Madras Day: Women who made Chennai proud – Times of India

By Sumit Ganguli & Rajalakshmi Muthukrishnan
CHENNAI: One who returns to Chennai after a long break will naturally look forward to being welcomed with a curious mixture fragrance and smell that is quintessentially Chennai.
The hot balmy air is infused with the fragrant thick milk coffee being poured from and into steel tumblers with elan, sweet smelling flower garlands that either hang from the ubiquitous street shops or adorn the braided hair of the sari-clad Chennai women with big expressive eyes. This is punctuated by the sizzling sound and smell of batter being magically transformed into the large circular dosas and the aromatic sambar simmering in the deep steel cauldrons.
As we celebrate the indomitable spirit of Chennai on this Madras Day (August 23), one may miss the smell of fish being dried during my early morning runs on the beaches near the ECR and the large three storey high posters of the politicians and actors all vying for attention and awe.
And in midst of all this, the just completed Democratic National Convention invoked a young Tamil lady, Shyamala Gopalan who was a daughter of an Indian civil servant and his wife. She had the temerity to apply and get admitted to the UC Berkley for Master and then PhD in endocrinology. Before that, she had managed to win a national competition in India in south Indian classical music.
Shyamala’s audacity of hope and spirit that prompted her to take part in the American Civil Rights Movement also propelled her to carve the path for her daughter, Kamala Harris, to be the first Jamaican Indian American woman vice-presidential nominee in the US.
And this could very well define Tamil women from Chennai, steeped in culture, tradition and customs and replete with religious fervour and yet being inherently strong, determined with a predilection for education and being the quiet anchor of the family and society.
Chennai women have been pioneers in various fields. The city had the distinction of having the first Indian woman surgeon – Dr Muthulakshmi Reddy in 1912. A woman of immense grit, she was successful in getting the king of Pudukkottai to intervene to get access to undergraduate education in colleges that only men had access to.
We have had the privilege of listening to and following the illustrious career of the first woman CEO of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi. Nooyi hails from the Coromandel Coast. During her 12-year CEO tenure at PepsiCo, she was known for her strategic redirection programme called – performance with a purpose.
A journey from not being able to afford a business suit for her summer job to walking in suited to the board meetings has been a journey of determination and passion. This dedication was strong enough to take her to Time’s 100 most influential people in the world consecutively in 2007 and 2008.
Indra Nooyi often speaks about the role of her family in defining her management style.
From MS Subbulakshmi to Padma Subrahmanyam, the home of Margazhi festival(December – Jan Arts Festival) has let artists display their skills and art mastery and take Indian Classical Arts to the global stage. This tryst with the fine arts has also led to the world being able to see the oeuvre of Padma Lakshmi, who has become quite a custodian of culinary creations and was born to an oncology nurse from Chennai.
The coastal city with a history dating back to 2nd century has given the world a breadth of achievers spanning various arcs of life. This achievement is not a mere feat but a testament to the zeal of knowledge and wisdom that the city encouraged and nurtured and nourished by the women of Chennai and Tamil Nadu.
In one of her interviews, Kamala Harris spoke of her walks with her grandfather and his retired friends on the Beasant Nagar Beach in her younger days. In those walks, she heard varied opinions about polity and governance. A discussion strong enough to influence her political beliefs and philosophies. And those principles have been cemented by her mother who was fiercely independent to marry a Jamaican, Dennis Harris, when India only saw arranged marriages. She not only gifted a belief system but also her spirit to her daughters Maya and Kamala – a spirit that let one of them aspire for one of the highest public offices in US.
Stripe, one of the highly rated American ecommerce payments company, just mounted a coup by hiring Dhivya Suryadevara, a Harvard MBA, and the former executive vice-president and chief financial officer of General Motors. Suryadevara recounts that following her father’s death, when she was rather young, she and her two sisters were raised by a single Tamilian mother.
“My mom had to raise three children on her own, which is difficult to do anywhere, let alone in India. She wanted to make sure there were no corners cut when it came to our education and to prove that we could have the same resources as a two-parent household. Her high expectations made us want to do better, and we learned that nothing comes easy. You have to really work hard to get what you want.”
And whatever political persuasions we may support, no one can deny the towering personality of Tamil Nadu’s former chief minister Jayalalitha and the indelible legacy that she has left behind.
“From Chennai, to the world” is a phrase that we have come to promote and believe in. The women of Chennai with their simple living and high thinking are emblematic of the best version of Chennai and Tamil Nadu.
The authors are members of the senior management team at GAVS Technologies.