Venu seeing sullivans Blue Mountains

The spotless blue skies staring down on the brick and mortar structure staved off in a nondescript village of Nilgiris –which is claiming to get back to its hay days again. Built in the year 1819 by John Sullivan – The Collector of Coimbatore this building is the first modern construction to come up in Nilgiris. The irony is that - one cannot understand what cometh to this important piece of history to be in the oblivion and state of neglected all these years. Thou the general antagonism for the British remnants are obvious in the plains but in Nilgiris it was different, by and large the Victorian & gothic style architecture was ideally suited more so for it is climatic adaptation and to the sylvan settings the residue of this kind of architectural style is evident even in the post British Raj period buildings. Many a factors went in to disintegrating this structure and to demean its importance one of the main factor being the place where it was located - Dhimbhatty (5 km from Kotagiri) which lost out to the subsequently explored Kotagiri & thereafter the Ootacamund through which the roads where planned this might be the one of the reason, as for the ownership of this bungalow changed in to various hands thereby it lost its significance eventually it was deserted by its last possessor until SNC took note of the importance of this building in 1988 and proposed to the administration to restore the Pethakal Bungalow (as it was called by the natives here). It was by the efforts of Shri P C Alexander, Governor of Tamil Nadu at that time and there after By Shri Supriya Sahu – Collector of Nilgiris in the year-2002 that this building was restored to its original plan and in the year 2005 it was hand over By Collector of Nilgiris (Mr VijayRaj Kumar) to SNC for maintenance and promotion.

And thus SNC is promoting The Sullivans Bungalow in a big way with lots of plans for the future to see it grow as a archive of The Nilgiris rich history. Envisioned by D.Venugopal Coordinator of SNC – The Nilgiri Documentation Centre is already in operation here with collection of priceless old photographs artifacts meticulously documented and exhibited.

And about D.Venugopal an economist by profession, founder coordinator of Save Nilgiris Campaign, his mind soul and thoughts lie in Nilgiris. I have not come across any one so obsessed with Nilgiris.