Madras Day: Madras Literary Society to rekindle history through two exhibitions

Talking about the exhibition, Venkatesan Perumal, founder of Postcards Ville, said each of the postcards will carry a picture of a setting from the time the city was called Madras, and also depict how that particular setting has evolved in the city of Chennai.

“We thought we would showcase both in the same card. One portion of the card will show Madras, if you flip it upside down you can see Chennai,” said Perumal.

Notably, this exhibit is also based on the theme of palindromes. Perumal went on to say that there was added significance to ‘Madras Day’ this year. “It falls on August 22 in the year 2022 – a palindromic date,” he said. The city turns 383, also a palindromic number, he added.

Perumal further said the pincode of the venue of the exhibition was also a palindromic number.

Meganath Venkatesan, the artist who created these postcards, said he studied how certain architectures looked years ago, when the city was called Madras, and took photographs of these in their current form. He later started sketching the same for the postcards.

Built along the theme of the colonial times, ‘Serving the Raj – Hired Help in Colonial Madras’ will be launched on the same day. This exhibition will portray the life of people who served the British as their ‘servants’ during the colonial period.

Venkatesh Ramakrishnan, the founder of Madras Local History Group, curated the images and postcards for the exhibition. He said Madras was a magnet for migrants and a lot of people came to the city to work for the British during the colonial times.

“We wanted to record their presence for the future generations,” Ramakrishnan said.

The exhibition will include postcards and other photographs from newspapers as well, he added.

Thirupurasundari Sevvel, from the Madras Literary Society, said that unlike last year, this time the events will be held offline.

Justice Prabha Sridevan will inaugurate both the events.

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