Benign onlooker?

That he was not. Never an onlooker and not often benign. For most of his life, Muthuramalinga Thevar was an active fighter, whether it was for having to write his school exams - the plague epidemic of 1924 putting a stop to that, or for claiming his inheritance of ancestral property. Getting into politics early, Muthuramalinga Thevar organized protests against the Criminal Tribes Act, a draconian piece of legislation that stigmatized entire communities. 

In the process, Muthuramalinga Thevar joined forces with the Congress. But in the Bose vs Sitaramayya fracas, he threw his might behind Bose and subsequently followed him into the Forward Bloc. He was quite close to Netaji; close enough for his claim that he had met Netaji in 1950 to be taken seriously. Thevar - by now known as Pasumpon after the village where he was born - had disappeared for close to a year in 1949-50 and it was speculated that he had visited Netaji in China during this period. 

Although most of his political activity was in and around Madurai, he was considered an important enough person for his statue to be erected on Mount Road, where Chamiers Road meets it. With that road being renamed after him, he does look on more kindly at the passers-by from his vantage point!

Associations' building

The Thiru Vi-Ka Industrial Estate in Guindy is over fifty years old and this building seems to be from the same era. One of the earliest Industrial Estates in the country, this was the first in Madras. With the emphasis on small-scale industries, this 400-acre piece of land has a large number of such small factories, typically turning out components to be used by larger factories elsewhere.

Not that there are only small units here. Some big names - Ennore Foundries, TVS Electronics, Alcatel-Lucent, among them - have a presence inside the 'Guindy Estate'. Even the Olympia Tech Park on its western edge is an attractive location for the large, new age industries. The overbearing majority of units at the Guindy Estate however are of the single-unit entrepreneur type, somehow managing to clear a profit and trying to keep pace with all those competitive manufacturing practices coming out of China.

Bringing those kind of entrepreneurs together are various associations and industry groupings. The biggest of them here happens to be the IEMA - the Industrial Estate Manufacturers' Association, which is why their name board is the most visible one at street level. Inspite of having a spanking new office at RV Towers, the IEMA continues to operate out of this building, jostling for space with all those other groupings of small scale industries. Looks like they'll run out of nameboard space soon!

More on the 'Park' theme...

West Chennai's answer to Tidel Park has been the Olympia Tech Park (OTP), across the road from the Guindy Industrial Estate. The Industrial Estate itself has been trying to re-emerge as a location of choice for new age industries; with a couple of large buildings, it is certainly not a location to be ignored, if one is interested in such things.

The OTP has come up where the Eveready factory used to be earlier. It does not obviously acknowledge its earlier avatar and has certainly been able to shake off any past associations. But it has not been able to establish itself as THE showpiece high-tech workplace in this part of the city, which is something that Tidel Park has been able to hold on to.

Being set close to the road, it does not have the 'grand entrance' feel that Tidel Park has; more so because the 3 buildings (Citius, Altius, Fortius) together do not have as much space as the one big block at Tidel does!

(Maybe I'm biased, having worked out of Tidel, and not even having visited OTP!)