CHENNAI: A businessman by profession, but a historian by passion, Nalli Kuppuswami Chetty presents a curious case of commerce co-existing with culture. While his Nalli chain of sari shops remains a staple in the shopping destinations, he is the omnipresent guest of honour in most cultural dos in the city. ‘Madras’ has never had a stable commercial hub in the way T Nagar has served it, he claims, adding that Madras’s first centre of commerce, from 1895-1915, was NSC Bose Road. “Then, it shifted to Chintadripet till 1929. Then Triplicane became the hotbed of all business activity till 1940. Then Mylapore took the honour till the early ’50s, and since then, T Nagar has retained the top position.T Nagar owes a share of its history to the Nalli store. “In the early ’20s, when Mylapore was the shopping hub, my grandfather Chinnasami decided to start selling saris in T Nagar. Back then, no other shop existed. Today, 14 of the top clothes stores in Chennai have a shop here,” he begins. While a few small shops began sprouting up in T Nagar in the 1930s, Nalli relied exclusively on word of mouth advertising. “While the World War II forced all shops in T Nagar to shut down, Nalli remained open for three weeks, thus making it famous with the localities. “Even the Madras High Court had shut down then and was operating only in the Holy Angels School premises. As the only shop open, we had customers flocking our place from Tondiarpet and NSC Bose Road,” says Nalli.“In the old Madras, we’d know all our neighbours well. Traffic was not an issue, and the locality was a serene place. In the 1940s, there would be only two cars passing by the Nalli store in an hour. Even little children can safely walk on the main roads. The platforms were 20 ft wide on one side and 10 ft on the other. But now with an inevitable outcome of growth, the buildings and the traffic congestion are sad developments in the locality,” he rues.
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