Though the city of Chennai is over 350 years old, it has not received the kind of attention that other metropolitan cities in India have. Writings on the city that are available are written from a somewhat elitist perspective, epitomized by the opposition to the renaming of Madras, a few years ago. But the fact is that it has been referred to as Chennai in Tamil works. Thus the tussle revolves around the cultural struggle between colonial Madras and the Chennai of a wider democratic populace. This somewhat provocatively titled book highlights the vernacular character of Chennai.
 
A.R. Venkatachalapathy, the editor of the volume, has a doctorate in history from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is Associate Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai. He has written/edited over fifteen books in Tamil on the social, cultural, and intellectual history of colonial Tamil Nadu. He has translated Sundara Ramaswamy's J.J.: Some Jottings (2004). His most recent publication is In Those Days There was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History (2006).