Memorials, Campuses, Churches

Some people say there is never enough to do and see in Chennai, but I'm finding lately that there are plenty of sites, loads of history, and a number of unique spots in Chennai to visit; they just aren't listed in neatly organized guidebooks or user-friendly website. Today's selected route took us from memorial halls to several college campuses, and finally to a number of historic churches [click here for photos].



Although the memorials carved out of the north side of Chennai's urban forest reserve, Guindy Park, are more substantial than the statues along Marina Drive, they still are lacking in any interpretive information for visitors, and, unfortunately for us, everything is in Tamil. Still, it's impressive that more than one of the memorial halls to Gandhi, Kamaraj, and Rajaji contained not just portraits of a single superstar of India's Freedom Struggle, but instead had rows and rows of portraits of those who, presumably, were instrumental in India's long road to independence.

Just across Sarder Patel Road is the engineering campus of Anna University, one of the first engineering schools in South Asia. Wandering around the courtyards of the traditional red-colored main building, We noticed a lot of students' drafting homework was still done in pencil, not in CAD. Like many cities in the world before the prevalence of cars, Chennai until the latter half of the 20th century was a port city sprinkled with historical garden estates. Though most of those colonial gardens have yielded their lush greenery to more lucrative apartments, some of the original structures and grounds have survived as institutions, such as the main building at the Women's Christian College, which until the 1920s was better known as Doveton House, after the British lieutenant who had made it his home. Another green oasis in the center of the city is the well-groomed campus of Chennai's Jesuit institution, Loyola College, complete with flowering bushes and orchards.

Chennai's cityscape is dotted with churches, most of them part of the legacy of Portuguese, Armenian, Dutch, and British visitors through the last 500 years. One shrine that doesn't fit that mold is Little Mount, the rock that the Apostle St. Thomas supposedly took refuge under when he was attacked. We also stopped to hear the organist practicing at St. Andrew's "Kirk," built in the 1800s on marshy soil using ancient Indian building techniques.

*Once again, the background information, and the impetus to visit these sites in the first place, are drawn liberally from S. Muthiah's books and lectures.

Red Buildings

The countdown clock is ticking, and topping my list are more Chennai urban adventures. (Click on the photo or click here to go directly to the 22 pictures). Today was a hopscotch across older parts of the city, starting with a stroll along the usually bustling Burma Bazaar--several blocks of tiny stalls, about a meter wide and two meters deep, located conspicuously close to the harbor--I'm sure all those (pirated?) DVDs just fell off the boat. On a Sunday morning before 9 a.m., I was more interested in the ice delivery, cut to size on the spot. On the other side of the street, just north of Parry's Corner, are some great examples of Chennai's architectural history, still colored the bright red characteristic of British India's buildings (kind of like Midwestern barns, schoolhouses, and fire stations were uniformly red for a period of U.S. history). The State Bank of India, the post office, and several companies' offices were build in the late 1800s/early 1900s along this port-side road.

I dropped into the grounds of the Government Museum, not to visit (today anyway), but to get some photos of the well-restored Museum Theatre (again, in official red), where I've enjoyed several performances during my time in Chennai. I also tried peeking in the windows of the Old Building of the Connemara Public Library, but it was locked up.

My final visit along the (odorous) Cooum River and College Road was less about the architecture (though the campus has some well-restored buildings--painted red) and more about the linguistic history of the place. After months of travel on a ship to Madras, British public servants were put through two years of language and job training at this site, previously the College of Fort St. George, established in 1812. The college was responsible for developing grammar guides and dictionaries of the four South Indian languages (Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu). The College was closed in 1854, but the campus now houses a number of institutions, including the Director of Public Instruction, a Microsoft technical training center, the Textbook Society, and the Madras Literary Society (under renovation in the photos)*. Today, it was also the site of about 40-50 young men playing cricket, apparently against the rules, since when I saw them, they were bolting in all directions away from the cop car with the blaring siren.

*Paraphrased from S. Muthiah's "Madras That is Chennai." Where else did you think I was getting all these ideas for historical adventures?