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.

Goa and Kerala

Even though most of you in the U.S. are getting out of the house more, sitting on your porches in the evenings, Chennai is swelteringly, drippingly hot, and so, I'm venturing out less and staying in more. So, it's a perfect time to post photos from a couple of cool vacations I took at the end of January. We hit the western coast of southern India (Click here for a map) for a couple of three- and four-day weekends to explore the South a little more.



Goa is known for it's clean beaches, Portuguese colonial history, and, unfortunately, the techno-partying European teenagers and their narco-issues. But our bed-and-breakfast-style hotel was well-removed from the closest speakers blasting nnn-tsa nnn-tsa beats, and we spent the weekend floating in the gentle surf on the shores of three separate beaches, eating spicy seafood, and touring a few relics of Portuguese Catholic culture in Panaji. Click here for Goa photos.



Most impressions of India revolve around the mind-boggling discrepancies and illogical co-existence, and Kerala is no exception. For the NGO/development crowd, it's known for it's levels of literacy over 90% (reading and writing is in Malayalam, a palindromic language you've likely never heard of but which has more speakers than all Scandinavian languages combined). But even a socialist-leaning state is learning to court Western tourist euros and dollars with its endless stretches of unspoiled beaches and coastal inland waterways We started and ended in the cities of Kochi and Ernakulam, with lots of walks through the old-town area by the Portuguese/Dutch fort, browsing the antique shops, eating great seafood, and inadvertently wandering through the chaotic streets of dock storehouses. Kerala has a significant Christian minority (missionaries seem to land on these shores, and St. Thomas supposedly spent the last decade of his life in India), and Christian names and churches were prolific. We floated inland on an overnight houseboat trip (with a biotank and solar power) through the backwaters, munching pineapple rings, and almost forgot that we had jobs waiting for us back in Chennai. Click here for Kerala photos.

I'll race ya

In a wonderful swirl of entertaining cultural fusion, some of my colleagues organized the Chennai 2007 Cinco De Mayo Great Rickshaw Scavenger Challenge. In teams, we had three hours to scour the city of Chennai, deciphering clues and riddles and then gathering photographic evidence (click here for the winning team's entries) of our favorite metro-village's quintessential icons - and our main mode of transportation was the mini-taxi of India, the putt-putt three-wheeled auto-rickshaw (one vehicle per team). Although the challenges may not have been as daunting as braving crocodiles or decorating kolams, every team had a blast racking their brains to remember if it was St. George or St. Thomas who was martyred here (and was that at the cathedral or up on the hill?). Every time we stopped to get a picture of, say, our team posing with stuffed animal vendors and their wares, we cracked up a curious crowd of onlookers and volunteer assistants. In the end, we got a fresh look at our temporary home and learned how good-natured and playful the residents of Chennai can be, whether we were coaxing a bicycle rickshaw driver to lean back and enjoy the ride himself, playing cricket on the beach with local kids, or offering to help a traffic cop direct Chennai's dizzying intersections.