Book excerpt: This book marks a decade of a column that appears every Monday in The Hindu's Metro Plus, Madras edition. Madras Miscellany has, over that decade, created an awareness and a greater appreciation of the significant past of Madras and of the events and the people who over the years made Madras "the first city of modern India", a description of the City the writer of the column, S.Muthiah, never tires of reiterating. Over a 1500 or so items that appeared in the 514 columns published during Madras Miscellany's first decade appear in the book in three sections:'People', 'Places' and 'Potpourri', the last named being everything else that doesn't fit into the other two sections. And in them there develops a rather comprehensive story of Madras over its nearly 375 years of history.In sum, this is a book for anyone interested in the development of Madras and its considerable contribution to modern India.