It was with great sorrow that I read last week of P. Thankappan Nair’s passing. In Calcutta where I grew up, his was a familiar name from at least the 1980s onwards. The newspapers, especially The Statesman, made mention of him and his tireless research to unearth various facts about Calcutta’s past and it was no easy task — Calcutta was always much larger than Madras and in its dense streets it packed in so much more.
When I began working closely with S. Muthiah, Thankappan Nair’s was a name that would frequently crop up during our discussions. He had the greatest respect for his Calcutta equivalent. “Had he lived in Madras, I would have been out of work a long while ago,” said Muthiah once. “It is just that Calcutta has not given him the recognition he deserved.” Among Muthiah’s vast book collection was Nair’s Calcutta in the 18th Century, obviously read many times, given the markings and notes in it.
Sharada Dwivedi | Photo Credit: The Hindu
Muthiah and I also discussed often the work of a third person — Sharada Dwivedi from Bombay. I read much of what she published, beginning with what is still a personal favourite — Lives of Indian Princes, co-authored with Charles Allen. Dwivedi was to Bombay what Muthiah was to Madras and Nair to Calcutta. She wrote extensively on her city of birth, and perhaps her finest work is Bombay: The Cities Within, a massive glossy packed with information. Towards the end of her life, she became a champion of the Art Deco heritage of her city, something that Madras too had in plenty but which it chose to destroy rather than preserve.
P. Thankappan Nair
Muthiah, Nair, and Dwivedi, in descending order of seniority, shared some common traits and were also studies in contrast. All three began writing on their respective cities in the 1980s, though they did have a passion for the written word from earlier and a corpus of publications. They focused on colonial heritage and relied heavily on East India Company and government records. They wrote in English. The world of academia did not take to them, considering them amateurs. But they achieved far more — they took history to the masses. In the 1980s, when local history was in danger of being forgotten, they did much to bring it back to light. By the early 2000s, their committed work had borne fruit. There was greater awareness and though Mumbai and Kolkata shot far ahead in terms of heritage preservation, Chennai too became more sympathetic to conservation as opposed to demolition.
Dwivedi was a Mumbaikar from birth, whereas Muthiah and Nair were migrants to their cities. In terms of personality, and going entirely by what was written on him, Nair had very few demands from life. Even in the 1980s, his habit of going walkabout barefoot was well-known as was the image of books strewn chaotically all over his simple residence. Muthiah too lived simply but was very much a Chettiar proud of his heritage, and an Anglophile — walks at his club, dinners with menus and aperitifs, and an appreciation of the finer aspects of life. Dwivedi and Muthiah were hugely recognised, celebrated and cherished in their cities, while Nair, though he did have his followers, remained unsung. If Muthiah had his long-running column in The Hindu and his Madras Musings, now in its 34th year, Nair had his A History of Calcutta’s Streets, a work that will remain unsurpassed.
All the three have taken their final bows. But their work will live on to inspire future historians, chroniclers, and heritage enthusiasts.
(V. Sriram is a writer and historian)
