Memories of Coimbatore - Where science thrived...
R. Subbayyan on G.D. Naidu's exhibitions, playing gilli danda with Greek refugees and watching Thyagaraja Bhagavathar in action at Valankulam
He was soft-spoken, lean and dressed in a veshti. Big or small, he would respond to all kinds of questions raised by students. When I was a kid, it was G.D. Naidu who planted the seed of engineering in me. I grew up attending the many Science exhibitions he held. His exhibitions always had interesting objects. There was a coffee-vending machine in one of them. All you had to do was insert a coin into the machine and you would get a cup of coffee! I was fascinated by it and asked him how it worked. He explained how levers operated inside to mix the decoction, sugar, milk and water. A shaving blade invented by him, an automatic ticket dispenser, illustrations on the harmful effects of cigarette smoke…G.D. Naidu's exhibitions were visited by students all over the city.
We lived in R.S. Puram. The area was full of karuvelam trees. It was during World War II. Refugees from Greece were sheltered in hostels in the Forest College campus. Everyday, they would walk all the way to the South end of D.B. Road to buy fruit and vegetables — there were no shops in between. Shopkeepers would take the exact amount and return the rest if the Greeks unintentionally gave them excess cash. People were honest and full of integrity.
Sometimes, we played football with the Greeks. We also taught them gilli danda, popular with boys back then. Football matches were played at Irwin Stadium in Coronation Park (now VOC Park). Since most of us travelled by foot, we would go home really late if there was a match happening in the evening. It was Diwan Bahadur C.S. Rathna Sabapathy Mudaliyar, the municipality chairman, who installed street-lamps in D.B. Road and brought drinking water from Siruvani to Coimbatore. Diwan Bahadur Road (D.B. Road) and Rathna Sabapathy Puram (R.S. Puram) were named after him.
We would watch movies in Swamy Hall on Variety Hall Road. A tharai ticket there cost one anna. For two annas, you got to sit on a bench. The chair ticket was four annas. There used to be a restaurant on a lane off Avanashi Road with a board saying ‘Man paandathil seidha divyamaana saappadu', for two annas.
The lakes in the city were pristine. People would bathe in their waters. When I was a little boy, I remember watching the shooting of the film ‘Sivakavi' on Valankulam Road. M.K. Thyagaraja Bhagavathar who played the hero had to push a man into the lake for the scene!
Those days, college students and teachers were more like friends. During my tenure as the principal of PSG College of Technology, I watched movies and played basketball with students in the evenings. Once, teachers and students manually installed a basketball pole in college. We also designed and constructed an automatic score board.
Deepavali was celebrated in the college grounds, crackers and all. But, when in class, we were very strict.
We had once invited Kavignar Kannadasan for a function of the Thamizh Mandram in college. Though he came late, he spoke for an hour to an audience of students delirious with excitement. In 1975, we installed the first computer centre in our college. The TDC 312, a huge machine, processed results for Madras University. Why, it even did the payroll for many companies, including LIC!
As a principal, I often did the rounds of college. On one such evening, I noticed a group of students playing cards in the hostel. “Look, it's the princi da!” whispered one of them who had seen me coming. By the time another student replied, “It can't be him da, he's probably asleep by now,” I was right behind them!
In 1954, I came across a young clerk in our college's canteen. A.V. Varadharajan was a bright kid with good marks in school. G.R.Damodaran offered him a seat in the college. We didn't know back then that one day, he would grow up to be an industrialist of repute. That he would be instrumental in the construction of the CODISSIA Trade Fair Complex in the city.
