Stones and Spires

Today I took advantage of the cool weather to do some exploring for the hidden remnants of Chennai's history. In a country that is expanding physically and influentially, the significant markers of past glories and achievements seem to get choked out by the glitz and blitz of today's economy. A handful of dedicated advocates and historians are making a good case for preserving and memorializing Chennai's history in architecture, word, and knowledge. While I'm not involved directly in those efforts, I like connecting with my temporary home by learning details of its history, and today's trip had the feeling of a scavenger hunt for little-known sites.

Today was a tour of cemeteries. And before you break out the Halloween jokes, I'll remind you that headstones often bear an amazing wealth of information etched on something much longer-lasting than the brittle stationery of the 18th Century's colonial rulers. They're also relatively green and serene, but India always adds its character to any setting that would otherwise seem familiar: In one cemetery, the caretakers residing on site were cracking coconuts to dry the meat in the sun. At the tiny Armenian cemetery, live-in caretakers hardly seemed necessary, but three generations of a family, as well as their dogs, chickens, and an outdoor game table, all resided alongside the gleaming black marble gravestones. While some effort was apparent to keep the graves themselves tidy, the ubiquitous plastic bags and trash had piled up in several corners, mostly from neighbors tossing their waste over the walls.

Although you'd be right in saying that Hindus are most often cremated, India is home to people of many faiths, not only Indian Christians but also traders and their families over the centuries from Britain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Armenia. While the graceful structures of the Madras High Court and the Ambedkar Law College are true to their names, they were built atop one of the original British cemeteries in Chennai (the stones were moved to the St. Mary's Church inside the fort here). The newer buildings obscured the spire and we almost missed the sole remaining tomb of the son of Elihu Yale, a Governor of Madras and later benefactor of Yale University.

We went on to two other cemeteries, a St. Mary's Cemetery (though it seems lots of churches in Chennai have that name) and an Armenian cemetery (the Armenians were traders from the 1660s onwards), flanking Bharathi Road near the Chennai Central Railway Station. We were discovering tombstone inscriptions and speculating on their stories in the Cemetery of St. Mary's until the caretaker started mumbling something about cobras, which made us keep to the well-worn path through the vines of morning glory. He did mention that the overgrowth, which covered every square inch of the cemetery, was being cleared by an outside preservation group, starting in March.

After navigating the footpaths of a new but very modest settlement (it looked kind of ad hoc, but with a freshly poured concrete road, running water, electricity, churches and temples, can it be called a slum?), we found that the settlement had been built about three feet higher than the Armenian cemetery, making for a comical descent through what was once a quite elegant cemetery gate.