CHENNAI: For years now, Madras Week hasn’t been complete without an offering from the delightful scientist-writer turned artist Manohar Devadoss or the involvement of INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage). This time around, Manohar and Sujatha Shankar, architect and convenor of INTACH, come together to celebrate the city and the rich heritage it has managed to preserve in its monuments and landmarks with the coffee table book, Madras Inked: Impressions of an artist and an architect. The book will present a collection of Manohar’s sketches of Madras, drawn over a period of six decades, and Sujatha’s insightful commentary on its history and architecture. But there’s more to the book than just that, clearly.
A creative union
Manohar and Sujatha’s collaboration began with a brief encounter that went something like a priest and a rabbi walk into the bar trope. Only here, it was an artist and an architect, meeting at a book launch. “Sujatha was the chief guest for one of the launches of my previous book, An Artist’s Perspective. This was in 2016. It was then that she suggested why don’t we come out with a book on Madras? ‘With your drawings and my text’, she said,” he recounts. The suggestion was a result of how much Sujatha had been struck by his work; the architect could do nothing but marvel at the work of this artist who went beyond the mere aesthetics of his creations. “Besides, he had so many drawings of Madurai and Madras. He’s already put out a book on Madurai — Multiple Facets of My Madurai. Even the chief minister had gifted it to the governor recently. So, I felt like Madras needed a book of its own,” says Sujatha, offering her version of the origin story.
They started by gathering every piece of work of Manohar that represented Madras — from the city-defining red brick buildings of the Indo-Saracenic style of High Court and College of Madras University, to colonial-era works of College of Engineering, Guindy, and Rippon Building, from the towers of temples to spires of churches, from the busy streets to lazy rivers, there’s a slice of every part of the city. This was made all the more special that the works come from all phases of Manohar’s loss of vision. “Unlike other books, where the sketches were drawn especially for the books, here I did the drawings for various reasons. Most of these were greeting cards but I did some (of the rest) for my wife Mahima, some for a magazine cover and various other things. The copies I had were also of various sizes. Also, the drawings were made by a person who had perfectly normal vision when he started and slowly dying as he went along. Now, I’ve completely lost my sight. The book is coming out when I can’t even see it myself,” points out the 85-year-old but follows it up with the assurance that he is quite a happy man.
Keeping history alive
To this massive legacy of this veteran artist, Sujatha brings her own brand of expertise. Over the years, she had contributed to the magazine Architecture + Design, for which she had curated a special issue on Madras. She has also written extensively about the old architectural styles that made the city. She has two documentaries on the subject as well; The Story of Madras has narration by none other than the late historian S Muthiah. In this book, she has chosen to focus on things that one might not get in a simple Google search. “I’ve mentioned the historical background of the building as well as the specific architectural features. Mr Manohar has also written on most of the drawings — about how and why he did those sketches. So that’s like a little anecdote,” she explains.
Manohar says that his additions to the writings were only humourous. But even one-liners mentioned in passing seem to have a story behind it. Like the entry for Senate House makes note of a conversation between his daughter and the late Dr APJ Abdul Kalam. But, what happened that day still remains fresh in his mind. “The Senate House was completely revamped, largely financed by the Murugappa Group. There was an event in which they had invited only a few people. My wife and I were invited. But my daughter accompanied me as my wife was unwell. There, my daughter stood one step behind me. When we met Kalam, his wife was standing one behind him. And my daughter remarked that it was because she was an interloper and Kalam joked about how they even let her in. When my daughter talked about her husband, a highly placed American diplomat and how she still refused to take up American citizenship, Kalam suggested that she should turn her husband into an Indian citizen,” he recounts, offering the entire story behind that single sentence.
While the book has certainly offered great pleasure to its two creators, it’s something everyone will enjoy, says Sujatha. “It’s not just for people of Madras but for anyone with an interest in heritage. It will also be of great interest to students of art, architecture and engineering. It is also a message for the younger generation to be aware of and respect our heritage. It’s to remind them that in this rapid pace of development, it is important to conserve our heritage because that connects us to our roots,” she suggests.
Manohar, on the other hand, points out that all proceeds from the book will go to four charities — one each picked by him, Sujatha and the two organisations that’s supporting the book’s publication, Chennai Willingdon Corporate Foundation and CPR Publications.