Madras Day | A day inside Chennai’s Brodie’s Castle, now the Music College campus

S Vijayaraghavan is introducing the basics of Hamsadwani raga to his violin students. Music pervades each nook and corner of this colonial heritage building, once known as ‘Brodies Castle’ and now called ‘Thendral’. Located along the Adyar river bank, this iconic white structure, spread over 20,000 sqft, is among the city’s few remaining historic homes. Historian V Sriram, in an earlier column in ‘The Hindu’, writes that “when James McIvor of the Bank of Madras was its occupant, his two daughters, an aide-de-camp to the Governor and the president of the Madras Corporation, were killed in a boating accident.” In 1943, a rise in the water level in the Adyar river destroyed many possessions inside the Castle, and subsequently, it stopped being a residence and started a tryst with music that continues till date. Cut to 2023, and ‘Thendral’ witnesses hordes of young music aspirants – dressed in traditional Tamil clothing – and training in various art forms.