Thoughts on the Royapettah house

Gopi has put out some great stuff on the house, the beginnings, anna's passion and so on. This is Anna's first house and I recall he took the money out of the Insurance policy.. we had lived in Rajasekhara Mudaliyar Road, Chandrabagh avenue and then moved on to Mahadevan's house in Gopalapuram. Mahadevan was in Cudalore and JSPradhu was going to bring him down to Madras...and then Anna has to move out of this property quicker..I recall also going down to the plot and pouring water to cure the bricks. Anna bought the land from Hari who lived across and he was the Manager at Higginbothams. Our other neighbor was ST Narasimhan's daughter and son-in-law (Mohana's old friend) who was a psychiatrist and ending up going insane and then the Jains moved in ( ask Mohana about Mrs, Jain!!). Anna loved the mosaic and also the window grill that he designed ( though it was a difficult design , it gave us pain to close the windows putting our hands through those holes!!). The upstairs verandah was also a great place and at one time he wanted to enclose it...

Anna loved crotons ( I googled to see the plants) and we never know what crotons are in this country...it is just a beautiful plant with different colors and anna's also use to cross-breed them to get different shades of the leaves...he had several varieties... his reason for not moving into the Adyar bungalows and be with the British guys, Popni Iyengar, SN Lal, John John and others were because he liked the independence to work on the yard, folding up his dhoti.......

Another thing that came to my mind was my interest in dogs!!!!! I hope you guys remember we had Sheba in Coimbatore and she finally ran away( I think Prem and Usha might have taken care of the dog), Mohana loved Tommy in Secunderabad ( a street dog that she cared) and then the white German Shepherd that was in he Royapettah house... In 1964, I had gone to Nellikuppam to work in the sugar plant, Shanti perhaps 3 years old and Gopi around 14.....he loved to play with this dog in the front and I still remember him pulling his tongue and enjoying it going in circles..the dog played with him..however, whenever I came from Nellikuppam, he barked and never let me through the front door ( I might have thrown some stones and he might have remembered) and one day, I recall his food plate had fallen down and when Anna was going to pick it, he did bite him ( or did he bite Venkatesan..) and then the dog was sent off to the Fireworks factory....

I really enjoyed the cane furniture in the front porch and Anna had the greatest relationship with Jayabaratham guy...and we had that little green cane chair that was used by every grandchild and I am sure it is still somewhere.... I was thinking of Amma's room ( her favorite Godrej where she kept her Cadbury's chocolate) and the only bathroom with the Indian toilet..she insisted on it!!!

Mythili always liked Anna's taste for furniture and he always brought in a few great pieces..he also loved polishing the wood around the house--- I recall the staff from Parrys' who used to frequently come and polish our rosewood furniture and other tables....I still remember his face and he probably drank half the spirit bottle...Anna wanted his brass polished and he did it and made us do it too.....

I was thinking of the gifts anna used to get in the Royapettah house from all his distributors-- particularly fruits and the visits of people like Periaswamy, Kali and so many others-- and we had a tough time distributing all the fruits to family and friends... I was also thinking of people like Padam Singh, Parijatham, venkatesan etc who were part of our lives growing up there....

Well, Mohana remembers all the things around our house-- and hopefully she will tell us more...

I somehow, remember the teacher that used to come for Dasharath..D will sit on the Pai for sometime and move to the chair and the teacher will follow wherever D went....was he learning music!!