 Yusuf Madhiya is a Chennai-based businessman and a talented and successful artist and author. He's become a good friend over the years I've been coming to Chennai. We have a shared interest in the city's heritage. And at the weekend, he took me around his home area of Royapuram in the north of the city, close to the commercial harbour. Yusuf is a Dawoodi Bohra, a religious community within the Shia Muslim tradition and akin to (but not the same as) the Ismaili community. There are about two million Bohra Muslims globally, and perhaps 2,000 Bohra households in Chennai. They are traditionally a prosperous trading community from Gujarat - Gujarati is Yusuf's first language and the language of his household.  The photograph of Yusuf was taken outside the impressive Dawoodi Bohra mosque and community centre in Royapuram, where many Bohra families live. It's just four years old, spacious and well designed. Photography inside the building is not allowed, but you can see from the exterior how much attention has been given to the detail of the design. And the fundraising which enabled such an impressive building to be constructed reflects the wealth and strong sense of identity of the Bohra community.
Before the mosque was built, the community for some time used the premises nearby of another even smaller religious community, also of Gujarati heritage. They met in the Parsee club. Just down the road, the Parsees (or Zoroastrians) continue to have a well-maintained fire temple - where prayers are held five times a day and the fire tended to ensure it never goes out.  The sign at the front of the temple reads: 'ADMITTANCE TO PARSIS AND ZOROASTRIAN IRANIS ONLY' - non-believers are not allowed inside. Parsees are the Zoroastrians whose forbears fled Persia by boat several centuries ago and found refuge in Gujarat on India's west coast; Zoroastrian Iranis are the more recent migrants, many of whom left what is now Iran in the nineteenth century. The fire temple has its own priest, known to everyone as Dastur-ji. After his training, he has served as a Parsee priest in Mumbai, Lahore, Nagpur, Bangalore, Jamshedpur and a few other places before coming to Chennai.  There's been a Parsee presence in Chennai for more than 200 years; the fire temple was built in 1910. Nearby there's a community centre and an anjuman or social centre, as well as a small graveyard. The number of Parsees in Chennai is variously put at between 90 and 200 - it depends on definition. It is an ageing community. There are no Parsees of schoolgoing age in the city, and no more than eleven Parsees still live in Royapuram, their historic heartland in Chennai. Many have moved out to more affluent areas. The community remains wealthy and has offered free accommodation to any young Parsees who want to move to Chennai. But most prefer to stay in Mumbai, home to by far the greater part of India's Parsees. So the community in Chennai faces an uncertain future. Older Parsees in Chennai remain Gujarati speakers - so Yusuf talked happily to Parsee elders in a language which only 1%, if that, of Chennai's population understands.  Our other stop on this tour of places of worship in Royapuram was St Peter's, a Roman Catholic church which dates back to the 1820s. The design is said to be like a ship, and the church used to serve the local maritime and fishing community before the construction of the commercial harbour displaced the small fishing villages..  It's a strikingly elegant building, widely known as the 'madha' or mother church, and it has a small separate bell tower - and its large grounds are thronged at the weekend by cricket players.  Some of the design elements on the outside of the church are unusual - at least to my eyes.
A real pleasure to see such varied religious institutions - and big thanks to Yusuf for showing me round, and for the wonderful dinner, with homemade dokla and excellent biryani, at his home afterwards! 
0 Comments
 A selfie with the shopkeeper-philosopher Lateef Mohammed. I don't know why it's taken me so long, but this weekend I paid my first visit to the magical Old Curiosity Shop, which - Lateef tells me - his family set up after leaving Kashmir almost ninety years ago. Photography inside the shop is discouraged, but you can see from the crowded shelves just what a treasure trove it is - from 1950s LPs to wonderful old nautical instruments, from dusty books (all now carefully conserved) to the sort of knick-knacks tourists seem to love.  The Old Curiosity Shop (aka the Kashmir Art Palace) is on Anna Salai, the wide boulevard which was once known as Mount Road. The city's leading department store, Spencer's, used to be opposite. Still close by is the Connemara, perhaps the leading hotel in what was Madras in the colonial era and certainly the best of the old-style five star hang-outs.  Lateef Mohammed explained that he had been born in Chennai - though he can still speak Kashmiri. His shop has become something of an institution. A wonderful place to browse for half-an-hour - and yes, I did buy too - though not cheap. There were several other shoppers when I popped by, and Lateef had time for them all - chatting, reminiscing, sharing a tea and showing his wares.  He had a lovely piece of ephemera from the 'Quit India' movement of 1942 - like so many of his choice items, it was strictly 'Not For Sale'. I asked if he had any other political publications or ephemera. He took out two wonderfully well-kept bound volumes of the Harijan, the weekly paper founded by Gandhi. They were from 1946-8 and so straddled the era of Partition and independence. They had once been kept at The Hindu's editorial department, just down the road. So of course I asked: how much? Five lakh (that's £5,000). I suppose that's another way of saying NFS.  I abided by all the signs requesting no photography inside the shop. But I did photograph the windows. They give you some idea of the eclectic mix, and delightful clutter, you find inside.
  A touch of the rustic in one of the poshest parts of Chennai. I came across this very basic structure - a weaving together of branches and leaves - in a back street in Mylapore, the city's "Tam bram" (Tamil brahmin) heartland.  You couldn't get much more basic - or indeed have a bigger contrast with the ultra-smart house in the grounds of which this stands.  The weave is both crude and beautiful. And it offers shelter of a kind - little protection from rain, but then we're not in the rainy season, but shade from the sun and a modest amount of privacy.  And the purpose? Well, I don't know for sure. But there's building work going on at the adjoining house. And I am fairly sure that this is where the migrant workers who are doing the construction work bed down. I don't know how many may share this tiny hut - perhaps quite a few. It makes the contrast between the smart residence nearby and this stark touch of rural simplicity all the more unsettling.
 Paul Jacob lives in Veteran Lines in Pallavaram, a cantonment area on the outskirts of Chennai. He's standing outside the single-storey, old style house which has been the Jacob family's home for more than sixty years. And he believes the building dates back a few decades before that. As the name suggests, the locality was developed for Indian military veterans of the two world wars. In the 1960s, most of this area was the home of Anglo-Indians, a small and distinct Indian community of families which have a European man in their ancestry. There are now not more than ten or a dozen Anglo-Indian households in Veteran Lines, and the old houses are slowly being replaced by brash new mansions.   So the heritage walk I went on this morning with Madras Inherited was an opportunity to see something of a disppearing vernacular architectural style and certainly a disappearing lifestyle. The Jacob family has been hugely helpful to Madras Inherited as they researched the architectural and social history of the area, and Paul Jacob kindly agreed to talk to the group about his home and his community.
The house has a big covered verandah, which was able to receive visitors and to host the social events so central to Anglo-Indian identity. There's a huge mirror hung on the back wall, which adds to the sense of space.  On the table in the centre of the verandah, there's a small bust. I asked who it was. Lenin! A gift from a visitor, not a token of political allegiance. But not what I was expecting!  To one side of the main building, there's a more basic structure: the tuck house. This traditionally was where cooking was done, particularly in the summer, and where food was stored at other times of year. What a wonderful survival, and still very much in use.  The Jacob family are animal lovers. They feed fifty - yes, fifty! - cats and dogs, who of course have the run of the place. And the cats in particular cast a suspicious eye on curious visitors. 
 The area around Veteran Lines continues to have two institutions often associated with the Anglo-Indian community - though Anglos now are only a small proportion of those using them. Just down the road is St Stephen's church (and that's Bhavika Vaidyanathan who led today's walk for Madras Inherited).   I attended a service here a few years ago and blogged about it - and I'm glad the church is still thriving.  The church was consecrated in 1935 after years of campaigning and fund-raising by four military widows from Veteran Lines. All were Anglo-Indians. As we were told, while the definition of an Anglo-Indian is based on patrilineal descent, the community is matrilocal: it's the women who are the backbone of the community, preserve its identity and organise its social activities. Just a short distance away are the vast playing fields initially set up by the English Electric Company, a private concern which gave work to quite a few Anglo-Indians.
But the area is changing. As Anglo-Indian families sell up and move out - many have chosen to migrate to Australia or the UK - the new buyers often demolish the old buildings and construct ostentatious mansions. Within a decade or two, there may be nothing of the old Veteran Lines to be seen. That's sad.
But it's wonderful to have a glimpse of Veteran Lines as it is, and was. Nice one, Madras Inherited.    Chepauk Palace in Chennai, parts of which date back to the 1760s, is the oldest Indo-Saracenic building of them all. This style of architecture combines elements of Gothic design then becoming popular in Britain with spectacular design features associated with Mughal and Muslim princely architecture in India. So it's designed by Brits, but borrowing generously from a rather romanticised vision of the East. You could say it was the first expression of Orientalism. This was built as the palace of the Nawab of the Carnatic Sultanates, an ally of Britain's all-powerful East India Company. At first, the Nawab planned to build his home inside Fort St George, the European-only fortified area at the heart of what was then British-ruled Madras. He thought that would offer some protection against the danger of assassination by rivals.  The Nawab, Muhammad Ali Khan Wallajah, eventually settled on Chepauk a couple of miles to the south, which was close to the East India Company, but offered more space and a sea vista (though the Brits later built deliberately to obstruct that view from Chepauk - how charming of them). The main entrance to the palace remains on Wallajah Road, close to Chepauk stadium, Chennai's principal cricket venue..  I had the chance of seeing something of Chepauk Palace as part of a heritage walk organised by Madras Inherited. Ashmitha Athreya, Madras Inherited's lead storyteller, is showing an old image of the Palace. The buildings have been undergoing restoration for as long as anyone can remember. As you can see the central tower which defines the palace is still swathed in scaffolding. But it was a later addition - the Records Tower, designed (though never used) for storing plans and documents.
Renovation work on one of the two buildings constituting the palace has been completed. Kalas Mahal is now the headquarters of the National Green Tribunal. The restoration of Humayan Mahal - which was extenseively remodelled in around 1870 by the master of the Indo-Saracenic, Robert Chisholm - is running several years later but is at last almost complete.
And it's been done well, with real attention to detail - some of the coats of plaster are of traditional style involving huge amounts of egg white and cream. Humayun Mahal (Humayun was of course a Mughal emperor) will be a museum of Indian independence, giving particular prominence to freedom fighters from the south. It's a spellbinding space, and so exciting to see it. The museum should be open later in the year. Chepauk Palace isn't the grandest of Indo-Saracenic buildings. That honour rests perhaps with the nearby Senate House of the University of Madras, an extraordinary, almost delirious, design. Senate House is closed to the public, but I did manage to have a look around during a photography exhibition a few years ago, Chennai is, along with Baroda (Vadodara) in Gujarat, one of the main concentrations of Indo-Saracenic architecture. It's not to everyone's taste, but the striking fusion of East and West is both dramatic and politically and historically important.   They say the Lord moves in mysterious ways. Well, in Chennai he comes in a cycle rickshaw. Every so often this mobile Hindu religious shrine makes its way through the back streets, playing out devotional music and offering blessings.  The saffron-scarfed rickshaw wallah is a cheerful guy and some local people - including the woman who runs the coconut water stand just opposite where I stay - are happy to receive his benediction and to offer a donation.  The sides of the rickshaw-cum-shrine are decorated with images of Sai Baba, the much revered holy man and spiritual teacher who died more than a century ago.  Assisting in the operation was a saffron-clad young woman who seemed to be the one accepting donations. I gave - not so much to seek salvation as to say thank you for their kindness in allowing these photographs.   A real privilege today to be invited to the annual service at Chennai's exquisite, eighteenth century Armenian Church on (of course) Armenian Street in Georgetown.. Armenians were once one of the main trading communities across Asia. Some of their churches survive - in Kolkata, Dhaka, Yangon and Mumbai and a few other ports and cities - but the community has all but gone. In and around Chennai, there are perhaps four or five Armenian, or part-Armenian households. The attendance at today's service - including visitors and well-wishers - was about thirty. The Armenian Orthodox priest at today's ceremony came over from Kolkata (Calcutta), where the community is a little bigger. So too did the two altar boys, and four young women, three of whom sang very tenderly throughout the two-hour service; they are students at Kolkata's historic Armenian College. One longstanding member of the Chennai congregation came over, with his young son, from Bangalore. An Australian Armenian family visiting Chennai also swelled the congregation. Most of the tiny number of Armenians in the city are not from long established Indian Armeninan families, but are married to South Indians whom they met in Armenia. And then there were well-wishers like me - it's the second time I've been able to attend this annual service, which is so very important to the community.
The church is in its own grounds.It is small but serene. The most striking visual aspect is the separate belltower, which has a set of six bells all dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and two of them cast in London. Today, the bells chimed to mark the opening of the service.  As well as the singing, there was lots of incense. Full members of the church took communion and we were all give the opportunity to kiss the cross and the Bible. The priest delivered his sermon in Armenian and English.   After the communion service, there was a short requiem service at the grave of Harutyun Shmavonian. He was a priest who in 1794 published the first ever periodical in the Armenian language. He died in what was then Madras in 1824.  After that there was a chance to chat, to eat very tasty Armenian pastries and of course to take the all important group photograph. Here it is!   This is Eyre Burton Powell, presiding over the college of which he was the founding principal ... at the tender age of 20. This statue stands in the once grand main block of Presidency College in Chennai (or Madras as it was when the college was built). The garland is fetching; the statue is in good condition; the building is grimy and needs a lot of love and care.  Powell's story is striking. In 1840, having just completed a Maths degree at Cambridge, he headed to India to become the first head of this college. How anyone can imagine that this was a suitabke first job even for a clever and ambitious young man is beyond me. He was the principal of Presidency College for 22 years and then spent another 13 years as Director of Public Instruction for the Madras Presidency. The college is the oldest in south India and the oldest constituent of the University of Madras. Its purpose was to provide a British public school-type education to the children of India's elite. The inscription on the plinth of Powell's statue makes clear that the money for this tribute came from that local elite - the rajahs and the landowners - rather than from the colonial authorities.  An inscription on the back of the statue reveals the sculptor to be one of the leading London memorialists of the Victorian era, John Adams-Acton.  The college continues to be highly regarded. A board lists all the principals right to the current day. To go by the names, the first Indian principal didn't take up the post until the 1940s, the decade that saw India gain independence.  The current, imposing site of Presidency College was inaugurated after Powell's long years as principal - though he was still working in what was then Madras and I'm sure took some credit for the building. It opened in 1870. The drawing below appeared in the Illustrated London News in 1872.  Why 'Che-9' in the title of this blog? Well, this is my ninth spell teaching at the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai - though two of those years, during the pandemic, I taught remotely from London. I had the privilege to see Presidency College today as part of a heritage walk arranged by the excellent Madras Inherited. It was the starting point of a tour of some of the most remarkable buildings in the Indo-Saracenic style, British designed but incorporating elements of Indian and particularly Mughal architecture. Presidency College has a commanding location looking out on Marina Beach. And many Chennaiites will know it for its clock tower - a much later addition, but an attractive one.   By the way, the roll call of former pupils of Presidency College is impressive, ranging from India's onetime defence minister and the country's first high commissioner to London. V.K. Krishna Menon, to the current chief minister of Tamil Nadu, M.K. Stalin. So Mr Powell's pupils done well!  |
Andrew Whitehead's blogWelcome - read - comment - throw stones - pick up threads - and tell me how to do this better! Archives
July 2025
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed