Thanks to that recorder of the stories of famous old houses in Madras, Sriram V, I recently discovered where a once-legendary old family of Madras, the Tawkers, had their mansion. The Tawkers were one of the earliest Gujarati families to settle in Madras, moving here from Trichinopoly in the early 18th Century. The South India Cooperative Insurance Company bought it in 1948 as its headquarters and when insurance was nationalised it became LIC property. There are still Tawkers in Madras, but the name no long creates the awe it once did. In South India, coffee on estate scale was first planted in 1798 by Murdoch Brown in Anjaracandy in North Malabar, but the effort did not take off.

Source: The Hindu May 07, 2018 06:56 UTC