Madras: The Gracious City

This is not the usual "coffee table" book. It is more than pretty pictures. It is really a memorial to much of the Madras that belonged to a more spacious and gracious age but which is slowly vanishing. It is a commemoration of the splendid buildings of that age and of especially the Indo-Saracenic architectural from that men like Chisholm and Irwin pioneered in Madras and then took elsewhere in India. But, above all, it is a record in word and picture of the development over a period of 350 years of one of the great cities of the world. Madras, however, is changing. And part of tha t change is the kaleidoscope today, a city where the traditional and the old are to be found everywhere existing comfortably beside the new and the modern, where the conservative and the quiet thrive side by side with the flamboyant and the raucous, where infrastructural shortages are as much part of the local scene as development and growth. Such juxtapositions are only some of the visible signs of the acceptance and tolerance and understanding that are the hallmarks of a gracious city. And they too are an integral part of this record of MADRAS, THE GRACIOUS CITY. Whether concentrating on the traditional or the new, MADRAS, THE GRACIOUS CITY, provides in words and striking pictures a charming picture of the different faces of a 350-year-old city. It is a portrait to be retained as a pictorial record of a metropolis whose contribution to modern India has been great.