Chennai is a city with a living past. The legends and legendary figures of centuries ago live there in a unique way. Their memories still animate the streets and salons of Chennai, its hotels and hospitals, its libraries and its colleges and colonies. Efforts to rename places and pathways have not been entirely successful. The past still lingers around. The personages of the past, heroes of distant centuries, retain a contemporary air.

Consider Anderson. Or Mowbray. Or Pycrofts. Or Ellis. Or Connemara. Each one of them who was important in his own way during his time in the city set up by Francis Day, remains a living presence through Anderson Road, Mowbrays Inn, Connemera Library and so on. Many roads have been renamed and many new places have come up but many landmarks of Chennai look like a confluence of the past and the present.

There is but an irony in all this. Those who drive along Anderson Road or frequent Connemera Hotel or cast a casual glance at Ice House when they go from Eliot's Beach to Fort St George scarcely know who Anderson or Pycrofts or Connemara were. Ellis is an intimate personage to the residents of Chennai through the road named after him but not everyone knows that he was the man who built Mettur Dam and thus earned a place for himself in Tamil skyline. Nor do many know that Anderson was a great physician and mapmaker of Madras; that Connemera was Dalhouse's son-in- law -whom his wife divorced because of his peccadilloes.

We take a look at this living heritage through Chennai Memory Chips, a book published by my dad with lots of help from his friends. (My brothers and me we actively involved in the study too).

The idea is to understand Chennai and its past through its varied names and exotic proper nouns. It could be an illustrated glossary of Chennai. It could be also an instant guide to Chennai's history and geography. It will explain all familiar yet unclear proper nouns with which Chennai has leant to live.