A many-splendoured man who let his work do the talking

Sixty-eight years as a journalist, 58 years as a columnist, 48 years of writing on Madras, 38 years as an author and 28 years as editor of Madras Musings. That surely makes for an extraordinary distinction. An inspiration to many, S. Muthiah commanded awe and respect not only because of the sheer range of his work, but also because of the high standards he set. 

If I had not joined the Journalism course at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan on a whim, I would possibly have never met S. Muthiah. I was in the batch of 1992-93, the oldest by some measure, but I quickly got hooked on to the evening classes, not missing a single class through the year.

Muthiah taught us Reporting – we held him in awe. Before the end of the course, he asked me whether I was serious about my insurance officer’s job – the south-based conglomerate where he worked was looking for a public relations manager. It was the time I was determined to leave the public sector. I was eight years old with the insurance company and I knew I had to be careful. But there was something about this man that drew me to him. I took the plunge.

As communications director at the TTK Group, Muthiah was my boss for a decade. Together, we brought out the group’s award-winning in-house magazine, TTK Spectrum. I might have been a gold medalist in journalism and confident of my English language writing skills, but Muthiah, the editor, soon brought me down to terra firma.

I vividly remember the day I received the first lot of drafts I had written for the magazine, duly edited. His driver, Malairaj, would bring such edited versions to my room from time to time. The first lot carried the editor’s favourite Wality fountain pen ink scribbles, which formed patterns between paragraphs, dotted margins and created a sort of mosaic at the top and bottom of almost every page. On one page there was an extra splash of ink and two prominent words emblazoned across: What nonsense! All the articles, of course, had to be rewritten for a second round of editing.

On most Saturday mornings, Muthiah would arrive at the TTK headquarters on Cathedral Road. He would come to my room first, but only after spending some time with the big man, T.T. Vasu. He would get me to order what he liked – either black coffee or lemon tea. And then he would go through the page layouts I had prepared, the headlines, etc. No adjectives for people, he would insist; for products, it’s fine. Do not use unnecessary words; the lead in a news story should say something new and you should make it interesting; avoid label headlines… And that was how I learnt.

During 2002-03, when he was travelling abroad and once when he was lying ill in hospital, he relied on me to put together issues of Madras Musings (a fortnightly that focused on the city’s civic issues, heritage and people from the past) – I was by then a regular contributor. It provided me yet another valuable experience, deciding the stories to be published, writing the popular Short ‘N’ Snappy/ MMM (Man from Madras Musings) column and, most importantly, to ensure there were no errors that would upset the editor.

Early days in Ceylon

Subbiah Muthiah’s association with Sri Lanka goes back to a father who came to study at Ananda College in 1916 and stayed on. V. Vr. N. M. Subbiah Chettair, better known in Ceylon as M. Subbiah or Subi, was to become a stockbroker, then took over Heller & Co in 1939 and ran it as a general trading corporation. But he was better known for his involvement in Ceylon politics, being a nominated member of the Colombo Municipal Council for several years and deputy mayor twice, acting for the mayor several times and, most significantly, being the founder-president of the Ceylon India Congress formed in 1939 by 16 Indian associations in Ceylon.

Subbiah, who was very close to the Ceylon leadership from the 1930s to 1950s, stood for election to the Nuwara Eliya seat in 1947 and lost a close verdict. He left Ceylon for personal reasons in 1960 and settled in his village in India.

Muthiah, born on 13th April, 1930 and brought up in a household where Ceylon and Ceylon-Indian politics was daily fare, was an old boy of Ladies’ College, St Thomas Prep where his teacher, W.T. Keble, was to prove the greatest influence in his life (he encouraged reading and writing). In 1946, after his school finals in India, Muthiah was one of the first batch of students from this part of the world to go to the US for higher studies immediately after the War.

In the US, Muthiah represented his university in athletics, debating, and was active in campus journalism and worked with local newspapers. Returning to Ceylon in 1951, circumstances forced him to rethink a career in the Foreign Service and he joined The Times of Ceylon, to become wedded to journalism and writing ever since.

With The Times of Ceylon from 1951 to 1968, Muthiah was its foreign news editor and then features editor, besides being in charge of the Sunday Times, the Group’s magazine publications and The Times of Ceylon Annual. He represented in Ceylon, from 1954, first, the London News Chronicle, and then the London Daily Mail till 1968. And from 1959 to 1968, The Observer, London, and its foreign news service.

Arrival in Madras

After arriving in Madras in 1968, Muthiah took charge of TT Maps & Publications, a unit of the TTK Group, which published maps and atlases and tourist guidebooks and had a large offset printing unit for its work. He retired in 1990 but continued as president emeritus till 2005. While at TT Maps, he conceived, edited, designed and supervised the production of all its publications – more than 15 titles a year. It was during his time at TT Maps that his interest in the history of the city of Madras developed and grew. And no wonder that he produced an astounding number of books on Madras. Soon, he became freelance editor for various institutions and publishers through his editorial consultancy service, Madras Editorial Services

Muthiah was a prolific writer of non-fiction and a chronicler of the European era in South India, with a focus on Madras. He has, besides his stories of Madras, written the histories of institutions like Parry’s, Simpson’s, Spencer’s, the United Planters’ Association of Southern India, and the Madras Club as well as social histories of ‘communities’ like the Indo-Lankans, the Chettiars, the Anglo-Indians and executives in British businesses in India between the 1930s and 1970s.

Author of 40 books with historical backgrounds, including Madras Rediscovered (its eighth edition recently launched), Madras – The Gracious City, Madras – Its Past and Present, Madras that is Chennai: The Gateway to the South, At Home in Madras – A Handbook, The Parry Story, Getting India on the Move, A Planting Century, The Spencer Legend, The Connemara, Queen of the Coromandel, The Spirit of Chepauk, Looking Back from Moulmein, The Chettiar Heritage, The Ace of Clubs, The Indo-Lankans, Born to Dare, Words in Indian English, he also ghosted The Unfinished Journey (the biography of M. Ct. M. Chidambaram Chettyar) and 60 Landmark Years (the story of L&T-ECC). His biographies include books on industrialists A.M.M. Arunachalam of the Murugappa Group and M. Ct. Chidambaram Chettyar, and military legend Lt Gen Inder Singh Gill.

The frequency with which Muthiah was able to produce books, each one thoroughly researched and edited, was something that never ceased to amaze even those who knew his capabilities well. His distrust of the computer and love affair with his Olivetti typewriter were legendary.

Muthiah might not have been as well known in India as Khushwant Singh or Shobaa De or even Ramachandra Guha, but he more than made it up with his high quality of work – his writings would easily rank as some of the best ever, especially in terms of research.

At the 2011 launch of his 1210-page compendium, A Madras Miscellancy: A Decade of people, Places and Potpourri, a collection of the best of Muthiah’s columns that had appeared in The Hindu Metro Plus for a decade until then (it ran for much longer till almost his last days), N. Ram, then editor-in-chief, The Hindu, referred to Muthiah as “an unconventional, one-of-a-kind historian… who has brought to his subject (Madras) a gifted journalist’s curiosity, humour, liveliness, eye for small things and accessibility”. Ram referred to legendary columnists like Walter Lippmann and Frank Moraes and said that if other newspapers had a Khushwant Singh or a Jug Suraiya, The Hindu had S. Muthiah.

Muthiah taught journalism and print production at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Madras from 1972 to the mid-1990s, and at the University of Madras. He helped found India’s first degree course in printing technology at Anna University in 1980. He has been an office bearer at the Madras Printers’ and Lithographers’ Association, the All India Federation of Master Printers, the Booksellers and Publishers Association of South India, the Indian National Cartographic Association, the Public Relations Society of India, and a founder-member of INTACH, Tamil Nadu and the Madras Book Club. In March 2002, Muthiah was awarded the MBE by the Queen of England for his work on heritage and environment conservation in Chennai.

It was not just what he had achieved. It was the manner in which he achieved what he did that stood out. He was simple and humble. He was happy to let his work do the talking. I had never seen Muthiah lose his cool or use intemperate language. Yes, he was sarcastic at times. That was his way of telling you he was unhappy. He valued the contributions of people no matter who they were. And for him, no age for chivalry – he would open the car door for a lady and got in only after she was seated.

(Pictures show Muthiah in his elements at the Press Institute of India where he would drop by often; at my daughter's wedding reception; and at one of his final public appearances.)