Tiruchi Readers Mail
Ensure smooth traffic
Traffic on the Y Road connecting the Chennai-Tiruchi Bypass Road and Thiruvanaikovil Checkpost in Tiruchi needs to be streamlined. Accidents occur frequently on the road. Request the authorities to look into the issue and ensure smooth traffic on the road.
N. Saravanan
Puthanampatti
The long time dream of Tiruchi residents is set to turn into a reality with the opening of the integrated bus stand next week. It is better to have a first aid clinic with a standby ambulance to assist and transport passengers in an emergency.
M.A. Aleem
Tiruchi
Tiruchi was the headquarters of then South Indian Railways ( now Southern Railway). To cater the needs of railway employees and railway offices in Tiruchi, the then British rulers had established a pumping station at Sarkarpalayam and it was commissioned in 1925. The pumping station has been fulfilling the drinking water needs of Tiruchi division including the Railway Colony and Railway workshop in Golden Rock. Its centenary can be commemorated suitably and a postal stamp can also be released. Request the Southern Railway and Tiruchi Division authorities to take the initiative.
H. Ghouse Baig
Tiruchi
The Uyyakondan canal cutting across the City needs immediate attention by the civic authorities. It's high time, it is cleaned immediately. Residents living along the canal should desist from throwing waste into it.
S. Raghavan
Cantonment
Bus stops without bus shelters are causing great hardship to passengers in Tiruchi. Shelters are much needed in the hot summer and the monsoon season. Bus passengers are prone to heat related illness and I request the authorities to construct at least temporary bus shelters on a war footing wherever there is no such facility.
A. Raj Mohan
M.M. Nagar
Almost all the city roads were dug up for laying of drainage pipelines. At several places, the precast manholes are not covered properly. The covers are either protruding a few inches above or dipping, much to the inconvenience of road users. I request the authorities to set them right before the onset of monsoon.
T.A. Ramanathan
Officers Colony
The Tiruchi Railway station is an important transit hub. Due to this, the ticket counters are invariably crowded. Long queues can be seen as passengers rush to catch their trains. Railways should open additional counters for current booking and open tickets, especially during peak hours. Ticket cancellation can also be allowed in these counters.
R. Shankaran
Kumaran Nagar
Recently, I made a fault complaint with the Tamil Nadu Power Distribution Corporation Ltd. But the complaint was closed before the problem was rectified. I had to approach the Thiruvanaikovil TNPDCL Office to get the fault attended. I request the authorities to confirm with the consumers before closing the complaints.
S. Anjana
Tiruvanaikoil
Residents of Palaniyappa Nagar, Bikshandar Kovil and Uthmarkovil are suffering a lot due to power cuts. Power cuts have been frequent over the past one month. Request the TNPDCL to provide uninterrupted power supply to these areas and also send an SMS regarding monthly shutdowns. I also request the authorities to reduce the hours of monthly maintenance during the summer.
S. Sivakumar
Musiri
Power consumption is increasing day by day during peak summer. While the Government is taking possible steps to meet the demand, people can go in for roof top solar power systems taking advantage of the subsidy offered under the Prime Minister Surya Ghar scheme. This will reduce the power bills for consumers and the burden on the TNPDCL will also come down.
R. Sivakumar
Poondi
Adirampattinam is a fast-growing municipality in Thanjavur district. A railway level crossing is located on the East Coast Road, near Khadir Mohideen College, Adirampattinam. Everyday, the students and commuters travelling in buses and other vehicles have to wait for a long time at the railway gate. This causes inconvenience to them and they are unable to reach their destinations on time. I request the authorities of the Southern Railway and the State government to take urgent steps to build a road overbridge at Adirampattinam railway level crossing.
A. Haja Abdul Khader
Adirampattinam
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Rudyard Kipling's Kim – that iconic novel of the Raj – first appeared as a serial in McClure's Magazine in December 1900, a month before the death of Queen Victoria. At this point, the British Empire was arguably at its strongest. The event that extended Victoria's reign to India was the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, now referred to as the Indian Uprising or the Great Rebellion. After this, British rule in India passed from the East India Company to the British Crown. Most references to the events of 1857-58 in Kim come from an old Indian villager, 'who had served the [British] government in the days of the Mutiny as a native officer…' He goes on to describe his loyal service for the Company army: 'Nine wounds I bear; a medal and four clasps and the medal of an Order, for my captains, who are now generals, remembered me when the Kaisar-i-Hind had accomplished fifty years of her reign…' Kaisar-i-Hind was the title Queen Victoria assumed as she was proclaimed the Empress of India in 1877. 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The empire was instrumental in Britain's rise as a modern nation state and, in the history of the British Empire, there are few events that left a mark as lasting as the Mutiny of 1857, as reflected in English fiction from Kipling to Zadie Smith. The 'Mutiny', in the shared histories of Britain and India, is today an enduring symbol of the horrors of colonialism for a contemporary Britain grappling with immigration from former colonies such as India. Sitting in a castle in Scotland, a small piece of mutiny-era Lucknow bears the weight of this shared history. A Scottish regiment Trophies of the British triumph over the Indian 'mutineers' occupy pride of place at the Regimental Museum of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, deep inside one of the several grey stone buildings of the Stirling Castle in Scotland. The Highlanders were a Scottish regiment that became famous as 'The Thin Red Line' in 1854 during the Crimean War. Journalist WH Russell, who gave them this epithet, was also present in India as a correspondent of the Times during the latter stages of the Mutiny. The Highlanders were instrumental in the British campaigns during the Indian Uprising, playing a major role in the Siege of Lucknow, when the British Residency there and its British and Indian inhabitants were besieged for several months by the sepoys. The siege began in June 1857, British reinforcements arrived in September, but fighting continued till the Residency was finally evacuated in November 1857. The siege later inspired Alfred Tennyson's 1879 poem The Defence of Lucknow, which also features the Highlanders. The Regimental Museum of the Highlanders houses several exhibits from the siege as symbols of their military triumph. These include gallantry medals such as the Victoria Cross awarded for the 'Relief of Lucknow', memoirs by soldiers who survived, military uniforms, paintings of British attacks and weaponry such as bayonets and swords. One of the exhibits is a letter by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson (who wrote Treasure Island and created Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) to Sergeant Forbes Mitchell expressing his sympathy and pride after reading the Sergeant's memoir on the Mutiny. The exhibits represent the power of British arms but are not beyond the troubling questions of the violence and exploitation experienced by the subjects of the Raj. How should an army acknowledge the effects and the implications of its actions? Can it commemorate its past in terms other than valour, sacrifice and an implied antipathy against the 'enemy'? Does it have an obligation to justify its actions, particularly when it fights for an empire – which, by its very nature, is an exploitative institution? In an age when war is consumed on prime-time television, how does an army, and more importantly, a society, make peace with war? In their 2018 book, East India Company at Home, 1757-1857, historians Margot Finn and Kate Smith argue that British material culture and even its built environment were profoundly influenced by objects and designs that originated in the colonies. This took place within a larger network of the exchange of people and objects in the wake of imperialism. The Stirling Castle reflects this due to its association with the English royal family, and can be considered a version of the English country house, which refers to mansions owned by aristocratic families in the English countryside. At the same time, the exhibits in the castle are material symbols of centuries of British political, military, cultural and commercial involvement through its empire in India. In Stirling, perhaps the most poignant of these symbols of the Uprising is a small piece of masonry from the Lucknow Residency kept beside a musket ball. While other objects such as uniforms, paintings and memoirs are attributed to individuals (the museum even has a flag seized from the 'rebels'), there is a haunting sense of emptiness, of the ruins of war, in that pale red fragment of a building (considerably faded with time) and the small black sphere, almost like a pebble, which represents many others like it that had killed hundreds of British and Indians alike. It is a fragment of Lucknow, a centre of Awadhi culture, which lives on behind a glass enclosure in a castle that was itself the site of centuries of bloody warfare between the Scots and the English. Sunset of the empire What conventional British history has termed the 'Sepoy Mutiny' has for long been known to Indians as the 'Indian Uprising' and even as an early struggle for independence. Another layer to this is that exhibits in Stirling are part of the collections of the British Army, situated in Scotland, which continues to debate if it wants independence from Britain. Museums across Britain are becoming increasingly conscious of the necessity of acknowledging uncomfortable aspects of British history such as slavery and imperialism. The Hunterian Museum, which is a part of the University of Glasgow, and the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, also in Glasgow, highlight the contribution of slavery and colonialism in the establishment of these institutions. No longer an empire on which the sun never sets, contemporary Britain (and the United Kingdom) finds itself having to acknowledge the violence that built the Raj at a time when 16% of the UK's population was born abroad. Even during the Mutiny, the Calcutta Review (a leading Anglo-Indian periodical) realised that the Siege of Lucknow would go down in history as a significant event, as much for the bloodshed as for its implications for the future of both Britain and India: 'when much that seems brightest to us has been blotted by time out of the book of history, the page which contains the defence of Lucknow will remain as clear as ever.' The author wishes to thank the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals for a travel grant, which allowed him to visit the UK. He also thanks Rod Mackenzie, the curator of the Argylls Museum, for permission to use the image of the exhibit.
