 Victoria Public Hall is one of the grandest of Chennai's colonial-era buildings. It was constructed to mark Queen Victoria's golden jubilee in 1887 - by which time she had been 'Empress of India' for more than a decade. And more than £3 million pounds has just been spent on a high quality renovation.  The building was known as the Town Hall, though as far as I can make out it was never a centre of municipal governance. It had a large auditorium which was used for political gatherings, theatre and musical performances and also as a sports venue. It has reopened in the last few weeks, and members of the public are at the moment allowed inside, once duly registered and issued with a wristband, to see an exhibition about the building's history and restoration (though, alas, no photographs are allowed inside the building). .  The Justice Party - the precursor of the still powerful South Indian Dravidian movement demanding social justice and an end to the dominant position of the small brahmin minority - held its founding meeting at Victoria Public Hall in November 1916.   The building was designed by Robert Chisholm, regarded as the most important figure in Indo-Saracenic architecture. But the design style is comparatively restrained and distinctly European, including an eye-catching Italianate tower.  The site was once adjoining the People's Park, more than 100 acres of parkland complete with twelve lakes. There's next-to-nothing of that park left, beyond a bust commemorating the governor who came up with the idea of the now lost leisure ground.  Just next to Victoria Public Hall is the striking, all-white Ripon Building. This was completed in 1913 and is the headquarters of the Greater Chennai Corporation. The municipal authorities have spent a lot giving Victoria Public Hall a new lease of life. It's already being put to good use. When I was there today, a schools' elocution competition was being held in the auditorium. And the exhibition about the hall, including an ambitious audio montage of the city, was drawing a respectable number of curious Chennai-ites. 
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 The churchyard last night was awash with noise, energy, excitement. And flowers. Thousands and thousands of them - on canopies, with lights and crosses. On the street outsides, dozens of stalls had been set up selling food, flowers, kids' treats, clothes - just about everything you could imagine. This was the Catholic church of Our Lady of Guidance in Chennai, close to the sea front and the famed St Thomas Basilica. The church was getting ready to honour its patron saint, St Lazarus. And how!   The annual feast of St Lazarus here - and this is, the church says, the 444th (yes, that's 4-4-4) on this site - lasts for ten days. It ends today. And on the last Saturday evening, nine religious statues are paraded around the local streets in what's called a car procession. That sounds very humdrum. In fact it's a riot of noise, colour and exuberance and goes on for several hours. I arrived at the church just as the frenetic final preparations were being made, with music blaring from the speakers set up all around the church compound. Lazarus, of course, was the man who Jesus raised from the dead (there's also another Lazarus mentioned in the New Testament, a beggar, and the two are often confused). St Lazarus is often associated with a Maltese-style cross, and that was evident in the decoration of the floats.  This annual event is clearly a big moment for the local Christian community. India's syncretism is evident - styles of veneration and festival common across different religions. And as far as I could see, there were lots of non-Christians running stalls, gathering around and want to be part of the 'tamasha'.  Rosalind had come with two other generations of her family to attend the mass that precedes the procession. She was happy to be photographed, and delighted that her (I presume) grandson is, like me, an Andrew.  And a splendidly uniformed band came along to add a high volume, high voltage charge to the evening. 
This church was established by the Portuguese by the 1570s. It was rebuilt in the following century, and there's still a plaque in Portuguese which seems to be from that time. The current building dates from the 1920s. For centuries, this was the church of St Lazarus. In the 1950s it was renamed as Our Lady of Guidance. But Lazarus remains the patron saint and the church stands on Lazarus Church Road.
If anyone wants to have a go at deciphering and translating the Portuguese inscription, here's a close-up. Good luck!  A lot of the action was on the street outside. A big turn-out was expected and the stall-keepers were ready. I was particularly taken by the woman with an outsize doll.  And everywhere the sense of anticipation was palpable. Long live Lazarus!      I'm back in Chennai - the city in south India of which I've grown so fond and familiar. And I've popped round again to a wonderful old church close to where I stay, the Portuguese-built Luz church (the church of Our Lady of Light) which dates from 1516. And I think I've managed to solve a longstanding mystery ... about this grave above.  As you can see, the plaque by this exceptionally old grave states that it's not clear who is buried there. Nor indeed what language the inscription is in. If you read on, I'll be able to fill in both historical blanks.
The Luz church is bewitchingly beautiful. But I hadn't noticed before the small plot of graves by one side of the church, of which the 1637 burial is one. The grave has a weathered emblem or coat of arms at the top, and then an inscription. The inscription has been damaged but it's still clearly legible.  What language is this in? Well, that's not too hard. It's Portuguese. It is antiquated, seventeenth century colonial Portuguese, and there are some irregularities in grammar, spelling and abbreviations. And it has been inscribed without all that many obvious breaks between words, with some words divided between one line and the next. So, the bigger question. What does it say? Well, I've resorted to help from ChatGPT - indeed I've never before relied on AI so much - but we've got there. 'Esta sepultura he de Dona Maria Rabela molher que foi de Migel de Souza Pimintela onde esta sepultados e u fil ho Vasco Fernao des Pimintel que faleceo em 31 de marco de 1637 annos e sua neta Dona Maria de Castro que falecio na mes Maria fio de Marco' Chat GPT offeres this fairly literal translation of the inscription: This grave is of Dona Maria Rabela, wife who was of Miguel de Souza Pimentel, where she is buried, and a son of hers, Vasco Fernão de Pimentel, who died on the 31st of March of the year 1637. And her granddaughter, Dona Maria de Castro, who died in the month [of March], Maria, child of Marco. Or in more polished prose: This is the grave of Dona Maria Rabela, wife of Miguel de Souza Pimentel. Here she is buried as is her son, Vasco Fernão de Pimentel, who died on 31 March 1637. Also her granddaughter, Dona Maria de Castro, who died in the same month, Maria, child of Marco. LATER: This post has stirred up a lot of interest. I hope it encourages some of those who read it to visit the Luz church in Mylapore. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am not the first to decipher the inscription on this grave. I have been sent this extract from a compendium of such inscriptions. Thank you! It's from Julian James Cotton, List of Inscriptions on Tombs or Monuments in Madras Possessing Historical or Archaeological Interest. This version is missing the last few words, and some of the personal names have been amended. I wonder if the church might like to reflect all this information in a new plaque alongside the gravestone? This is an important piece of its history   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.  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.
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