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Che-9: a pilgrimage to Poes Garden

3/3/2025

For three decades, Jayalalithaa dominated Tamil politics. When she died in office in December 2016, she had been chief minister of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu for 15 of the previous 25 years. She was capricious but decisive and a very effective politician. Her regime perhaps wasn't without graft, but she had a reputation for getting things done.

Her home - not an official residence but her private home - was on Poes Garden, a broad, exceptionally quiet street in central Chennai just a stroll from where I am staying. It's the white house visible over the tall boundary wall on the left of the photo above. And that's Jayalalithaa on the right of the poster nearby.

Eight years after her death, Jayalalithaa's nameplate is still on display. After a legal battle, her niece moved into the property towards the end of 2021.

Jayalalithaa's photos are on show at the security booth outside the property - but what was once a power centre is now becalmed. Poes Garden is no longer the epicentre of Tamil Nadu.

Jayalalithaa's succession planning wasn't too great. On her death, after a protracted illness, her confidante Sasikala moved to fill the void. The nature of the relationship between Jayalalithaa and Sasikala is not clear and much of the lurid gossip is probably inaccurate. But Sasikala was certainly Jayalalithaa's closest friend, someone whose loyalty she relied on and who became increasingly politically powerful towards the end of Jayalalithaa's life.

But within Jayalalithaa's party, the AIADMK, Sasikala was not popular. The two main factions united to freeze her out. Sasikala was expelled from the party and then jailed for having 'disproportionate assets', so in essence for corrption.She was released in January 2021.

But the warring factions of the AIADMK - led by veteran politicians with strikingly similar sets of initials, OPS and EPS - have brought the party to a low ebb.

At the moment, it has no seats in the Lok Sabha, the elected chamber of India's Parliament, and just 62 of the 234 seats in the state Legislative Assembly. It may improve its standing in next year's state elections, but that's far from certain.

What's striking in the posters on display outside Jayalalithaa's old residence is that Sasikala is given almost equal billing to her old boss. That's Sasikala, palms together, in the top left of the image above; Jayalalithaa's on the top right.

It's said that Sasikala now lives in one of the imposing houses nearby and the posters suggest that she believes she still has some political sway. I'm not so sure about that.

Jayalalithaa, like so many prominent Tamil politicians, had her roots in the local film industry. And if there is to be an effective challenge to the current governing party, the DMK, it may well come from new figures in the movie industry who have in recent years turned to politics.

So the trend which Jayalalithaa so epitomised - using an on screen reputation as political capital - may well remain an important part of public life in Tamil Nadu.

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Che-9: remembering Queen Vic

2/3/2025

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When Queen Victoria died in January 1901, the Brits named pubs after her -like the one in the fictional Albert Square where so much of the action of Eastenders takes place.

In India, they went to town and built huge memorials. This is the one in Chennai (then Madras). It's in the grounds of the Government Museum in Egmore and is now a National Gallery.

This ornate sandstone structure is described as in the Indo-Saracenic style. But far from being a fusion of British and Indian styles, this is a straight lift from Mughal India.

It was designed by Henry Irwin, an Irish architect, and based on the Buland Darwaza or "the Door of Victory", built by Akbar more than 300 years earlier in the abandoned city of Fatehpur Sikri near Agra.

The Buland Darwaza, Fatehpur Sikri

India's most commanding memorial to old Queen Vic is tha vast, shimmering white, Victoria Memorial in Calcutta (Kolkata). The foundation stone was laid by the Prince of Wales, late King George V, on 4 January 1906, and it took fifteen years to complete.

The Victoria Memorial, Kolkata

Just under three weeks after laying that foundation stone in what was still then the Indian capital, George was in Madras to lay another foundation stone to another memorial to his grandma.

The Victoria Memorial Hall was built relatively speedily - in just three years. It was for a long time in poor repair, but it has been done up, with the sandstone made good, and is now simply spectacular.

But it's not Victoria's statue, or George's for that matter, that stands outside Chennai's Victoria Memorial Hall. It's Gandhi's!

You'll find old Queen Vic hidden away in the grounds of the University of Madras's Senate House, while King George presides over a car park in, of course, Georgetown.

I saw round Egmore on a heritage walk organised by the admirable Madras Inherited. Thank you!

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Che-9: Tipu Sultan and the mouth of the Tiger

1/3/2025

3 Comments

What an extraordinary design for a cannon. The firing end bears the likeness of a tiger - the cannonball comes out of its mouth. And the two smaller apertures, which I guess is where the gunpowder is placed, are of the same design.

But then, this was a cannon used by the renowned Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, in his battles against the East India Company and its allies at the close of the eighteenth century.

According to the sign - and this is in the grounds of the Government Museum in the Egmore district of Chennai so we must assume it's authoritative - the cannon was used by Tipu Sultan in his ill-fated defence of his capital, Seringapatam, in 1799. Tipu Sultan lost, indeed lost his life, and his capital was ransacked.

One of Tipu's looted treasures remains on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. It's a close-to-life-size model of a tiger mauling a European soldier. And if you turn the handle, the soldier's arms flap up and down and he makes a noise which one assumes is supposed to be his death agonies. Charming!

The location of Tipu's sturdy cannon is a touch unusual. It's in the grounds of the government museum, but is one of several old cannons placed around the Museum Theatre - a charming and well-used building dating from the 1890s.

There can't be many fortified theatres around the world!

The mouth of the cannon has been stuffed up, gobstopper-like, by a piece of wood - I suppose to stop squirrels and other critters making a home in it.

And poor Tipu, his ever so majestic cannon now rests on a Raj-made gun carriage, manufactured at Captain Broome's gun foundry at Cossipore outside Calcutta (Kolkata).

The museum's website has got brief entries on a couple of Tipu's smaller cannons on display here, but not about this majestic piece of military hardware.