Madras Day

The first recorded celebration of the founding of Madras was its tercentenary commemoration in 1939. Unlike later anniversaries, the celebrations were officially sponsored by the British government and a special tercentenary commemoration volume was issued with essays on the different aspects of Madras city authored by leading experts of the time.[2][3] An exhibition of pictures, portraits, maps, records and coins was inaugurated by Diwan Bahadur S. E. Runganadhan, the Vice-Chancellor of the Madras University and a short play writing competition was organized.[2][4]

The 350th anniversary in 1989 was celebrated with the opening of a commemorative monument titled "Madras 350" built in the Classical Style by builder Frankpet Fernandez at the junction of the Poonamallee High Road and the New Avadi Road.[5] Other major events included the commissioning of a book by S. Muthiah titled Madras — The Gracious City by the Murugappa Group which also organized the first Madras Quiz which has continued to the present day.[5]

The idea to celebrate the birth of the city every year was born when journalists Shashi Nair and Vincent D'Souza met S. Muthiah at his residence for coffee.[6] It was based on the success of another event called Mylapore Festival which D'Souza had been organising every year in January. It was decided by the trio to start celebrating Madras Day from 2004.[6] According to them, the "primary motive of celebrating 'Madras Day' was to focus on the city, its past and its present."[7] The idea initially started off with about five events in 2004 but grew gradually. The second edition in 2005 had events throughout the week. In 2008, there were a total of 60 events conducted.[6] In 2007, a commemorative postal cover was released by Chief Postmaster-General of Tamil Nadu Circle at a function at Fort St George as a part of the Madras Day celebrations, thereby inaugurating a tradition that continued through the later editions.[8] The 2010 celebrations lasted beyond a week and extended well into the following week as well.

The 375th Madras Day was celebrated with more than a hundred events that lasted from 10 August to 14 September 2014.[1] However, despite expectations to the contrary, Tamil Nadu government departments did not participated in the celebrations which they felt "colonial heritage".[1] The celebrations were deemed a roaring success and the events got nationwide coverage for the first time.[9][10] "The Madras Song" was composed to commemorate the occasion and a website was launched by The Hindu titled friendsofchennai.com for residents of the city to create online petitions voicing their civic grievances.[11][12] Historian and entrepreneur V. Sriram also designed a mobile app named Chennai Past Forward for users to keep in track with the heritage of the city.

The 376th Madras Day celebrations were bigger with events being held even in suburbs like Tambaram.[13] Apart from heritage walks, the 2015 edition also included a walk of the L. V. Prasad film studios.[14] The focus was, however, on restoration of the Coovum River and a presentation on the history and heritage of the Coovum River was held at the Madras Literary Society by author Anusha Venkatesh on 15 August.[15][16][17] The Cycling Yogis, a Chennai cyclists' group, conducted a 72 km bicycle ride along with the Coovum River on 16 August 2015.[18]

The 377th Madras Day celebrations were kick-started in a grand manner by The Hindu Group through their Madras Beats 2016 song. Composed and performed by Opus g7, a band which was selected as winner through a competition floated by The Hindu, the song "Endrum Padhinaaru" was launched on 21 August 2016 and went viral on social media.[19]

Madras Day focuses on the city, its history, its past and its present and the core team motivates communities, groups, companies and campuses in the city to host events that celebrate the city.[20] The celebration consists of events such as heritage walks,[21] public talks, exhibitions, poetry reading sessions, public performances, food festivals and special programs on local radio.[20] It also includes contests such as T-shirt designing, documentary film contest, multimedia presentation for schools and quizzes in both Tamil and English.[20] T-shirts to mark the event are also released.[22] The talks delivered to mark the week-long celebrations usually involve lectures explaining the heritage and history of the city.[23] There are also events for the retired citizens where they can post about their life years ago on the "Stories about Madras section" on Madras Day's website and share their views on how Madras grew into the Chennai of today.[24][25]

The programmes for Madras Day 2015 included:

• Heritage walks organized by the Chennai Heritage foundation
• Quizzes and competitions for children organized by the British Council
• Daily lectures organized by the Roja Muthiah Research Library
• Daily lectures organized by the Press Institute of India
• Tree walks by the Nizhal Foundation
• Field trips by the Madras Naturalists' Society
• Lectures and exhibitions organized by The C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation
• Competitions organized by the Photographic Society of Madras

A unique design T-shirt, selected through open competition, is sold by Mylapore Times every year during Madras Week.[26][27]

The Madras Day celebrations culminate each year with the Madras Quiz, held separately in Tamil and English. This is facilitated by the Mylapore Times.

Many quiz enthusiasts come for this quiz, which is quite competitive in terms of content.

The 2009 edition of the Madras Quiz in English was conducted by the Indian Quizzing League.

• Madras Day: August 22
• Madras Day site
• Madras Day 2015
• Article published in The Hindu