  This is the second oldest plane tree in London - and one of the city's ten great trees (not quite sure who selected them but there you go). It's a 230-year-old tree in Brunswick Square Gardens in Bloomsbury - a square with quite a few splendid arboreal specimens.   It's difficult to get a clear photo of the Brunswick Plane. but here it is from a couple of different vantage points.   iAnd a bonus from Brunswck Square Gardens - the copper beech! 
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 Well, this is a gem! I came across this issue of a leading women's suffrage paper in a Bloomsbury bookshop - so, yes, it wasn't cheap. But it is in marvellous condition and has this fantastic cartoon on its front page comparing the Liberal government's willingness to talk to hardline Ulster Unionists with its rejection of compromise with suffrage campaigners. Votes for Women was very much suffragist (so, moderate and constitutional) rather than suffragette in tone. It was established in 1907 by Emmeline and Frederick Pethick Lawrence and was the oficial publication of the Women's Social and Political Union - the main suffrage organisation - until 1912. The paper continued until 1918, the year that votes for some women in Parliamentary elections was conceded. Among the reports of activities included are those of the more militant suffragettes in the East End of London led by Sylvia Pankhurst.  The paper includes a really interesting directory of suffrage organisations ... and a letter co-authored by the then 20-year old Harold Laski, later one of Britain's leading political scientists. It's these incidental details which make old political newspapers so enthralling.
 This was Limehouse a few days ago. At high tide, the Thames was lapping onto riverside terraces. Much higher and the Flood Barrier a few miles up the river would surely have been activated.
The photo was taken from Narrow Street, The Thames riverside path was traversible, but the swell from a river taxi might well have spilled over onto it. Not often you see such a high high tide! 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!   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.  |
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