I have led heritage walks at Fort St. George numerous times but last week’s, thanks to The Hindu’s Lit Fest, was unique. Asked by the team at the newspaper as to what could be done by way of a curtain raiser for the Lit Fest, I suggested a heritage walk at Fort St. George, entirely dedicated to books written on it and to people who lived in it. This is, of course, not the first time I have led themed walks based on books. In earlier editions of the Lit Fest, I have done walks dedicated to books published by the College of Fort St. George and the rare collection of the Madras Literary Society, a literary trail at Mylapore (co-curated by Karthik Bhatt), and another at Thiruvallikeni.
This time, the difference was that I carried the books to the Fort. A total of eighteen works was selected. Volunteers from The Hindu held aloft the volumes when needed by me and I can only sympathise with them for carrying these tomes from place to place. A report has already been published on the event and I will restrict myself to the books that were brought. They, after all, were the stars of the show. Of course, I had to begin with S. Muthiah to whom the Fort was a hallowed ground. Most of his books begin with this precinct, but by way of visual appeal there is none better than his Madras, Its Past and Present, with plenty of black and white photos from the Vintage Vignettes collection, depicting how the Fort looked early in the 20th Century.
