Lost in the time cycle

CHENNAI: There is a bad habit that most of us who do a lot of driving and are almost always late have — using Chennai’s many shortcuts through bylanes, alleyways and one-way streets extensively. If you’re one of us, then we probably agree that the quickest way to get across Mount Road from Alwarpet is through GP Road. So, no surprises, when I say I must have driven down the perennially packed General Patters ‘GP’ Road in Royapettah (actually crawled would be a more accurate word) innumerable times. But I must confess, that I have never noticed the small blue board that reads ‘VK and Sons — Monument and Stone Engravers’ perched over an imposing wooden doorway, tucked between a plethora of car accessory shops. “There are usually a bunch of cars parked outside that almost block us from view,” says its owner, Arulnandi. “But we don’t really mind because there’s hardly anyone who walks in here after seeing the board.” A class of my own, I am in then, until he adds, “Not in these last two decades anyway.” And deflated in a hurry.Stepping into the space, it is evident that there is one common denominator in the shop, if you can call it that. Everything from the large carved desk to the easy chair that Arulnandi’s 83-year-old father VN Purushotaman reclines in, have this classic touch of tradition with just the right amount of clutter. It is supremely reminiscent of a Mylapore home of yore. “I took over this shop from my father, the year after the British left,” rasps the wizened old gent peering at me through his weather-beaten spectacles. The enterprise was floated a few shops away in 1910, by Purushotaman’s father VK Narasimhan and has managed to stay alive to see it’s centenary year and more. He thrusts photo upon photo of almost every major temple in South India, where they have plied their trade of hand-chiselled devotional songs or texts onto large slabs of stone. The names alone are astonishing. “The inscription of the entire Thriukural at the Madurai Meenakshi Amman Temple is our work. I still remember how we transported the slabs from here by rail after receiving the commission by post,” recalls the veteran chiseller. The Kanchipuram Varadaraja Perumal Temple and Kapaleeshwarar Temple at Mylapore are his other top works of art, he adds.Considering the easy communication now, you’d think orders would be easier to handle. But that just isn’t the case for two reasons as Arulnandi enumerates, “People expect immediate service, which is difficult for artisans like us because all our work is purely manual. Second, after the lull in gravestone-orders, the plaque and inscription orders have been dwindling slowly because companies now go through ‘event managers’ to organise these things. And honestly, we have no promotion,” he rues. Still, he concedes that there are a few “old clients” who have been coming to them “like it’s a tradition” not just for their reputation but quite simply for the quality.Asked about the future, Arulnandi gazes away and sighs. Having put both his children through college and watching them settle abroad, the 58-year-old  chiseller says there is little to plan for.  “We are fortunate enough to have held this space for this long,” he says.  The veteran, however, reveals that the large space has actually been rented all these years. But what really made my eyebrows hit the ceiling were when he said that their rent was a modest `1,000 per month. Truly, support comes in all forms, to them even if it’s not actually from orders. Hopefully, this enterprise will remain, etched in GP road’s topography, if not in stone.