Hotel Maris: a 50-year-old journey and Madras-Ceylon connection

Hotel Maris on Cathedral Road turned 50, with a rich history of family ties and cultural connections in Chennai.

Hotel Maris, which stands on Cathedral Road, turned 50 last week. I had helped in putting together a video commemorating this, and I must say it enabled me to secure some more stories to add to the extraordinary tapestry that is Chennai.

In a brilliant talk that S .Muthiah delivered in 2003 at the Tag Centre on India-Sri Lankan relations, he spoke of how Maria Pillai embarked on the career of a kangani, a person who hired labour in Tamil Nadu for the tea estates in then Ceylon. But there was a lot more I learnt during my recent research, thanks to Anand Rengaswami, the present Managing Director of Maris and grandson of Maria Pillai.

When Ceylon became independent in 1948 and British estate owners began leaving in a hurry, one of them, a Turnbull, offered his holding to Maria Pillai, on a pay-when-able basis. And that is how the family got into estate management. To assist Maria Pillai, his second son, Rengaswami Pillai, moved to Ceylon. But Madras was his idea of a cultural metropolis.

South Indian classical music and dance were Rengaswami Pillai’s great passions, and it was to soak in the December Music Season of Madras that he began coming each year to the city in the 1960s and when he did, he invariably stayed at Hotel Swagath. He eventually became a close friend of the owner Ramakrishna Aithala.

Thus, when in 1972, the newly named Sri Lanka nationalised all its tea estates without compensation and Rengaswami Pillai found himself out of business, it was to Madras that he came seeking fresh ventures, and it was Aithala whom he consulted.

The Madras of the early 1970s had a great need for good quality and yet at the same time affordable hotels. Aithala felt Rengaswami Pillai ought to start one and what was more, identified location and architect. The former was historic Cathedral Road, where on land belonging to The Hindu family, Swarga Drive-In, a small restaurant was barely functioning. This was acquired, and as for the architect, it had to be Atchyut R. Chundur, who specialised in hotel projects — Kanchi, Swagath, Srilekha (now Courtyard Marriot), and Maris were all his designs.

The Hindu has a detailed article on him in its issue of September 23, 2020. The hotel was inaugurated on January 15, 1975, with Rengaswami Pillai handing over the key to a room to his father Maria Pillai and the latter signing the guest register. And with that Maris got going. Apart from its affordable rates, it became well-known for long-serving staffers who knew guests and their families by sight. The vegetarian food, still served on banana leaves at the Anandam Restaurant, was a big hit, as was the bar, named The Permit Room, as a doffing of the hat to Tamil Nadu’s prohibition era, when tipplers needed permits.