 The land adjoining the college where I teach in Chennai was waterlogged when I arrived. It's only just dried out. But that temporary wetland was a magnet to birds who love ponds. Two open-billed storks were regular visitors; and lots of great egrets; I saw a couple of cobalt blue glimpses of a kingfisher; and the water attracted plenty of pond heron, also known as paddy heron. One of these, let's call him/her Paddy, made themsleves very much at home on the lawns of the college. These are watered at least twice a day, and Paddy was very happy to gorge on the worms that surfaced to take advantage of the moisture.
The pond heron is a non-descript brown, shorter than the herons you see in the UK - but its wings are broad and largely white, which makes them quite striking in flight. They are shy, but Paddy became sufficiently comfortable to come strolling round the outdoor seating at the college, and drinking from the tank. I'll miss you, Paddy!  But the storks were the big thrill - large elegant and intensely shy. I'd never seen storks around the college before. And I suspect they have flown now the waterlogging has evaporated. In this video you can see storks, great egrets and paddy heron - from a distance, but what a lovely vista from just over the college boundary wall. But let's leave you with Paddy on a tour of his estate.
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 This is the building universally known in Chennai as the MH - the Maternity Hospital. And it's always, always busy, with about sixty births a day.. That's more than 20,000 babies a year. The formal title of this institution is the Government Hospital for Women and Children, Egmore. It dates back to the 1840s and was the first allopathic maternity hospital in India, indeed it's been described as the oldest such hospital in Asia. The hospital moved to its present site in the 1880s and has been much expanded as the demand for its services has increased. The first woman head of the hospital was appointed as recently as 1984.  I was introduced to the hospital while on a heritage walk organised by Madras Inherited along Pantheon Road in Egmore. The hospital houses a small museum including an array of old, and rather sinster, obstetric devices, and jars of 'specimens' of malformed foetuses. (So you can see why I gave that a miss!) The hospital was a pioneer in training midwives, with an exhaustive course ending in a formal qualification in practical midwifery recognised by the Central Midwives' Board in London. And the training really was 'hands on'. As you can see, Jane Bullock who qualified in 1909 (and thanks to Ashmitha Athreya at Madras Inherited for sharing the certificate below) conducted forty births, assisted at six more, and was present at another sixty during her six months training. It would be reasonable to assume that perhaps as many as a thousand people alive today are descended from men and women whom Jane Bullock saw being born.   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.   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!   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.  I came across the cannon as part of a heritage walk along Pantheon Road in Egmore orgnaised by the always excellent Madras Inherited. Thank you!   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!   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.    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!  |
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