According to legend, old elephants instinctively move to their final resting place when they recognize their time on the planet is running out. At one level it seems to be plausible. After all, if eons of creation have implanted the urge to run upstream to spawn (and then die) - as in salmon - or to come to the same beaches year after year - as in the turtle arribada - the reverse may be true in the case of elephants? Certainly writers like H.Rider Haggard (King Solomon's Mines) and Edgar Rice Burroughs (the Tarzan series) and the Lion King movies (and musical) helped in building up the legend that the gentle giants make their way to a common place to - curl up and die.Cut to the city life. Where do buses go when their useful life is over? Sure, there must be some wrecking yards somewhere that cut, rip, and tear apart the pipes, cast iron and sheet metal that make up the elephants of the city. The images that come to mind of such yards are all from Hollywood movies. I cannot remember having seen a similar yard anywhere in Chennai. But once the scale is recalibrated, it seems likely they are all over the place. More likely that the scrap dealers go to the condemned buses and reduce them to pieces of metal with just a couple of oxy-acetylene torches, than have all the outdated buses come to one place. There is probably one place, somewhere near Porur, where I've seen a couple of bus 'skeletons' standing around. Seeing this going in the same general direction, I guess that's where the bus graveyard is. Does anyone know for sure?
It is tempting to think that with Rainwater Harvesting having been mandated for both new constructions as well as for existing buildings, the problem of Chennai's water supply has been adequately addressed. The move has surely helped in improving the water table (apart from adding one more strand to the red tape of seeking an approval to construct a building), but there are still large areas of the city that have to cope with limited availability of clean water for cooking and drinking. It is estimated that Chennai and its suburbs currently need about 1.5 billion litres of water a day, a figure that is expected to touch 2 billion in the next 12 years. The gap between demand and locally produced supply is almost 50%; water from the Krishna river, in Andhra Pradesh has been of immense help in narrowing that gap down. And thanks to the good monsoons of the past few years, the gap is even lesser, now.At the turn of the millenium however, Chennai was completely dry. The Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (Metrowater) was simply unable to pump water out of the ground. Various ideas were put forward, including proposals for a giant de-salination plant feeding on the Bay of Bengal. Through all that hot air that circulated, the only means of getting water across to the city was the fleet of tankers that were owned or leased by the Metrowater. Traversing the city from their filling points at various locations in the 16 Metrowater zones, the tankers tried to meet the water needs of the city dwellers; but the long lines of colourful plastic pots, queueing up for the tanker to arrive, just did not seem to be shortening. Today, some of those proposals are being, or have been, implemented. The desalination plants are being built, even if on a less grandiose scale than was originally proposed. But until those plans are implemented, tankers (like the one in the picture, coming out of the Mylapore - Nandanam distribution point) will remain the lifeline to a majority of Chennai's citizens!
Given the general chaos around the place where bridges are being built, the 'Go Slow' sign is a bit superfluous, one would think.Unless of course, it is a comment on the nature of the bridge work that's in progress...Take your pick!
Founded in 1928, The Music Academy was conceptualized as an institution to promote the study, practice and performance of Carnatic music around the area of its birth. The idea arose at the All India Music Conference of 1927. Now the All India Music Conference itself began as a sideshow of the Indian National Congress' annual sessions, so when it was Chennai's turn to host the Congress session, S.Sathyamurthy wanted the Music Conference also to be conducted with it. At the end of the Conference, one of the resolutions that were passed was a request to "organise a Music Academy in Madras for the purpose of improving and encouraging Indian Music and to consider the various problems concerning the theory and practice of Indian Music". Probably this was the influence of a paper presented by Mr. Ramachandran, titled "The Need for an Academy of Music". Formally, The Music Academy came into being on August 18, 1928, when it was inaugurated by CP Ramaswamy Aiyer. Dr. U.Rama Rau was its Founder-President and so, the office of the Academy began functioning out of his dispensary at 323, Thambu Chetty Street. Mandated to hold annual music conferences and other music conferences whenever convenient, the newly formed academy always struggled to find suitable venues. The first few conferences (annual or otherwise) were held at various parts of Chennai: behind the Ripon Building; at 'Funnels', on General Patters Road, at Woodlands, Royapettah, at the University's Senate House and even at Dr. Rama Rau's dispensary. Tired of such itinerant conferences, TT Krishnamachari and Kasturi Srinivasan worked hard to come up with this permanent complex for the Academy, and are remembered through the names of the auditoria in the complex. Somewhat surprisingly, it took seven years fom the time the foundation stone was laid by Jawaharlal Nehru to the day when Sri Jayachamaraja Wodeyar declared it open. Thankfully, the time taken seems to have been worth it!
The theme seems to be 'Let them have any colour, as long as it is not black'. Going on the East Coast Road recently, I happened to see several stacks of these kind of flowerpots along the road. Great idea to match these indoor planters with the colours of flowers that grow in them!
In 1938, Victor Gruen fled his native Austria to escape from the Nazi invasion. Though trained as an architect, he couldn't find enough work in his adopted country, the USA, and found himself working on store designs, which was infra dig for architects in those days. As time went by, he found himself specialising in designing larger and larger shopping spaces. Between 1954 and 1956, he designed two large malls which went on to become the de-facto templates for shopping malls the world over. However, Gruen was apalled by the Frankenstein's monster he had unleashed - only the store part of his design was implemented and the rest of his vision, of the mall as a mini-community, with apartments, medical facilities, lake, etc. was chopped off in pursuit of profits from shopping centres. Having conceptualized the mall as a replication of the shopping district of his native Vienna, he was apalled to find that those districts had given way to shopping malls. He declared himself as being in "severe emotional shock" at the sprawl around his shopping centres and in 1978, two years before his death, said that he refused to pay "alimony for those bastard developments". Of course, we believe that we learn from our mistakes; maybe we learn from the smaller ones - the malls of today are more airy, spacious-looking (and safer?) than the shopping centres of old where shops were crammed in all shapes and sizes, with merchandise spilling out on to walking area too. The larger mistakes? They're probably too large to be seen with the naked eye. The Chennai City Centre seems to be impressive at first look, with its mish-mash of architectural styles and flourishes. I try to avoid going to it though, because the overpowering feeling is of claustrophobia. That's not something hundreds of other people feel, obviously. The Chennai City Centre should be thankful for that!
Of course it should be a natural impulse for first time visitors to desire to see more of Chennai. I however have a gut feeling that many of the visitors who come to the city are either business visitors or those who are passing through Chennai towards Pondicherry or parts of Kerala rather than having an intent of staying in the city itself. And that includes a huge number of domestic tourists who regard Chennai as nothing more than a point to change trains. The rank of Chennai in the list of tourist destinations in India is heightened only because it is a point of entry to a range of locations catering to a variety of tourists. In a dangerous portent of a self-fulfilling prophecy foretold, the state government has excluded Chennai from the list of cities where tourist facilities are proposed to be augmented. Mr. V. Sriram, the writer, has detailed several reasons why Chennai's wonderful tourist attractions are overlooked - and in doing so, has given enough ideas for entrepreneurs to come up with business plans centered on Chennai tourism. One of the points has to do with lack of information at the airport. It may not be what Mr. Sriram had meant, but for a long while, there was not even sign indicating the direction to take towards the city, at the airport. The sign shown here came up only a few years ago. Behind the sign is the new flyover, allowing vehicles coming into Chennai from the southern districts to go over the traffic that turns into the airport. That vehicle to the left of the sign stood on the flyover for quite a long while, allowing its passenger the chance to see several aircraft taking off and landing - now, that seems to be a new kind of sight-seeing tourist demographic that could be tapped into!
It is a proud - and often debated - contention that south India is the hub of engineering education in the country. While the debate around the quality of engineering research or the funding for higher engineering degrees has some legs to stagger around on, any set of data on the number of 4-year engineering degree graduates will put 'quantity' out of the debate. For sheer numbers, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are way ahead; Maharashtra, in 3rd place, graduates less than 60% the number that Tamil Nadu does. Between them, the four southern states account for about 300,000 of the country's 550,000+ engineering graduates.
Tamil Nadu was one of the early states to open up engineering education to the private sector, through self-financing colleges; over the past 25 years, the early colleges have moved up to becoming well respected institutions. The newer ones come in knowing fully well that they have to hit the ground running with decent infrastructure, faculty and support services if they hope to succeed. That's a far cry from the early self-financing colleges, some of which had palm-leaf roofed classrooms and no laboratory infrastructure to speak of. The first batches of students were grateful that they had the opportunity to work towards an engineering degree, that they thought nothing of clambering on to the overloaded public transport system to reach their colleges on the outskirts of Madras.
Today, it is a competitive disadvantage for a college not to have its own transport service for students and faculty - the early morning roads see the buses of several colleges zooming away from the city, full of students catching up on their sleep. Luxury for the students? More an indictment of a public transport infrastructure that hasn't kept up with the changing needs! 
I'll give you one guess as to what kind of a shop this could be. Noticed this shop a few days ago, but when I passed by it today, the fallen buntings of some political party showed up a nice contrast of colour with the blue and pink...
In Tamil Nadu especially, Deepavali is not The festival of lights. The reason for Deepavali is completely different, indeed an avatar behind, from the north Indian Deepavali tradition. It takes another month, almost for the south Indian festival of lights to turn up as it does in the month following Aipasi, which is when Deepavali is celebrated. Since the month is Karthigai, the festival of lights, which falls on the full moon day in the month - which is also the day when the star Karthigai is on the ascendent - is simply called Karthigai Deepam (the lamp of Karthigai). Legend has it that Shiva wanted to put an end to a quarrel between Brahma and Vishnu over who was the more powerful of the two. Distracted by a huge pillar of fire, the two of them travel to opposite ends of the pillar - and realize that this is a pillar of fire without beginning or end, the whole of eternity, the Lord Shiva himself. The lamps lit today symbolize that form of Shiva, which is manifest at Thiruvannamalai, as Arunachalam. This is legend after all. So it needs a counter legend, too; it was on the full moon day of Karthigai that six babies were found floating on the lotus leaves at Saravana Poigai. Parvathi, who found them, joined them together to create her child, Karthikeyan. Whichever be the legend you choose, the small charad / agal vilakku (earthern lamp) in front of the houses remind you that this is the festival of lights, after all!
It is one of the shopping hotspots of Chennai, but how it came by its name remains a mystery. The pavements along Sir Theyagaraya Road are chock-full of anything that you would ever need in life. Someone said of Harrods; "If you ask them for an elephant meat sandwich, they will ask you what kind of bread you would like". The traders of Pondy Bazaar would go further than that, I reckon and offer you the entire range of elephants, from African to the woolly mammoth. Of course, if you were showing off, you'd probably end up with the meat of some local mammal, which may not be the case at Harrods.Who was the 'Pondy' of the bazaar? Was it a contraction of 'Pandian' the dynasty that ruled over Madurai of yore? Was it because the first traders came from Pondicherry - one version has it that a certain Devaraja Mudaliar from Pondicherry built the first shops on Sir Theyagaraya Road and called it Pondy Bazaar? Or, as a school mate averred, long years ago, is it a corruption of the lingerie that's one of the fastest selling items on the pavement? Some years ago, the state government declared that the original name of this market - 'bazaar' in Hindi, 'angadi' in Tamil - is 'Soundarapandianar Angadi'. Conveniently, they did not mention what Soundarapandianar's claim to fame is, so I'm guessing he must be some party big shot's ancestor!
These lions guarding the northern end of Thiru Vi Ka bridge were probably intended to direct people to the new bridge when it was opened in 1973. They have their brothers on the southern end, on the opposite side. That the lions are placed only on the side that traffic enters the bridge is why I think of them as bridge markers, drawing people into the new spur of road, which is what the bridge was 35 years ago.Today it is the Adyar Bridge; the older Elphinstone bridge just to its east is broken in the middle and cannot even think of holding traffic any longer. It had served the city well, in the 133 years of its life. In 1846, just six years after construction was complete, one of the pillars of the Elphinstone Bridge was swept away by monsoon-fed current of the Adyar. The bridge continued its function without any readily apparent shortcomings. We wish that the 'new' Thiru Vi Ka bridge remains for at least half the time that its predecessor did!
It has been around for quite a long while, now. I am sure it pre-dates many of the other cinema halls in the area broadly known as Kodambakkam - an area that includes within its definition almost all the famous movie studios of yesteryear, all those bits and pieces of the industry that grew to be called Kollywood. The halls that came after it are gone or, at best, are in the same state of poor repair that Liberty Theatre is in today.But in its time it was the lord of the west side of Kodambakkam bridge. It was the landmark; businesses nearby have used its name to further their interests, be it Liberty Park (the hotel) or Liberty Xerox, a photocopy shop tucked away in some recess near the theatre. I know of at least two movies, Jaganmohini and Oru Thalai Raagam that played here for over 25 weeks, in those days when 25 weeks meant 3 (sometimes 4) shows of the same movie, every day, for 25 weeks. Such glory days are well behind it, now. It visibly looks like it can't make the effort to screen a new movie and ekes out an existence by re-running all those hits of decades ago.I read somewhere once, long ago, that Liberty is the only cinema hall (of good standing) in Asia that projects pictures on to a white wall, rather than onto a screen - don't know how true that was, but it looks like even that wall may be completely sullied, now!
This man came into prominence in early 1984, when the Cholan Roadways Corporation was split and one of the splinter groups was named 'Dheeran Chinnamalai Transport Corporation'. For a while back then, I believed that he had something to do with the Little Mount area in Chennai, because 'Little Mount' is what Chinnamalai translates as. And then, when this statue of the man was installed opposite the Guindy railway station a few years ago, I had reason to recollect that connection with Little Mount, because that's not far away from the Guindy station. Did he actually have something to do with the locality, after all?Apparently, that's not the case. Born as Theerthagiri, he came by his more popular name because of his bravery (Dheeram) in opposing Hyder Ali's tax collectors. The people of the Kongu region (where he was a local chieftain) rallied behind him, declaring that the King of Mysore now had to cross not only the geographical formations of Sivan Malai and Chenni Malai, but also the human Chinna Malai to get to them. It is a different matter that Theerthagiri went on to side with Hyder's son, Tipu Sultan, to fight against the British. For six years after Tipu's death, Theerthagiri continued to undermine British supremacy in the Kongu region, until he was caught and finally hanged in 1805; like that of a few other local chieftains of the time, his story was also used as a rallying cry against British rule.The positioning of the statue seems strangely appropriate. Not just because it is close to Little Mount, but also because it is right behind a very high-traffic bus stop - recalling the route of his rise to recognition amidst the '80s generation!
Airports all across the country have been on high alert. Chennai's airport has been no exception. A couple of days ago, the police had begun to check vehicles entering the airport area before allowing them to go near the terminal buildings. Now they have restricted vehicles from even coming close to the buildings; passengers are required to get off around 100m away from the buildings and walk into them. There is an advisory that passengers have to get to the airport at least 3 hours ahead of their flight time. That's a big bummer, especially if you're travelling to Bangalore; another two-and-a-half hours on the road and you'll reach Bangalore... that sounds like an easier way to travel!The last really serious incident at the Chennai airport was 24 years ago, when a bomb planted by Tamil extremists went off at the airport on the night of August 2-3, 1984, killing 30 people. At that time, it was described as 'an accident'; the nascent Tamil militancy in Sri Lanka was looking for ways to harm and this bomb was to be ferried from Madras to Colombo on an Air Lanka flight and was timed to explode at the Colombo airport. One version has it that the flight was delayed and so the bomb went off at Madras; another version has it that the luggage was misrouted to a London flight and then was not allowed on the plane because they couldn't match it to any passenger, so it remained in Madras airport. Took this photograph because I spotted the tail of an Air India jet. The police checkpoint was just after this point where we turned left. Looking at the photograph later, I was thinking about how trusting we are - even when we are carrying out all the security checks, we trust that anyone trying stunts would come in, take the left turn and move along the normal road. It certainly wouldn't be too much trouble for a madman to drive straight on from this point and maybe smash through that wall itself!
Despite all the doom and gloom around, there are still many reasons to celebrate. Noticed the Christmas stars for sale for the first time this season only this evening. All the 'fancy stores' have them, reminding us that the festival season is not over yet. There were a couple of other shops with brighter stars; missed taking pictures as I passed by, because this one was meant to be. Bright and fancy!
Heading back into the city from the airport this morning, we took a different route over the grade separator at Kathipara. This time around, with all the links at Kathipara fully functional, we could actually go over towards Jawaharlal Nehru road, rather than ducking under, as we did six months ago. Now that all the construction debris is hidden from view, it is a nice sight for all the corporate types to see - a swank interchange, one arm of which leads you to a set of rather techie looking buildings. And all those traffic holdups as you enter the city, they're now a dim memory of the past!
The Directors of the British East India Company were clear in their minds about the separation of the Church and the Firm. They were in it to make coin, not save souls and did not vex their minds too much about attending to the spiritual needs of their representatives in the newly created outpost at Madraspatnam. The honour of the first church in the Fort, therefore does not go to this building with the imposing spire. Yet, it has a first to its credit, being the oldest Anglican church east of the Suez. In the late 17th century, the task of designing buildings often fell to gunners - maybe because they knew how a building could be destroyed, they could design one that could not be. In any case, William Dixon, the Chief Gunner of Fort St George was assigned to build the church. The money? Since the Company had refused to sanction any finances for such frivolity, construction of the church was funded by subscriptions from the 'locals'. Dixon was a gunner who knew his business, for St Mary's Church was consecrated in 1680, with a four-foot thick, dome shaped roof; one that withstood the cannonballs that de Lally threw at it from Parry's Corner during the siege of Madras in 1758. (The spire was added 200 years after the church was built, in 1884)But that was much later; within a week of its consecration, the church recorded the first marriage, on November 4, 1680. The groom? A certain Elihu Yale, Esq., who is well known as the benefactor of that great academic institution!
Time was when pushcarts such as these were extremely homogenous. Every one of them had the same basic ingredients: greenpeas, chickpeas, slices of unripe mangoes, grated (or finely chopped) coconut, salt, chilli powder... and then the power of the maker takes over. Whether you took your custom to Balu or to Ramu depended upon how well the man knew your taste, and how he'd balance the salt to be just right for you. Were there pushcarts in those days? Unlikely, you say? Maybe you're right, for the sundal came to its own on the sands of the Marina Beach, which are not the easiest terrain to push a laden cart through.With more options for an evening out than just the Marina, the options for push-cart-snacking have also grown. Chennai has also become quietly cosmopolitan, no matter what outsiders might say. Here's proof, if you will: the sundal has ceded a fair amount of space to crunch-munch delicacies imported from other parts of India. Jhal mudi on the push carts was just impossible to come by a few years ago, but now, it looks like Chennai has taken to it with a vengeance.Writing about sundal and jhal mudi has only served to make me drool - I can't think of what to write any more!
It didn't seem like much when it was being built, but the LB Road / Sardar Patel Road flyover has quite eased a significant part of the bottlenecking on those roads. 
