Big brother

Though his term as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu was among the shortest - just under two years, between 1967 and 1969 - C.N.Annadurai was a powerful force in the political arena of the state. So much so that there is almost no place in Chennai that does not have something or the other to do with the first non-Congress Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.

Mount Road was renamed Anna Salai, after Annadurai's death in 1969. When the state government set up its first technological university in 1978, they named it Peraringar Anna Universtity of Technology (thankfully it was changed to Anna University later: imagine the credentialling agencies outside India - no, outside Tamil Nadu - trying to get their tongues around the earlier name! The Indian IT revolution may not have quite taken off!!). The first planned layout in Madras - Anna Nagar. We could go on playing this game, but you get the point.

Anna -that means 'elder brother' in Tamil - is certainly omnipresent. For quite a while, the state publicity cell even used the obelisk in his memorial on Marina Beach as their logo!