|
This is one of a family of open-billed storks which have brought me such joy over the past few weeks in Chennai. They have been living on a part-flooded patch of wilderness alongside the college where I have been teaching.  When I arrived here five weeks ago, there was a family of four storks - I assume two juveniles and their parents. The adults have a gap between the upper and lower mandibles which helps then to get a grip on the snails on which they feed. Of late, there have just been one or two storks. And I suspect they all may now have flown on. But what a privilege to be able to see them so close up. I do hope that they (and I) come back next year! 
6 Comments
 Although there are direct flights between Chennai and Colombo, and Sri Lanka is a lot closer than the Hindi-belt of north India, the Sinhalese Buddhist community in Chennai is small. Perhaps just a few hundred people. That may result from the sympathy many Indian Tamils felt for Sri Lanka's Tamils during the island's long civil war. But there is in Chennai a rather wonderful Sinhalese Buddhist temple.
The temple is in the Chennai headquarters of the Sri Lanka Maha Bodhi Society in Egmore. As well as the temple, the building offers lodgings to Sri Lankan Buddhists who come on pilgrimages to India.  The main part of the temple is well-kept and serene - and when I visited on a weekend morning, I was the only person there.  I was delighted to come across this haven of peace, and symbol of friendship between neighbours, amid the clamour of Egmore. And thanks to my students who told me about this temple.   It's quite an achievement for a small private library to survive for three-quarters of a century. I think Gandhi would be proud of the library that bears his name in the Chennai district of Saidapet.  The founder of the library, K. Mahalingam, heard Gandhi speak at a rally in what was then Madras in 1946, the year before India gained independence. He resolved to do something as a form of social service just as Gandhi advocated. In 1952, he opened this library, the Mahatma Gandhi Nool Nilayam. Initially, all the books were stored in a wooden trunk. Now they take up two flooors. The subsription needed to be a member is very modest. And as a matter of principle, all the books are in Tamil (a language which Gandhi couldn't read, though he had a basic conversational knowledge through interaction with Tamil labourers in South Africa).  K. Mahalingam - photograph courtesy of 'The Hindu' K. Mahalingam died in 2025. at the age of 96. The library is now run by his son, M. Nithyanandham. It is open for three hours in the morning and then three hours in the evening every day of the week except Monday.  The library is clean and well organised and its holdings are increasing - it relies largely on donations for its holdings of books and journals. The library recently expanded on to a second floor, and is estimated to hold up to 25,000 titles.  When so many public libraries are struggling - and when so many fear that interest in reading is collapsing - it's heartening to see a private library doing so well.   Up early this morning for a heritage walk around Saidapet, once a small town on the banks of the Adyar river and now absorbed into the big city of Chennai. Saidapet became known as a centre of handloom weaving, a craft that has more-or-less disappeared from the area. It's now noted above all for its Shiva temple, Karaneeswarar temple. Just by chance, we were visiting on Shivratri, a festival dedicated to the Hindu Deity, Shiva.
The temple is reputed to be 400 years old, though the seven-tiered Gopuram, the ornate entrance tower which is such a hallmark of South Indian temples, dates from the 1930s.    Attached to the temple is a sizable tank - which looks serene from a distance and is home to some astonishingly big fish, but at close quarters is a little murky. 
The temple has all the usual accompaniments - riotously colourful flower stalls, blaring music and lots of alms seekers. Quite a sensory overload!  The nearby streets were just getting into gear as we walked by. One of the delights of these heritage walks is seeing parts of the city which otherwise wouldn't be easily accessible to outsiders.    The walk was organised by the always excellent Madras Inherited, who combine deep historical and architectural knowledge with a commitment to heritage and conservation. Their walks are also fun. Breakfast was part of this morning's outing - at Mari hotel which devised the dish which celebrates the locality, Saidapet Vadacurry (invented as a way of reusing fried food that otherwise would have to be thrown out, and very delicious). We even heard the 'filmi' song which pays tribute to this dish (or at least mentions it). I'm sure you wouldn't want to miss out ... And no, the hotel mess wasn't quite as depicted in the film!! Our group photo was taken outside the Gandhi Library in Saidapet, which will be the subject of my next Chennai blog. Thanks Madras Inherited!   So here's a mystery! Why is a sizable house in one of the smartest districts of downtown Chennai stuffed full of cattle fodder? This is not customary - certainly not close to Poes Garden where one of Tamil Nadu's most renowned chief ministers had her home. As mysteries go, this may not be one for Sherlock Holmes. But there is something strange afoot ...  It is an arresting sight - though you have to peek through the railings to get a good view of the hay. What I can also deduce is that (at least) two cows have taken up residence in the garden. This also, I assure you, is not at all the custom in the poshest parts of Chennai. And yes, I suspect the cattle fodder and the cows are connected! But if you know more, do share!
 This is the stunning Dutch cemetery at Pulicat in the north-east corner of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It's just about all that's left of Fort Geldria, the first Dutch settlement in India and the principal Dutch fort. It's also all that remains of a much more sinister enterprise. Fort Geldria was for several decades a centre of the Dutch slave trade on India's Coromandel coast.
Pulicat is now a fishing village on the south side of the vast Pulicat lake. In the medieval period it was a substantial coastal trading centre, particularly during the powerful and prosperous Tamil Chola dynasty. Middle Eastern merchants were present here from the seventh century. The Portuguese arrived at the start of the sixteenth century. In about 1613, the Dutch started work on Fort Geldria and later pushed the Portuguese out of this corner of South India. For the best part of a century, this was the centre of governance of the Dutch in India. The Dutch East India Company, the VOC, was a powerful commercial force in Asia through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Dutch bought textiles produced in South India to trade with the Moluccas for their spices. Under the Dutch, Pulicat also became a centre of the slave trade in India. Labourers were forced onto ships and sent to work on plantations in what is now Indonesia. So the wealth and confidence so clearly expressed in these graves and monuments rested on the pernicious trade in human beings. Research has indicated that about 30,000 Indian slaves were transported by the Dutch to Java. The factors who captured and sold the slaves were in Chennai (then Madras) and that's where they were shipped from - but Fort Geldria was the nerve centre of this trade, and the location of the money and power which underpinned this grotesque form of commerce. 
The Dutch cemetery is now under the care of the Archaeological Survey of India. The gates have macabre 'memento mori' - visual reminders that we all will die which were common to both Catholic and Protestant religious iconography at the time. There is nothing at all to indicate any connection with slavery. Indeed the slave trade on the Coromandel coast is one of the darker recesses of the Netherlands' - and India's - past, not erased but not much talked about.  Most of the graves are from the seventeenth century with inscriptions in Dutch. The adjoining fort was demolished by the British about 200 years ago and what remnants there are are shielded under dense scrub. There are some indications of the fortified settlement - notably the well, a deep well, which you can see above. It's unusual, I would imagine, to have a well in a graveyard. It doesn't increase your appetite for the water to think that it may have drained through human remains. But this must have been a much prized source of drinking water, which was in short supply here (Pulicat lake, which is really a lagoon, is brackish and so no good for drinking or irrigation).  Some of the graves have fascinating emblems and designs. This one shows what I imagine was a fort, or perhaps a church, and could be a visual representation of Fort Geldria itself.
The inscription on the main obelisk suggest that this memorial is later than most of the surrounding graves. It's the burial place of Jacob Eilbracht, a Dutch colonial adminstrator with a tarnished reputation who died here in 1804. He was sufficiently important to have his portrait painted as a miniature.  The cemetery is broadly in good condition. The grounds are well kept and not at all overgrown, That's probably thanks to the local goats which are sufficiently agile to leap over the wall into the burial ground even when the gates are closed. They seem to have taken it upon themselves to keep the grass cropped.  Some of the bigger memorials also serve as shade for those wanting an afternoon nap.
There are a small number of much later British graves in the cemetery, again in generally good condition. Some of the obelisks and mausoleums and a few of the graves could do with restoration before they suffer further erosion. I went to Pulicat completely unaware of this magnificent cemetery and I was pleased to have the chance to look around - and disturbed then to discover when researching this blog the chilling link with the slave trade,   It's fascinating to see a watercolour sketch all the way from the germ of an idea to completion. My two companions on a trip to Pulicat Lake north of Madras at the weekend, Yusuf and Hari, are both accomplished artists. And Hari took the opportunity of our brief time encamped on a spit of sand sticking out into the Bay of Bengal to capture the scene in his sketch book. He went over to where our boat and another were beached, set down the outline of the composition, then came back to our spot in the shade to work with his watercolours. From start to finish took no more than an hour.  As he was working on the sketch, several other visitors to the sandbank came across to look over his shoulder. One returned to ask to borrow the entire sketchbook for a few minutes to look through with his friends. I really like Hari's art - there's more on his website, and he also organises sketching retreats, This piece captures the isolation of the spot where we disembarked on the edge of this huge brackish lagoon. There's a charm and freshness to it, and its so well-observed and wonderfully executed.   Pulicat is a large brackish lake - or more accurately a lagoon - a little less than two hours' drive north of Chennai. It doesn't get a huge number of visitors, even though it's a delight and is a bird reserve of international importance. I went there on Sunday with my friends, Yusuf and Hari. We set off from Chennai well before first light and were at Pulicat by eight. Then Ilayaraja, a local fisherman who at weekends guides and helps visitors, took us on his boat to a spit of sand looking out on the Bay of Bengal. So, yes, three men in a boat - not forgetting our skipper!
Fishing here is in the traditional style and on a small scale. Some of the bigger boats round here go out into the sea for a few days. Most simply spend a few hours in the morning securing a catch in the lake or in the sea immediately beyond. The lake is, in parts, incredibly shallow - just inches deep. And our skipper at one point simply stopped the boat and invited us to wade in the water. It was quite slippy, but it you had a mind to, you could have walked for a hundred yards or more without getting your knees wet.
And the birds? Well, we didn't get a clear view of the flamingos which at certain times of year congregate in their thousands in the northern part of Pulicat lake. But we did see plenty of storks - I think I spotted a pelican flying overheard - terns dipped and swooped on the water in search of food - there were egret and heron, of course - and bigger flocks of cormorant than I have ever seen before.
And in the paddy fields nearby you could see black-headed ibis, with pied kingfishers and drongos perched on the wires above. Our skipper, Ilayaraja, was a friendly and resourceful guy. He guided us through the shallows for about twenty minutes until we were almost at the open sea. He had poles and tarpaulin and set up a rudimentary shelter from the sun on the sandbank where we alighted. He brought dosas, idlis and sambar for our breakfast. And excellent fish and prawn dishes for our lunch. So we tasted some of the local catch. And we had the opportunity to thank Ilayaraja's wife for her excellent cooking. What a great day out! Many thanks to my companions Yusuf and Hari for including me in their adventure.   Radhika has been taking classes in English at the British Council Library in Chennai. But not for much longer. The library is closing at the end of next week. The class rooms will close too. The library will operate digitally. It may in time find new premises for classes but that seems far from certain. Radhika says she is distressed and disappointed that the library is being shut. She won't be signing up to the online classes. She says they won't be popular with Indian students.  The book lending side of the British Council Library is already closed. You can't borrow books any more or consult the library's holdings. Any volumes out on loan have to be returned by February 15th.  The library has been selling off many of its books - with such success that the sale has been halted within a matter of days. Whether that's because it found a bulk buyer, or because the books were being sold for a pittance, or because so many library users wanted a memento, isn't clear.  Tanisha is a customer services manager at the library. She says there are about 5,000 registered users and emphasises that digital services will be maintained. But the really pleasant British Council buildings and garden just off Mount Road/Anna Salai in the heart of the city, and the round-the-clock cafe with outdoor seating, will go.   The British Council Library has been lending books, encouraging excellence in English, promoting Britain and increasing awareness of higher education opportunities in the UK for many decades. There will now be only two physical British Council libraries in India - in Delhi and Kolkata. Money will of course be saved, but at what cost?   Mr Baskaran is the proud owner of Baskar Book House in Moore Market, an enclave of new and second-hand bookstalls. There are twenty to thirty stalls, some selling new or nearly-new novels (perhaps pirated, but who can say?), others specialising in academic 'crammer' guides, Intellectual Property Law, Tenth Edition - that sort of thing.. When I arrived, Baskaran was wielding a jharoo, a broom, getting the shop ready for the day. It was already past eleven in the morning, and there wasn't a lot of sign of custom.  Moore Market is something of an anomaly. There isn't much demand for cheap books these days. And the stalls seemed to be just-ticking-over if that.    Moore Market has a marvellous location. It's just by Chennai Central rail station and was built in sumptuous Indo-Saracenic style in 1900 as one of the principal markets of the city. But in 1985, the old building burnt down. And what currently constitutes Moore Market is a slightly tatty building with a compound round it. A pity. With this location, it could be something much more enticing.
Also at Moore Market are ten or so antique shops - though I am using the term loosely. They have a remarkable range of stuff for sale, almost all of it tat. (Not that there's anything wrong with tat, of course!)
A few of the stalls could perhaps be described as bric-a-brac shops. Others are junk shops with hardly any item in tact, and of course nothing bearing a price.  But if you like a good rummage to try and locate a gem - and as long as you won't be too disappointed if you fail utterly in that task - then Moore Market is for you.  |
Andrew Whitehead's blogWelcome - read - comment - throw stones - pick up threads - and tell me how to do this better! Archives
April 2026
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed