cdj1122

I saw a sorry looking cover in the auction a week or so ago. It looked quite worse for wear and may have been opened by someone desperate to get at the contents, a long awaited note, tearing at one end roughly which can be seen at the left edge.
But it traveled quite fast from Penang in Malaya to Madras and on to what must have been a small village named Karaikudi, in modern-day Ramnathapuram District. Today the area around Karaikudi is known as Chettinadu.
It only took ten days during wartime and it was passed by a censor in Penang at the start of its journey across the Bay of Bengal to reach its destination. I suspect that it travelled by ship to Negapatnam (Megapatnam)a small but bustling port in that part of the Madras district.
The face of the cover was cluttered with writing in a strange version of, at least to me, an incomprehensible script, but also with senders and receiver's addresses in English, the lingua franca even today for much of the Indian sub-continent.



To me it both looked sad and yet it caught my interest. In my wasted youth a ship I was on stopped at "Madras", or at least in a port along the coast of India in the Madras district to discharge a few tons of cargo. I remember the port being so small we discharged the cargo into some of the most rickety barges I'd seen. And about two years later on another trip around the world I visited Penang and Singapore for similar reasons.



So I bid on the cover at least to add it to a group that were sent from, or sent to, other distant ports that I knew from those days.
After a totally uncontested flash of disinterest by anyone else, I won it and in due time it arrived.
The cover was sent from one Mr. Palaniappa Chettiar, of #126 Penang Street, Penang to what appears to be a relative, Mr.Chithambaram Chettiar. But upon searching the name I discovered that "Chettiar" is not just a last name, but a profession. And Chettier is the dominant profession of Karaikudi. They are a group of money lenders, bankers and businessman who operate a credit transaction system known as a "Hundi." A hundi is a way that people who do not have access to banking can pay the local Chettier and he will send a remittance note to what must be, at the least, a cousin who will then pay the person designated the funds. Chettiers have a long history and I expect an impeccable reputation as they have plied their money trading for over a hundred years from their home in southeast India to Ceylon, Burma, Malaya, Singapore and the straits Settlements, going as far as Vietnam and the Philippines.
The system is similar to the Hawala system utilized in a similar manner in the Muslim countries of what we call the Near and Middle East.
In Penang, the large barn like building at 126 Penang Street was known, in 1915, as the Chettier's building and these money lenders not only financed things like the grain trade, but were also spice traders and land speculators.
Looking at a map, I think that the SS Transyork, in 1967 may have moored within sight of the Chettiers building, or its replacement, and I may have walked past it once or twice en route to see what could be seen on the island /city of Penang.
Well the cover sold for a princely $1.00 plus postage, well worth the price of the history lesson to me.

 
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