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The Ice House in later days
The postman kept knocking with observations and queries from several readers on last week’s item on Sister Subbalakshmi and Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddy.
An observation by a couple of readers – one from abroad – was prefixed by the statement that they were Ramakrishna Mission devotees. Nevertheless, why, they wondered, did Vivekananda Illam focus only on Vivekananda. Surely it could have a niche to remember the Sarada Ashram, which was Ramakrishna Mission linked but, more significantly, would have served as a memorial to Sister Subbalakshmi’s contribution.
Another reader wondered whether I didn’t know anything about Dr. Muthulakshmi’s contribution to the Cancer Institute. Let me assure him I do know something about it, but the focus of my item last week was on the uncanny similarities in the lives of Sister Subbalakshmi and Dr. Muthulakshmi.
The question most asked, however, was what happened to Ice House from the time the ice trade came to an end till the gifting of it to the Ramakrishna Mission in 1997. Ice House had apparently belonged to the Government – what it was used for or who built it is not known – but Government leased it from 1845 to the Tudor Ice Company for its ‘San Thome depot’. The lease given to its Agent, Andrew Bancroft, for 20 years was extended in 1865. But when the International Ice Company was established in Madras in 1874, “to manufacture ice by the steam process”, the Tudor Ice Company’s days were numbered.
An advocate, Bilagiri Iyengar, bought the property from Government sometime in the 1870s and renamed it Castle Kernan, after Justice James Kernan of the Madras High Court. It was here that he hosted in February 1897 Swami Vivekananda on his return from that momentous tour of the West. And it was here that the Ramakrishna Movement in South India was founded by Swami Ramakrishnananda shortly afterwards. Bilagiri Iyengar offered his ‘castle’ to the Movement as its home in Madras. In 1907, however, five years after Bilagiri Iyengar’s death, the property was auctioned to settle the sad state of the advocate’s financial affairs.
It now passed through a couple of hands, from one of whom Sister Subbalakshmi rented it in 1912 for her Sarada Ashram. When the Ashram for child widows moved out in 1928, the building fell vacant till Government bought it in 1930 to serve as a hostel for the teacher-trainees of neighbouring Lady Willingdon College. It remained a hostel till the 1990s, growing more dilapidated by the day. Restoration of the skeleton of a building that remained began only after it was gifted to the Ramakrishna Mission.
S. MUTHIAH
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