Madras on stage

The air is cool, carrying that distinct, slightly dusty scent of old newsprint and polished wood. The sun hits the marble floor, but the stone just swallows the light without reflecting it. Right across the room, the massive oil painting dominates everything—the gold frame is heavy and tarnished, and its subject, he’s just staring right back at you, looking incredibly stern. Just a bit further down, there’s a famous old photo of Jawaharlal Nehru reading ‘The Hindu’, framed under thick glass.

My dad and I were waiting for our friend to join us. We had just arrived for the Madras on Stage - an archival photo exhibition by The Hindu, where they displayed old, rare photographs of cultural performances, public events, and film making in Madras. When Elumalai Sir arrived, we went up the stairs to the second floor. The stairway was musty and it smelled deliciously old.

Elumalai Sir led us past a vast, quiet shot of Marina Beach—back when the shoreline was just an endless expanse of clean sand —before stopping right in front of a photograph that felt completely out of place, yet perfectly at home. It was a shot of Yehudi Menuhin and the pianist Louis Kentner, capturing the moment they were walking out of the plane onto the Madras ground. They looked slightly rumpled from the long flight, but still carrying that specific kind of energy about them. Yehudi Menuhin was clutching his violin case like it was an extension of his own arm. You could practically feel the heavy, humid Madras air hitting them right as they stepped onto the metal stairs.

I gasped in delight. After almost 5 years of playing the violin, I had heard so much about Yehudi Menuhin - considered the greatest violin player of the 20th century. I had never known that he had set foot in Madras. I felt goosebumps on my skin– the greatest violin player of the century, here in the place where I grew up. 

Seeing a Russian actor portray Lord Rama was an absolute surprise—proving that multicultural collaboration is by no means a modern concept. The art exhibition beautifully lined up canvas portraits of iconic Indian legends like MGR and Sivaji Ganesan. Every image captivated me, seamlessly capturing dramatic mid-performance expressions alongside delightfully funny, reminiscent shots. 

We spent another 15 minutes wandering through the gallery, lost in the black-and-white city of the past. There were shots of performances on the streets, high-voltage concerts, crowds gathered under the shade of massive banyan trees, and protests in front of the stately domes of the High Court rising against a cloudless sky.

When we finally walked back down the musty wooden staircase and stepped out of the building, the afternoon heat hit us like a physical wall. The quiet stillness of the exhibition vanished, replaced instantly by the roar of auto-rickshaws, the honking of buses, and the sharp, comforting scent of filter coffee drifting from a nearby mess.

But as we walked toward the car, my mind was still back upstairs in the cool air, hovering somewhere between the candid shot of Sivaji Ganeshan mid- performance and the endless sand of the old Marina. I looked at the bustling, noisy city around me with completely new eyes, hearing amidst the chaotic rhythm of the modern streets, the faint, enduring echo of Yehudi Menuhin's violin.