Madras is more than Chennai

        A dismissive tone can arise in online posts about Chennai. Travelers see the city merely as a transfer point to the temple towns and hill towns of southern Tamil Nadu. Among Indians who can afford to be picky, Chennai's conservative ways often brand it as a backwater compared to Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore.  Nor does the city, or "corporation," do do itself any favors with a helter-skelter approach to development, neglect of historic architecture and little regard for the value of public spaces. But with each visit to Chennai, I go a little deeper and learn a little more from my adventures, students, friends and reading the newspapers, of which there are far more than one.   A month ago, I attended a Sunday service at St. Mary's, the church where Elihu Yale, one-time president of the East India Company and a certain university's benefactor, married Catherine Hynmers.          

      St. Mary's Church in Fort St. George

 A week later, I took a tour of the world's finest collection of ancient bronzes at the Government Museum led by Chitra Mandavan, a scholar who brings alive the dynasties of the Pallavas, Pandyas and Cholas.  

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                                Shiva, as Nataraja, Lord of the Dance. This is the second year that I've gone to Oru Olcott Kuppam, a festival in a fishing village where south Indian folk traditions share the stage with classical  music and dance.        .                                                                                                                                     Village kids dancing at the festival to Kurangan, a Tamil rock band.    

                                                       Catching up at the festival with  former students and their friends. Saturday morning brought a lecture about Tamil Nadu handloom textiles at the Madras Literary Society, said to be South India's oldest lending library. The 200-year-plus old building holds a crumbling collection 83,000 books, including Aristotle's Opera Omnia in Greek and Latin published in 1619. One by one, MLS members are trying to restore the books. They have a long way to go.

 

  This morning, I got up at 5 am to go on a "heritage walk" around a part of town that once served as the dividing line between Muslim royalty and wealthy Hindus, became home to the Madras Club and  a hub for the city's auto  and photography industries. Today, the unsightly Express Mall occupies a large chunk of this neighborhood, but several lovely art deco buildings remain.