Day out with the dubashes of city

CHENNAI:At 6.15 am on Sunday, the city is just about waking up. Temples have just openedtheir doors, the man at the tea stall is preparing to light his stove, andpeople are still fast asleep on the pavement. So what are a bunch of peopledoing at the entrance of the High Court? Learning about dubashes at a heritagewalk during Madras Week. While the older folks look sprightly, theyounger ones are still rubbing sleep from their eyes. But all listen withattention when historian V Sriram starts talking, "A dubash is a man who knewtwo languages, a translator of sorts." In the 17th century, when ships firstarrived in Madras, natives would climb on and try to interact with the British."The Englishmen would look bewildered till they realised that the natives werespeaking English. That's when they felt the need for dubashes," says Sriram. Thedubashes were more than just translators they kept Black Town's secrets andliterally ran Madras for more than a century. The walk, done on footand by car, took the group of 15 through the streets of Georgetown, many ofwhich are named after these invaluable dubashes. One of the first dubashes wasPulicat Maliappachetty, who worked for the Dutch in 1602. But it was BeriTimmappa who was Madras' first official dubash and the man, who with Francis Dayand Andrew Cogan, was responsible for giving England its tiny sliver of landwhich grew into Madras. Then Sriram explains why the group is at the High Court:In 1646, Timmappa built the Chenna Kesava Perumal temple in Fort St George butthe British felt it was a security threat and moved it in 1760. FromBeri's story, the group hops across to Moore Street to hear the story of KasiViranna aka Cassa Verona aka Hassan Khan, who built a mosque on the road. He wasresponsible for quality control in the cloth business, and the first to start ajoint stock company in India Cassa Verona and Co. But unfortunately, handlingthe Brits' business was not a cake walk, and Viranna was in and out of jailoften. While some dubashes were happy making money, some were not.Like Sunku Rama who antagonised dubashes from other castes, causing many a riot."Finally Governor Morton Pitt took action. He confiscated a garden near theCooum that belonged to Sunku Rama and established a weaver's village now knownas Chintadripet," says Sriram as the group stares at the buildings on the streetnamed after Rama. Most dubashes tried to do good for the cityPachaiyappa Mudaliar was responsible for Pachaiyappa College, says Srirampointing to a Grecian-style building with Pachiyappa' emblazoned on it in Tamil.Finally, the group reaches two pagodas. "These temples came up in1760 and Manali Muthukrishna Mudaliar was instrumental in the construction. Hewas also responsible for bringing fame to Muthusamy Dikshitar," says Sriram.That's when realisation sets in this is the very same Chenna Kesava Perumaltemple Timmappa was forced to move. "By 1750, the concept of organised dubashescame to an end, but private dubashes functioned till 1947," adds Sriram. Andsuddenly names surnames like Adikari, Shroff and Kanakupillai have a whole newmeaning. lakshmi.kumaraswami@timesgroup.com