-sponsored one in the country, shifted to this space in 1954 when it was felt that the old museum structure could not bear the geological specimens that it housed.

• A theatre, the Connemara Public Library and a few other buildings had come up by 1896.

• What was the name of this estate?

• The road on which the museum stands gets its name from it. This also shares its name with this building.

Answer follows

The Pantheon

• Edward Green Balfour, the President of the Literary Society, served as the officer-incharge of the Museum from 1951 to 1885. During this time, he experimented with including certain new exhibits. He found that these new displays significantly increased the number of visitors. He used statistical methods and cross-verified his results by controlling the variables.

• His research is considered the first scientific study of whatever he worked on.

• What did Balfour come up with, considered to be the first of its kind in the Indian subcontinent?

Answer follows

A zoo

• Balfour found that keeping live animals (a tiger cub, a leopard, some birds and snakes) brought in a lot more people, a finding which convinced the Government to set up a zoological garden.

• This is the Triumph of Labour statue, one of the many statues found on the Marina beach. Which iconic photograph of Joe Rosenthal served as inspiration for it?

Answer follows

Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima

• Set up in 1802 by John Goldingham, this soon became popular and was used all over India including the Railways.

• However, in 1947, after India’s independence, it shifted to the Shankar Garh Fort.

• What?

Answer follows

Indian Standard Time

• Madras was just 9 minutes off UTC+5:30 and almost in between Bombay and Calcutta.

• Thatikonda Namperumal Chetty was a master building contractor and the man behind many of the most beautiful buildings in Madras.

• He soon became very rich. He owned a lot of land in what is now Chetpet (he is theorized to have given the area its name) and had 99 houses in the city (he thought the 100th would bring him bad luck).

• Whom, in 1919, did he invite to stay in one of his houses named Crynant where he was promised the best of medical attention?

• Why did the man whom Namperumal Chetty housed feel uncomfortable? He was immediately shifted to another residence (called Gometra) of Namperumal Chetty because of this.

Answer follows

Srinivasa Ramanujam

• He was shifted because Ramanujam thought the name Crynant was not the best name for a residence that housed a terminally ill patient.

• This instrument was procured by a group of enthusiasts led by electrical engineer C.V. Krishnaswamy Chetty in 1924, 2 years after something founded by John Reith came into existence.

• What historic thing did these enthusiasts do with this from July 31st 1924?

Answer follows

Daily radio broadcast

• This was India’s first radio broadcast.

• They formed the Madras Presidency Radio Club which had 2½ hour programmes every evening from Walltax road.

• John Reith founded the BBC

• Hotels in Madras were typically either ‘military’ or ‘civil’.

• What was the difference between them?

Answer follows

• Civil hotels were vegetarian.

• Military hotels specialised in non-vegetarian dishes.

Rehash

• This guy was posted in the Madras Presidency of the East India Company as a writer. He soon started climbing the company's ladder and became Governor of Madras. He amassed a lot of fortune while he was Governor as a private merchant and through his marriage to a rich widow whose father had a successful diamond business. He went back to England in 1699 where he lived near Wrexham and was in the possession of several impressive paintings, rugs and carpets. He was always remembered as a patron of good causes as was evident when he gave 6 pounds from his salary of 10 to St. Mary's Church (in fort St George where he got married). For what other contribution do we know him for?

• In pic: A monument he constructed in Madras for Joseph Hynmer (whose wife he landed up marrying) and for his own son.

Answer follows

• This is Elihu Yale who went on to donate paintings and rugs which were auctioned and the money used to set up the university. The University was named after Yale with the hope that he would contribute more.

• This governor of Madras left his fortunes to the “Collegiate School within His Majesties Colony of Connecticot”.

• The institute was never able to successfully lay claim to the fortune he left behind, though.

• Why?

Answer follows

The institute had renamed itself after the benefactor

• Among other legal problems, Yale University couldn’t obtain the fortune Elihu Yale left behind for them because the institute renamed itself hoping that Elihu Yale would contribute more.

• Hiram Bingham’s Elihu Yale - The American Nabob of Queen Square is considered as one of the best biographies of Elihu Yale, Governor of Madras.

• But for what does the world remember Hiram Bingham?

Answer follows

He discovered Machu Pichu

• Bingham was a professor, historian and an explorer. His Lost City of Incas was a bestseller.

• He was among those who inspired the look of Indiana Jones.

• After his success in the operations in Wandiwash in 1757, Stringer Lawrence became the first to occupy a certain post.

• He started something in 1758 which is the oldest of its kind in the country. He is also regarded as the father of something that is integral to India now. What?

Answer follows

Father of the Indian Army

• Founded in Fort St George, the Madras Regiment is the oldest regiment in the Indian Army

• He was also the first Commander-in-Chief of India

• John Smith was a British Officer for the 28th cavalry of the Madras Regiment. One day, while hunting for tigers, he stumbled upon this place which locals were using for prayer.

• Finding nothing interesting, he etched his name and the year (April 1819) on the wall.

• What did he discover?

Answer follows

Ajanta Caves

• "Going down into the ravine where the caves were cut, he scratched his inscription (John Smith, 28th Cavalry, 28th April, 1819) across the innocent chest of a painted Buddha image on the thirteenth pillar on the right in Cave 10..."

• The English equivalents of what were Fanam, Pagoda, Doodoo and Cash?

Answer follows

Currency in the Madras Presidency

• Panam, Pagoda, Duddu and Kasu

• This is the famed statue of Thomas Munro, a very popular administrator, sculpted by Sir Francis Chantrey. The absence of something spawned the urban myth that the sculptor suicided when he found out.

• This is false since other similar statues by Sir Chantrey (see next slide) also have this missing.

• What is missing?

Answer follows

The Stirrupless Majesty

• When she came across the Indian Sanitary Report, she found that Madras did not a drainage system and invited Robert Ellis, the president of the Madras Sanitary Commission to London and had him study London’s drains.

• She sent a lot of letters to Governors, Viceroys, the Prime Minister asking them to look into giving Madras a system of drains.

• Prime Minister Lord Salisbury told her that Madras had funds “only for imperious necessities” and that Constantinople managed well without drains.

• She was dauntless in her efforts and through sympathizer Lord Ripon, after a lot of prodding, the government decided to begin work on the drains in 1881.

• She got her nickname from this passage from The Times: “When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with ____, making her solitary rounds.”

Answer follows

Florence Nightingale

• The Lady with The Lamp

• This cricketer founded the Madras United Club which accommodated Indians in its side unlike the Madras Cricket Club which was exclusively for Europeans. He trained aspiring players and provided them with equipment.

• An annual Presidency match was started in his memory in 1908. This became one of the biggest fixtures in the Presidency.

• Typically played in the 2nd or 3rd week of January, what was this match called?

Answer follows

The Pongal Match

• The cricketer is Buchi Babu, the father of South Indian Cricket

• The person in the first image is Cotah Ramaswami, the youngest son of Buchi Babu Naidu.

• The person on the right is MJ Gopalan.

• Connect the two sportspersons.

Answer follows

Indian cricketing Double Internationals

• Cotah Ramaswami is the only Indian to play a test match and the Davis cup. He was also a Wimbledon semifinalist

• MJ Gopalan was selected for the Hockey team for the 1936 Berlin Olympics and for the cricket team to tour England. He chose cricket. The hockey team went on to win gold. The England tour was a disaster with Gopalan not playing a single match.

• The father was an expert on the Tamil language and Indian law.

• The mother was the daughter of Edward Waller Stoney, the chief engineer of the Madras Railway Company.

• Their second child was conceived in Orissa (then part of the Madras Presidency) but was delivered in England on June 23rd 1912.

• Identify this ‘father’ (not the Tamil expert) who was subject to chemical castration after the war.

Answer follows

Alan Turing

• The father of computer science and artificial intelligence might have grown up in India if it wasn’t for A.Y.G. Campbell who was appointed chief secretary of Madras over Julius Turing. Julius Turing was so angry that he left the ICS and never visited Madras again.

• This island on the Adayar river saw a bloody battle between the French and the forces of the Nawab.

• It gets its name from a word which means “to evade the truth or importance of an issue by raising trivial distinctions and objections” or “a pun on words”. This was a term used to describe Greek philosophers by the commoners, according to Mugglenet.

• What island, later merged with mainland?

Answer follows

Quibble Island

• In late December 1884, 18 men (of which 17 were delegates to the Annual Convention of the Theosophical Society) met at the house of Dewan Bahadur Raghunatha Rao in Mylapore.

• What came out of this meeting?

• The third session of whatever was formed was held in Madras. It is theorized that the area ‘Thousand Lights’ gets its name from the decorations used during this 600-delegate strong meeting.

Answer follows

Indian National Congress

• Some apartment called Vishwakamal stands now in its place

• This is Pete Best. He was born in Madras in 1941. Post independence, he went to England and became a drummer.

• On 16th August 1962, he received a call from Brian Epstein, the manager of his band, that the other members of the band had decided to sack him. Who replaced him?

Answer follows

Ringo Starr

• The Beatles and The Quarrymen played some of their first concerts in Pete Best’s mother’s coffee clubs.

• This began in April 1802 under the supervision of Major William Lambton, who chose to start it around St. Thomas Mount. The entire project was hoped to be completed within 5 years but it extended for over 60 years.

• The person here was the supervisor after Lambton.

Answer follows

Great Trigonometric Survey

• This survey gave us, among other things, the heights of Mount Everest, K2, Kanchenjunga.

• In 1906, one of the largest banks in the Presidency, Arbuthnot & Co, declared themselves insolvent. Thousands of customers suffered heavily with many institutions shutting down permanently. This was just after Parry’s also sent out distress calls.

• V Krishnaswamy Iyer, the great lawyer, was among those who lost money because of the crash of Arbuthnot & Co. What did he and a group of Chettiars start, after observing that banks run by foreigners were untrustworthy?

Answer follows

Indian Bank

• Their headquarters was (and is) located at the spot where Parry’s Building once stood.

• This bank was started primarily to help the Nattukottai Chettiars who were at that time doing business successfully in India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and most other countries in South East Asia.

• Established in Madras in 1938, the bank initially started with two other branches, one of which was in Rangoon.

• Where was the other branch?

Answer follows

Karaikudi

• The Indian Overseas Bank was started by M Ct M Chidambara Chettiyar primarily to help other Nattukottai Chettiyars

• V Krishnaswamy Iyer was a one of the greatest residents of Madras. His contributions to the people were plenty – the Mylapore Club, the Sanskrit College, the Venkataramana Ayurveda Dispensary, Indian Bank, etc. He was also a freedom fighter, a fiery lawyer and judge and a patron of drama and Tamil literature.

• His name would figure first in a list which now has Mahatma Gandhi, Bharathiar and Kamarajar among others. What list?

Answer follows

Statue at the Marina Beach

• V Krishnaswamy Iyer was incidentally very averse to statues.

• The statue is close to the statues of S Subramanya Iyer, Gokahle and U Ve Swaminatha Iyer, all close friends of his.

• The Tondaimandalam Sabha is one of the oldest Carnatic Music Sabhas in the city.

• What did they introduce, for the first time in the history of Carnatic Music in 1887 for the concert of the star singer Maha Vaidyanatha Sivan?

• When the artist found out what happened, he was incensed with the organisers and sang three continuous evenings at the Parthasarathy temple to a large audience.

• What was the disastrous experiment?

Answer follows

The Sabha decided to make the concert ‘ticketed’

• The plate collections when Mahavaidyanatha Sivan sang for free in the Parthasarathy Swamy Temple came to about 750 rupees, a princely sum much higher than what sabhas would pay

• When the Indian Fine Arts Society was mulling over giving a young singer from Madurai a concert opportunity, Annie Besant stepped in and insisted that the budding star not be allowed to perform. The reason had nothing to do with her music but with a rule she had established for all artists performing at the YMIA (which she founded).

• What was the rule?

Answer follows

No women of Devadasi origin would be allowed to perform

• The singer, Madurai Shanmukhavadivu Subbulakshmi sang in the neighboring Soundrya Mahal and became an instant success.

• Muthulakshmi Reddy was India’s first woman doctor ,the first woman legislator in British India and the first woman Deputy President of the Legislative Council. She was unequivocally against the Devadasi system and was responsible for the strangling of the system and its imminent death.

• What is the irony in this?

Answer follows

Muthulakshmi Reddy was herself the daughter of a Devadasi

• She did other great things – founded the Adayar Cancer Institute and the Avvai Home.

• Extras

• Ground floor: Mahadev Govinda ______ , a social reformer, author, lawyer and judge of the Bombay High Court.

• First floor: the Rt Hon. Valangaiman Sankaranarayana ________ ______, a temple priest who became a teacher at the Hindu High School and went on to become a legendary orator and politician whom Gandhi considered his elder brother.

Answer follows

Ranade Library and Srinivasa Sastry Hall

• Manali Muthukrishna Mudali: Arunachala Kavirayar, Ramaswami Dikshitar and his sons

• Kovur Sundaresa Mudaliyar: Thyagaraja

• AK Ramachandra Iyer: ?

Answer follows

Papanasam Sivan

• These are the rich patrons who brought these Carnatic composers to the city.

• It is theorized that when Sri Krishna Gana Sabha began, they held concerts in the roof of a house near Panagal Park, close to the shop owned by this businessman. The business tycoon overheard most concerts and developed a liking for music.

• That translated into his patronage of Carnatic music. He enjoys a top post in many sabhas today.

• Who?

Dr Nalli Kuppuswami Chetty