Memorial Day at Marina Beach

Although Chennai has cemeteries from the British colonial period and cemeteries of the various active Christian communities here, I chose the statues lining Chennai's favorite public space, Marina Beach, as my focus for this (U.S.) Memorial Day Weekend.

Statues in India can become focal points of contention, evoking emotional responses as prominent political symbols occupying public spaces. These images of past leaders of Tamil Nadu (along with a few movie stars, and a few of them being movie-star-turned-politicians themselves) line the beach, Tamil inscriptions on the front and English inscriptions on the side or back. On special occasions, statues, often picturing their honorees with their sunglasses on, are sometimes "felicitated" with garlands of live flowers. To see some pictures from my self-guided tour by auto-rickshaw, click here.

I started at the north end of the beach, across from the buildings of Madras University. I was dripping in sweat before I even reached the end of the first memorial, but there were already large groups of people wandering among the shapes of stone at 11am on a Sunday. I joined them in the shady spots, and got lots of questions from children. My Tamil is progressing enough now that I could at least ask people where they were from, and I had lots of volunteers pose automatically whenever I lifted my camera.



I visited two massive (apparently competing?) memorials of stone and sculpture memorializing former state chief ministers C.N. Annadurai (the man known as Anna) and M.G.R. Each has a golden bust (or two), an eternal flame, dry-running fountains, and a small museum noting their particular policies and the mentoring role they played to current leaders of their parties. The reported attendance at each of their funerals--well into the millions for each--place them far removed from another class of self-aggrandising world leaders who build vast memorial complexes to themselves while still living.