The lockdown has given me an oppourtunity to get into a lot of things and thought processes. I was ruminating and getting things organized at home. Wow... I discovered an old 1969 Canon camera that belonged to my dad. It had been gifted to him by his uncles Viswanathan and Damotharan after their tour of the world. Damotharan continues to talk about the old Lebanon and its capital Beirut which had been famous for its good life.
The lockdown has given me an oppourtunity to get into a lot of things and thought processes. I was ruminating and getting things organized at home. Wow... I discovered an old 1969 Canon camera that belonged to my dad. It had been gifted to him by his uncles Viswanathan and Damotharan after their tour of the world. Damotharan continues to talk about the old Lebanon and its capital Beirut which had been famous for its good life.
Our elders were known for their interest in innovation and while they modernized, they did not tamper with tradition and culture. We were amongst the earliest in town to get a hairdryer. It had been invented by Alexander F.Godefroy during the nineteenth century in France. However, the handheld household one came up in 1920. My great grand uncle P.A.Ramaswamy Chettiar was perhaps among the earliest in town to purchase a hairdryer. I remember my grandfather R.Krishnan talking about the hairdryer that had been purchased around the year 1933 ! A lot of German and Swiss equipment were specially brought in by my innovative great grand father P.A.Raju Chettiar prior to the second world war and it helped him to create a new range of light weight jewellery which was both - fashionable and reliable.
Well, our family used to collect a lot of items and were fond of miniatures. I still remember the huge collection of silver miniatures that were with my granny Lalitha Bai. This craze continued and we began to collect a number of items like erasers, sharpeners, coins, first day covers, stamps, pens, pencils, Binaca dolls which came along with the tooth paste and toy cars. I grew up in our Vysial Street house ' Raju Bhavan ' for some years and my mother Aravindakumari began inculcating this idea into me from those days. Ours was a huge joint family which consisted of nearly 30 people belonging to four generations. The house was a huge mansion and it extended from one street to the other. It was a world by itself. We would have handled the lockdown better in that house.
My parents began getting us comics and toys from all over. Dad used to often travel to Madras for sorting out legal matters. A number of our tenants were not ready to pay a fair rent those days. Daddy used his spare time in Madras by visiting places like Burma Bazaar and Kasi Chetty Street. These places used to be full of imported items smuggled into the country. The country was socialist but the black market was super active those days. He used to get us tiny MATCH BOX cars during the course of his trips.
All the members of my family were into this car collection. We used to exchange notes, see each others collection and then upgrade our own. My grand uncle P.A.R.Raghunathan and his wife Sarsaswathi were big collectors of tiny cars and a host of other items. I was told that Raghunathan had 102 radios and that his personal staff used to get a license for each one of them. My youngest uncle Prakash recalls, "Raghu uncle used to have a big collection of toy cars and I used to play in his room. The cars were always in mint condition and would be placed back in the showcase after entertaining me. Dinky toys, Matchbox cars and other battery operated toys were in his collection in a good number. This motivated me to have my own collection and my father used to help me build it up. Old Spencers had been one source and the cars used to cost about Rs.9 to Rs.11 during the early days. They were of course expensive and out of bounds for most people. This was around 1970 or so. Now the cars are with my son Ananthram".
My other uncle Shekhar Viswanath was known for his excellent collection but he has given away most of his toy cars. Uncle Sitarama Guptha and aunt Nirmala used to visit Madras often and they used to get us new cars. In fact each of us knew whatever was available with each other and it helped. We created townships with our building sets and keep all these cars as part of the display. My mother used to help my brother Suresh and myself in this regard. Each of us had about 200 or so of these tiny cars and great grand father P.A.Raju Chettiar used to jocularly state that we could exchange the collection for a real car. One of our aunts Suguna Gopalakrishnan lived in Salem and their family knew one vendor called Shaukat Ali. She helped us to source cars through him. Oh, it was a craze for we rushed into deciding very quickly and fortunately daddy was accommodative. My father’s kid brother Shankar uncle continues to love these tiny cars.
I still remember my mother educating herself about these cars. She used to tell us that we should only buy Matchbox which was ' Made In England '. We were told not to choose ' Made in Hong Kong ' or ' Made in Japan '. 'China was yet to make its debut. It was alright to pick up other items made in these countries. DINKY Toys had been the mother of all toy collectibles. They made a range of die cast zinc alloy miniature vehicles from 1934. Meccano made these cars and the factory had been in Liverpool. Dinky in Scottish meant neat or fine. Matchbox was the next popular brand which was founded in 1953 and it was made by Lesney Products. The company had been founded by John W. "Jack" Odell, Leslie Charles Smith and Rodney Smith. The first popular model had been Queen Elizabeth II 's coronation coach. Jack ODell had created a toy which could fit into a matchbox. This was for his school going daughter. Her school only allowed children to bring toys that could fit into a matchbox. This led the company to create the Matchbox series. Our collection was mostly Matchbox. We had a few Hot wheels too and they were by Mattel. However it was Matchbox which pioneered in the miniatures which were made to scale. They made replicas of real cars. Some of them were special for the door or the hood or the boot could be opened. One of my toy beach buggies has a driver who would move if the car was pushed. These cars moved smoothly.
CORGI was produced by Mettoy Playcraft (Metal Toy) from 1956. This brand was produced in Wales. HUSKY was introduced by Corgi in order to compete with Matchbox. Therefore the cars were marked with ' Made in Great Britain ' for they were produced in Wales. We were fine with Made in Great Britain. In times on non availability we used to grudgingly buy cars made by ' PLAY ART ' and they were ' Made in Hong Kong ' . We were told that they were often diecast seconds of other brands like Tomica (Made In Japan). These die cast tiny cars were nice but yet we preferred Matchbox. We heard that there were other brands like Solido from France but we never had any of those.
Our collection got wealthier in the year 1979. It was when my father K.Govindarajulu and uncle K.Sridharan went to Kuwait in order to participate in a jewellery fair. They were perhaps the first among the jewellers in Tamilnadu to participate in an international jewellery fair. Our big sized Volvo miniature and the car carrier which could hold upto five Matchbox cars were from Kuwait. I still have them with me.
The collection includes fire engines, tractors, ambulances. personnel carriers, cannons, scout cars, racing cars and hovercrafts. The cannon could fire a tiny stick and it was super thrilling to use it. We had a tank which had a rotating soldier fixed in it. Every blessed brand was available. The Mini, Mercedes, Jaguar, Lamborghini, Jeep, Volkswagen, Toyota etc., were among the many. Lorries, concrete mixers, oil tankers, towing vehicles, bikes, fire engines with flexible ladders were part of our collection.
I used to discuss this subject with my close friends at school. None were aware of all this except Santossh who hailed from a family which had pioneered in establishing king sized ventures. He had given his collection away to somebody. It made me understand much later that we were among the fortunate few in the land and therefore we should do our bit for the society. Our Made in England craze was often compared to the attitudes presented in the movie ' Kaadhalikka Neramillai ' by Director Sridhar. The heroines Kanchana and Rajshree would swear to their brother Nagesh the founder of Oho Productions that they would only watch English movies.
Well, I grew up and my interests changed and later came to know that production of many of these toy cars had shifted to China and the ownership of the brands had also changed. However I had stopped getting them and do not have any of the ' Made in China ' cars with me. The production had also taken place in Macau. I learnt that both Dinky and Matchbox had come under one management. My mother had safely packed most of these Matchbox cars for me and my brother Suresh. All my cars were packed in old biscuit tins and have been moving along with me. It is our fourth residence thus far.
“I still remember using the wooden cover of my mother’s Veena as a slide to play with these cars. It was a great activity for me,“ recalls my cousin Vishnu.
Joint families had there own attendant issues. Therefore my mother had marked our cars with my father’s initials K.G. These initials were marked underneath the cars.
Matchbox, Made in England had been a market leader and by 1968 it had become the largest selling brand. It was a force to reckon with in the seventies of the last century. All of us grew up in the company of these cars. We would not go out much and therefore spent most of our time with toys and books. Those were the days when spending the holidays at home was healthy and enjoyable.