CHILDREN OF EMDEN

Change is inevitable. That is a rather clichéd way to begin this exercise but I have never found the truism more applicable than in the last 19 months. Since leaving Chennai behind in August 2002 my only contact with the city had been during the scrupulously saved 15 days of vacation once every two years. The Chennai I was acquainted with was quintessentially middle class. The city woke up early to the strains of M.S’s Bhaja Govindham, a steaming cup of filter coffee and The Hindu. The rest of the morning involved unhurriedly perusing the previous day’s news and motoring off to another workday in a Bajaj Chetak. The evenings were for Wonder Balloon followed by homework with the kids capped by a light dinner. Weekends were reserved for unannounced visits to houses of relatives and an even more languid pace of life, if that was possible. What faced me on my return in 2009, however, was a chronological impossibility. A city I would have at best described as avuncular seemed younger and filled with the impatience of a teenager. Old clichés had made way for new ones - milkmen with mobile phones and traffic that could easily be misconstrued for a parking lot.
The congestion generated by capitalist enterprise makes me wistful but the impracticality of traveling backward in time is not lost upon me. Iterative introspection makes obvious the fact that no one generation can completely absolve itself of the sin of not recognizing that the roads they walk on, are paved on the past. For the willing however, Chennai still offers the glimpses into the past.

The Story

An unpalatable task faces Swaminatha Iyer during his vacation in Chennai. He must confess to his parents that he is engaged to his Armenian girlfriend in Los Angeles without their consent. In the midst of the argument the narrative is thrown back to the night of September 22nd 1914. Working late in the Madras High court a young barrister, Swaminatha Iyer Sr., is injured as a result of SMS Emden’s blitzkrieg on the Madras Harbor. Losing blood quickly, he manages to limp to the premises of the Armenian Church, where he is nursed back to health by the rector/caretaker in the dead of night. The picture he takes with the rector in the belfry of the church as a memory of that night watches mutely as the junior Swaminatha Iyer’s parents, unaware of the past, bemoan the problems that would befall the family if Justice Swaminatha Iyer’s great grandson and namesake married an Armenian girl.