Coimbatore :
Branching off from both sides of D B Road is a little known street called Sambandhan Road. You have West Sambandhan Road which leads to Thadagam Road and East Sambandhan Road which leads to Mettupalayam Road. The road is believed to have been named as a tribute to former municipal chairman M Sambandhan in the 1930s when the legendary Rathna Sabapathy Mudaliar drew the layout of R S Puram.
However, like almost all roads in R S Puram the road has seen a lot of changes in the demography of its residents over the past few decades and only a handful of original inhabitants can still be found. So, it is not surprising that not many people know who Sambandan was or why the road was named after him. M Sambandhan was born in 1869 and passed his Class 10 in 1885. Then he moved to erstwhile Madras for further studies. The MCC graduate got his degree in 1891 and got a degree in law from Presidency College in 1894.
Being the son of former tahsildar and Tamil literature expert Muthukrishna Mudaliyar, he moved back to the city in 1894 and took up a job as a secretary of a sugar manufacturing company. In 1901, he began his legal career. However, in 1906 he decided to enter public life. “He became a municipal councillor in 1906 and went on to become a municipal chairman in 1916,” say INTACH members and historians Perur K Jayaraman and Rajesh Govindarajulu.
The man is believed to have greatly contributed to the city infrastructure creation in the early 20th century. “He was awarded a certificate of merit and a silver medal as a councillor,” says Govindarajulu. He then grew in society by becoming the director of Janopakara Needhi, becoming committee members of the Cosmopolitan Clubs of Coimbatore and Chennai, becoming a part of the Madras legislative council, Theasophical Society, becoming a Free Mason and being a part of the Madras Mahajana Sabha, known to be instrumental in forming a congress chapter in the state, says Govindarajulu.
The street, which now has cars parked on both sides and is dotted with apartment complexes and a range of commercial establishments like a bakery, coffee shop, an art gallery, clinics, Aavin outlet and eateries, has managed to retain a bit of its past. There still exist a few two-storey independent houses, painted in peach, blue and pink with terraces and flat window sills. The street’s oldest resident 78-year-old S S Seshadri gave a glimpse of the street’s past.
“I was born in this house on this street in 1936. My parents had moved here in 1933,” he recalls. “Then it was just a gravel and mud road. We just had horse carriages. It became a tar road in 1952. “The Chandrika soap manufacturing unit was based in East Sambandhan Road,” says Jayaraman.
“The whole road used to be filled with fragrance when they processed their solution,” he adds. The road also used to have a few well-known residents like surgeon T S Sivanandham and former movie actor T S Baliah. Seshadri says the road for decades used to have only independent limestone houses with tiled roofs. “It changed about 40 years back when people began to use cement to renovate them. Many sold off their property and left the area. Now it has become more of a commercial street with more shops and apartments than houses,” he says. He gets nostalgic as he talks about those “good old days” when he used to spin tops on this very street. He knows those days will not come back again.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Coimbatore / by Pratiksha Ramkumar, TNN / August 17th, 2014