1 month ago
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It is contiguous touted arsenic downtown – a happening spot with fashionable eateries and shops. But adjacent 30 years ago, Khader Nawaz Khan Road, oregon KNK arsenic it is spoken of now, was a quiescent residential area, with bungalows connected some sides. That representation came backmost alternatively forcefully, arsenic I work Fran Forsyth’s From Madras to Chennai: and immoderate of beingness successful between (2QT Publishing, 2025). The writer spent 8 years of her childhood, commencement onwards, successful Madras betwixt the 1950s and 1960s.
It was the play that she was penning astir that got my attention. As immoderate idiosyncratic funny successful the past of Indian cities would know, the archetypal 4 decades aft Independence are the worst successful presumption of records. Material is scanty. Photographs are adjacent much hard to laic one’s hands on. A erstwhile firm caput told maine that cameras were rare, and photograph movie adjacent much scarce. And so, thing that crops up astir the epoch betwixt 1947 and the 1990s usually has maine speechmaking it.
