The Hipsters of Tamil Nadu: Plaid and the Madras Shirt

Perhaps it is my fascination for autoethnography and a quest for the meaning of life that makes me seek the connections between what I read and my own life.  It is my own way of finding my own personal connections to this universe and developing my own interpretation of the old mahavakya तत्त्वमसि (You are that.)

Today's piece in this fascinating quest: the plaid shirt.

Back in my first year of graduate school, I bought myself a plaid shirt, with the typical red and black color combination.  When I wore it to class on a Southern California winter day, a classmate--a White American woman--greeted me with "hey lumberjack!"

I had no idea what she was referring to.  Why am I a lumberjack because of the warm and colorful shirt that I was wearing?  Keep in mind that this was well before my immersion into all things Americana and, of course, before I figured out the importance of small talk in this culture.

Over the years I have also come to understand that as one from Madras (Chennai) and Tamil Nadu, maybe I had had the preference for the plaid shirt even back in India thanks to the Madras shirts--though I knew about the expression "Madras shirt" only after living in the US.  I know, I know, this autoethnographic piece is getting to be a ball of woolen yarn; so, will slowly thread the story for you ;)

In 1978, archeologists inspecting an ancient cemetery in China found the 3,000-year old remains of a "6-foot-2, tall, brown hair, and long-nosed" body referred to as the "Cherchen Man."  And, even more interestingly:

When the archeologists discovered this 3,000-year-old body, it was dressed in a “twill tunic and tartan leggings.” Various colors of wool were interwoven. They are the oldest preserved pants in the world and the first example of what we know as plaid. (Which isn't to say this is the first plaid ever made: There are references to the design that pre-date the Cherchen Man; his just happen to be preserved.)

And,

While it's still not entirely clear how persons of Celtic descent ended up in China, the discovery is proof that the Scottish people have been using plaid/tartan as a design for more than 3,000 years.

Imagine that!

Fast forward from the time of the Cherchen Man to the British mercantilism morphing into imperialism.  The Subcontinent, especially in the cotton-growing areas, is way too hot for wool.

The modern day Madras fabric has a plaid or checked and sometimes even striped pattern in generally bright colors. These patterns, especially plaid, first made their appearance about a hundred and fifty years ago and were the result of the tartan craze which started with the visit of King George IV to Scotland in 1822. As was to be expected, this influenced the British in India and tartan started to be incorporated into Madras. The Harris Museum in Preston, Lancashire has two swatches of Madras fabric dating from 1866; one is a tartan and the other very similar to modern day Madras

I recall wearing plenty of checked-patterned shirts when growing up in India, but had no idea then about this rich story of Scottish tartans and the British Raj.

Source

Of course, it was not I who brought the Madras Shirt to the US ;)

It first made its appearance in America in 1718 as a part of a donation made to the Collegiate School of Connecticut by the then Governor of Madras Elihu Yale.

Ahem, by now you know well about my thoughts on Yale--the person--right?

the big breakthrough came allegedly in 1958, when the leading textile importer William Jacobson embarked on a trip from the U.S. to Bombay in the hopes to return with this exotic fabric from India.

What happened?

Upon his arrival, the local textile Commissioner Mr. Swaminathan directed him to Captain C.P.Krishnan Nair the proprietor of Leela Scottish Lace Ltd, a textile exporting company from Chennai ( modern day Madras) who presented Jacobson with a fabric that he fell for right away. It was a Madras plaid fabric with a strong smell of vegetable dyes and sesame oils that was dyed in vivid colors that was originally made for export to South Africa. Mr. Nair was delighted to supply Mr. Jacobson with the Madras fabric at $1 per yard, warning him that the fabric required utmost care when laundering because the color would run out if it wasn’t gently washed in cold water.
The American exporter sold ( 10,000 yards ) of the same fabric to Brooks Brothers who manufactured trousers and jackets (which sold for $50) . 

Wait, this gets more interesting:

However Jacobson failed to fully explain the properties of the fabric and did not issue washing instructions to Brooks Brothers.
Customers were furious when they saw the colors run that ruined their expensive summer apparel. Jacobson was likewise furious and summoned Mr. Nair to the United States where his attorneys threatened to sue Mr. Nair and the Leela Scottish Lace Ltd.

Which is where the marketing genius kicked in:

One of the attorneys arranged an interview for Mr. Nair with the editor of Seventeen Magazine in which he created a story about this miracle Madras fabric from India that was exclusively made for Brooks Brothers in New York. In the following issue, the editor ran a seven-page article about fabric titled “Bleeding Madras — the miracle handwoven fabric from India”. And since pictures say more than 1,000 words, they added beautiful photographs with the caption “guaranteed to bleed”.
Within a days of the magazine hitting the newsstands, Brooks Brothers was flooded with thousands of requests for the Madras items and it became an overnight success. Both, Mr. Jacobson and Mr. Nair made a fortune from the sale and paved the way for future Indian fabric exports of millions of yards of Madras cloth.
In the 1960’s, David Ogivily, one of the leading “Mad Men” of the era, would further a very similar campaign for Hathaway Madras shirts, and all of a sudden customers couldn’t wait to see their Madras shirts fade fast enough.

To borrow the words from another American, "there's a sucker born every minute."

And to bring this to a close, from right here in Oregon, well, there is a town close by that is named Madras.  Why?

According to one version of the story, someone noticed a bolt of Madras pattern cloth and suggested that the town be called “Madras.” Others contend that the name was chosen because of the early settlers’ spiritual affinity with the city in India.

तत्त्वमसि 

Namaste! ;)

A life of rebellion ...against quiet desperation?

When I was young, we never seemed to have enough money for me to buy books.  Throughout my life in the old country, my parents, like most ones of their generation, had budgetary worries and with the household budget and accounting done in the presence of us kids, well, I knew well it was a luxury for me to buy books.

Thus, I relied on the local library, which more than fit my needs of those days.  Heck, that library even had Fahrenheit 451, and The Prophet, which are evidence enough that it was not a bad library by any means.  When we moved to the big city of Madras, I then made wonderful use of the libraries at the American and British consulates.

Attending graduate school at a university with more libraries than I could have imagined, with more books than I could have ever dreamt of, meant that I now had even less of an incentive to purchase books.

But, every once in a while, I do buy books.  And am always ready to loan them to anybody who is interested.  (There are a few books that are ultra-special to me and the fear of losing them means I shall never loan them!!!)  A student had borrowed my copy of Mario Vargas Llosa's Letters to a Young Novelist.  And it came back to me yesterday, which gave me an opportunity to scan through the book and re-read a few of my favorite sentences and paragraphs there.

Perhaps you wonder why I purchased that book when I have no plans ever of writing a novel.  Non-fiction essay writing shares in plenty with writing novels.  For that matter, the existential drive to be an academic has a lot in common with the angst that drives fiction writers.  Consider the following sentences that Llosa writes:

At peace with themselves!  Which is why I went through all those career changes--ditching electrical engineering, quitting professional planning--even though those, especially engineering, would have made me worry less about my financial well-being.  As I blogged a while ago, I don't want that life most people lead, which Thoreau noted:

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them

So, "what is the origin of this early inclination" to choose this vocation?  Why this nagging feeling that without pursuing this vocation we won't be true to ourselves?  Llosa provides an answer that sums it up really well for me: "The answer, I think, is rebellion."  A rebellion "against authority, the establishment, or sanctioned beliefs."  Yes, to rebel, even if seems like I have no cause!

This existence means that I never truly take a holiday from my work.  Why would I, when this is all I want to do?  Llosa writes regarding the literary vocation:

The literary vocation is not a hobby, a sport, a pleasant leisure-time activity.  It is an all-encompassing, all-excluding occupation, an urgent priority, a freely chosen servitude that turns its victims (its lucky victims) into slaves.

I live that kind of a life so much so that one of my biggest problem is that most teachers do not view themselves the same way.  Instead, they view their vocation as one that pays them so that they can do whatever else that really interests them.

Llosa also consoles me about my failures--having failed at getting promoted to the rank of full professor, not being recognized by my peers, ... when he writes about "confusing literary ambition with a hunger for glory and for the financial gains that literature affords certain writers"

This academic life of reading, thinking, writing, learning, and teaching, is, indeed, the best thing that ever happened to me.  Here's to hoping that it will continue for a while more.

"மெட்ராஸ்ல மூணு வாரமா?"

"You will most likely use kiosks at immigration" came the announcement as we were preparing to land at Chicago.  "There will be staff to help you with the touchscreen" she added.

I was utterly disappointed.  Not because I don't like those touchscreen systems.  For the most part, I love to use those machines.  And, in the case of immigration, I can then even avoid the gazillion questions from officers who think my brown skin and a beard and traveling to a neighbor of Pakistan's adds up to a huge red flag.

I was disappointed because despite the poker-faced, stone-cold, officers, I hope against hope that I will encounter a warm and friendly face who will scan my passport and say "welcome home!"  No kiosk can provide that kind of a warm welcome.

The neon-art at Chicago's O'Hare

I stood in line after we deplaned. It looked like a crew of trainees or college interns guiding us to the kiosks.  She saw my US passport and pointed towards a machine that looked like an ATM.  Perhaps at the end of the transaction it will even dispense cash?  Nah, this is the US--no free money! ;)

I went through the questions, which were the same ones as in the form that the cabin crew had given us just in case it was not going to be the kiosks.
I was asked to look straight into the camera.
Click.
My photo appeared on the screen, and the system asked me to confirm the image.
I did.
I grabbed the receipt it printed, which included that photo, and walked to join a couple of others who were in line.

I noticed that the officers were merely checking that the photo in the passport matched the person carrying the passport and the photo in the receipt.

It was now my turn.

The officer gave me the widest grin a human--not merely an officer in uniform--could have given anybody.  He looked like he, too, was from the old country.  His badge said "Philip."

"Where were you in India?" he asked me with a smile.

"Madras" I said.  I know, I know, it is Chennai.  But, instinctively I always say Madras.

"மெட்ராஸ்ல மூணு வாரமா?" (three weeks in Madras?) he asked me in Thamizh.

I could have hugged him right there, but I didn't.

"That's not a typical South Indian name" he said, obviously referring to my last name.

"Yes, I was K. Sriram back in India ..." and he finished it for me with "oh, so you made it Sriram Khe."  I smiled a yes.

"Welcome home!" he said as he waved me through with the best smile ever.

I wish I had given him a hug.  Nah, this is the US--you would never have heard from me had I done that ;)

I grabbed a salad before boarding the connecting flight to home, sweet home.

So, why blog about it now?  So many days since I wrapped up the India blogging?

The answer is plain and simple.  I thought Philip deserved a special, a very special, post.

Recalling my love for "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" is a Father's Day tribute?

It is one of my favorite movies ever.  It is not only because of the fantastic movie it is, or for how uniquely the movie depicted humans and aliens communicating with each other, for Dreyfuss' crazed and possessed looks ... But also because it is a reminder of a glorious time in my childhood.

I was a little more than 15 years old then, and after the written part of the National Talent Search exams, I was one of the few students invited to interview at the Madras campus of the Indian Institute of Technology.  Two other students from my class, Vijay and Krishna, had also gotten to this stage.  The prospect of the interview itself did not excite me as much as the thought that I would be at the fabled IIT campus for some serious, official, business.

Father took me to Madras--yes, that's how the city was called then.  We stayed at the home of my favorite uncle, whose sons were always a delight to hang out with ...

The following day was the big moment at IIT.  But, I didn't care about the interview, and was immensely excited playing cards and cricket with the boys.

The morning came.  We reached the campus and the interview site.

I knew I screwed up my chances because I messed up the first question big time.  If only I had the ability to forget the bad experiences! ;)

The first question was rather simple, compared to the later ones and even though I did well in the ones that followed, I am sure that the "golden duck" was how I lost the honor of the scholarship ... and that simple question was, "what is the maximum value of the tangent of an angle?"

Throughout my school life, my math teachers--right from the earliest days that I can recall--tried their best to help me understand that I needed to pause and think about the questions before I answered them, even when confident of the answer, only because of the remarkably silly mistakes I did while being in a hurry as if I were in a race against the devil.  But, stupid is as stupid does, as I would learn much later from Forrest Gump.  Thus, consistent with that track record of buzzing in the answer almost as a reflex action, I said "one."

That answer bothered me.  If only they had asked me "is that your final answer?"

But, they continued to toss more questions my way, including one where I was required to solve a problem on the chalkboard.  A green board it was, in contrast to the black boards I had been used to.

After I was done, and while exiting the campus, I realized the enormity of erring in that first question itself, which was the simplest of them all.

Perhaps father realized that I was kicking myself for my haste.  He did two things.  First, he took me to the beach.  We then walked over to a restaurant across from the road, where I ordered a cucumber/tomato sandwich.  And then he said we could go to any movie of my choice.  Which is how we went to "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." I think this was at the Satyam complex.

After the movie ended, and as we were exiting, father said, "I didn't understand anything there."

Church. Park. School. Cantina.

Readers from Chennai (the Madras of my days there) might have hastily read the subject line as "Church Park School Convent."  Let me clarify to them that this post is not about that prestigious school in that part of the world.

Wait, wait. Don't go. Stay with me. Read this post anyway.  Please!

Down the valley ...

As we were driving through Paraiso, and as we passed a church, Luis showed four fingers and counted, "church, park, escuela, cantina."

"Always" he added in English.

Yep, there was a park, big enough for a soccer field, across from the church.  Cantinas by the road side, and a school.  A simple formula for life in a Costa Rican town, I suppose.

The layout in Orosi was no different.

Tthe church, originally built in 1743, was across from the park where a couple of boys were kicking a ball around.  The park even had floodlights installed!

Behind the goalpost was a restaurant, and more on the other sides of the park.

The school I didn't photograph because there were lots of kids.  Perhaps it is the American paranoia in me that I will be hauled away by the cops for taking photographs of minors.  Life has become too complicated that way--people seem so ready these days to attribute incorrect intentions to actions by strangers.  I didn't want to invite trouble in a strange land.

The town's layout was so different from what I experienced as a kid in Neyveli.  My school was far away from the temple.  Nor was any restaurant next to the temple.  Our home was, come to think of it, closer to the church than to the temple!

The church at Neyveli

Life in the big city of Chennai now is very different.  It seems like real estate near temples and churches and mosques is prime for eating places.  I suppose people find something for the soul and then a lot more for their appetites.

This big restaurant is only a couple of doors away from a crowded temple at Chennai

The next step in this land use evolution could be the introduction of a drive-through praying and eating service even as the faithful/customer is watching ballgames on the dashboard of a driverless car.  Perhaps an American is already working on that business proposal.  It is also equally possible that the crazy American entrepreneur is a Church Park School alum!

Orosi, after a spell of rains

Remembrance of things past: My first Malayalam song

Way back in the 1970s, whenever we visited Madras, as Chennai was known then, we almost always stayed with mother's uncle and his family.  The tiny home was in a part of Madras that was practically next door to the area where movie-making activities where clustered.

Without fail, somebody or the other would point a home that was a metaphorical stone throw away from the uncle's home and say, "Sharada lives in that house."  Yes, the movie actor Sharada. I would then eagerly look at the house, hoping to catch a sight of her, but never, ever did.  Almost round the corner from her place, I was told, was the singer, SP Balasubramanian's.  I never saw SPB either.

Some time then was when I saw my first Malayalam movie, which was also the first movie that I watched that starred Sharada.  "Triveni" was the movie, which, come to think of it, was perhaps one I watched at the local Park Club in Neyveli.

Anyway, after all those years, I remember all too well the song from that movie that I tracked down:



Later in life, with the dawn of the television era, I watched a few movies of Sharada's--the "arty" ones that Doordharshan telecast every once in a while.  I looked forward to those, which were always subtitled making it easier for people like me to follow along.

The best one of them all was a wonderful movie by Adoor Gopalakrishnan.  Google helped me tracking that down: Elippathayam.  I am so glad that one of my favorite scenes from there is on YouTube:



Quite a few years have gone by since all these.  It is ten years since that uncle died.  My last trip to Chennai, I took a detour via that place when going somewhere else.  It has gone through such a transformation that there is nothing that I can identify from the old days.

Those were the days, my friend!

‘The sari-clad golfers of Madras'

Excerpt from "Memories of Madras" at The Hindu:

SUMATHI RAGHUNATHAN: Born in 1935, she played golf in the 1970s and 1980s with distinction, winning The Addicts — an all-India tournament — one year and finishing runner-up in another. In addition, she has won many club-level golf tournaments.

Photo of the day: Chennai's T Nagar

So, this is a sample of what I will see in a little more than a month, round the corner from my parents' home :)

Caption at the source: Rains doesn't seem to deter these Chennaiites who are indulging in Deepavali shopping in T. Nagar, Chennai's famous marketplace. Photo: R. Shivaji Rao

The disappearing middle class

I will outsource this to James Fallows, who is quoting a German executive who, get this, was an Indian by birth--born in Madras (Chennai) ... aahh, the circular universe we will live in... the name of this executive, Bharat Balasubramanian, is such a typical Tamil brahmin name that maybe dad will tell me that he is some nth cousin or soemthing :)

"I will state that there will be a polarization of society here in the United States. People who are using their brains are moving up. Then you have another part of society that is doing services. These services will not be paid well. But you would need services. You would need restaurants, you would need cooks, you would need drivers et cetera. You will be losing your middle class.

"This I would not see in the same fashion in Europe, because the manufacturing base there today can compete anywhere, anytime with China or India. Because their productivity and skill sets more than offset their higher costs. You don't see this everywhere, but it's Germany, it's France, it's Sweden, it's Austria, it's Switzerland.... So I feel Europe still will have a middle level of people. They also have people who are very rich, they also have people doing services. But there is a balance. I don't see the balance here in the US."

Every Madras and Salem has a rich history

When I accepted the job at Western Oregon University, triggering our relocation from California, I told my parents that I would be moving to a place close to Madras and Salem. We chuckled at the inside joke — there is a town called Salem in India not too far from Madras (now called Chennai), in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

Almost six years after moving to Oregon, I visited Madras. Finally. Coincidentally, it was almost on the very day — Aug. 22 — that marks the anniversary of the founding of Madras in India. Lacking a melodramatic background music for the special event, the best I could do was to hum — in the privacy of my car in which I was the sole occupant — Mel Tormé’s “Coming Home Baby.”

Hey, I couldn’t think of any other song.

The first time I heard about a town called Madras in a state called Oregon was, however, way before the interest in my current job at WOU. It was when the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his followers started gathering in large numbers in nearby Antelope.

For those who may have forgotten the stories, Rajneesh and his assistant purchased a large ranch, which in a matter of weeks became the gathering place for thousands of his followers. The commune swiftly disbanded within a couple of years after it became known that the leaders had engaged in illegal activities of many kinds, including the notorious salmonella poisoning in The Dalles. Rajneesh returned to India after a plea bargain, changed his name to Osho, and died in 1990.

I was tempted to swing by Antelope and look for any remnants of the Rajneesh years. But I suppose I gave in to apprehensions of how this bearded guy with Indian origins would be viewed after all the confusion caused by the presence of a bearded Indian only a couple of decades ago!

I find it fascinating that Oregon’s Madras got its name from the textile color patterns. I wonder if the town’s founders would have thought twice about the name had they known that we never actually called them “Madras shirts,” even though these colorfully patterned shirts are popular not only in Tamil Nadu but all over India. They were simply referred to as “check shirts,” as opposed to the “plain shirts.” I should note here that the cloth itself is rarely manufactured in Madras, but in towns scattered all over Tamil Nadu.

India’s Madras is, of course, a much bigger city than the Madras here. With a population of more than 4 million — more than the population of all of Oregon — Madras is a huge metropolitan area that is gaining power, prestige and prosperity thanks to the rapid growth in the information technology industry.

Meanwhile, Madras has had a name change. The city officially became Chennai in 1996, at a time of political and populist interest all over India to revert the names from the Anglicized spellings and sounds to those in the local languages. However, there is still international recognition of the old name of Madras. In fact, I think it is primarily because of the need for recognition that the University of Madras, which was established in 1857, continues to operate without having changed its name to University of Chennai.

Thanks to the international recognition for Madras, I don’t imagine the world will start referring to the colorful shirts as “Chennai shirts” any time soon. Which means there will be no pressure on Oregon’s Madras to change its name to Chennai, either.

The origin of the name Salem in India is from the local vernacular, unlike the story of the Salem here. Of course, both Salem and Madras here in Oregon have been home to the American Indians for centuries. As much as names in India were Anglicized, many native names here in Oregon also got erased. Otherwise, our capital city would be Chemeketa, as it was once called.

If you feel giddy with excitement or from information overload after reading this, well, now you know how geographers feel every single day!

Published in the Register Guard on Sep 16, 2008