I was working at the American Consulate in Chennai at that time. Early in the morning on Christmas Eve, the Consul General (CG) called me and said that he had heard that MGR had died. He said that I should try to get in to the office as soon as possible, because we were afraid that there might be some kind of unrest in the city.

I was able to drive in from my house in Rutland Gate because it was still early. Later, as more people heard the news, people in cars were driven back; cyclists were forced to get down and walk, as a sign of ‘respect.’ As it happened, I had the Consulate building almost to myself. A few people had come walking, or had arrived very early; the rest stayed home.

My office was on a level with the Gemini flyover - at the time the only flyover (overpass) in Chennai, and a central route to Rajaji Hall, where MGR’s body was taken to lie in state. As the day progressed, more and more people began crossing the flyover on foot, walking downtown. Soon they were a solid mass; people were coming in to Chennai from outlying towns and villages, to see MGR. I spent much of the day taking phone calls and just staring at the people streaming by. Some of them were crying, no doubt, but as the crowd grew and grew there was and air of excitement, as though they felt their own strength, and wondered what would happen next.

Every once in awhile, someone would stop and throw a stone at the Consulate. One hit one of my office windows, and left a spider web of cracks in the bullet-proof glass. In the afternoon, someone jumped over the wall - which had just been raised in a security upgrade, though it had not yet become the fortress that it is today - and smashed the glass on each side of the Consulate’s main door. Then he ran back and over the wall and was gone. There was some looting of shops - I could see from my window a petrol bunk being broken into, and people making off with cans of engine oil and such; some cars, I heard later, were damaged; there was violence throughout the state, and many people committed suicide; but what I saw was just the huge, unimaginable mass of people, all headed in one direction.

On the day of MGR’s funeral, I drove out with a black dupatta tied to my windshield wiper as a sign of mourning, and picked up a large floral wreath. I was nervous about it, but no one stopped me. I went to the CG’s house, where a police escort was supposed to take us to Rajaji Hall. No one turned up, however, so we decided to go alone. We put the wreath prominently in the front seat beside the driver, and set off on our own down the beach road. The road was completely jammed. The size of the crowd was unimaginable - hundreds of thousands of people. The driver had to inch along. People peered in, saw us foreigners and the wreath, and parted to let us pass. None of us spoke a word - it was like driving through a tunnel made of living human beings, of whose intentions we were unsure.

Eventually we reached the place, later than we had intended, because of the non-existent police escort. By this time MGR’s body had already been removed and placed on a gun-carriage (I think that’s what it was), where he would be taken in procession through the streets, before being buried in a hastily constructed tomb on the beach. We carried the wreath to the carriage, handed it up to someone who placed it on MGR’s body, and stepped back. Then we drove back through those thousands of people; I went home and watched the rest of it on television.

If you have seen Mani Ratnam’s film Iruvar, which tells a story based in part on MGR’s life, there is a scene at the end, where the main character’s body is taken on a carriage through huge crowds. That scene looked very real: it brought the day back to me. It was an unforgettable experience.

After the speeches LS and his musicians performed for an hour, playing two Thyagaraja kritis. The first was, as far as I could tell, quite traditional. The second, which included solos by the percussionists, ended with a crescendo by LS and his violinist son, Ambi, which sounded to me as if it had some western influence, especially in his playing of double-stops - two or more notes at once, almost like chords. (I venture to say this because I know that he has performed many times with western musicians; but if I’m wrong, do tell me!)

LS’s sound is rich and resonant, but he was over-miked, so that it sounded as if he were playing an electric violin, more than a vibrating wooden instrument. I wish that in intimate settings, people could turn down the (electric) volume - but no one seems to agree with me. It was wonderful anyway.

Then cocktails and dinner outdoors, among trees and many small lights, in the coolest weather Chennai is capable of. (Ahem, I hesitate to mention the mosquitoes that attacked my ankles, and the crows which sent down their liquid blessings on both me and my husband. And the 45 minute drive from the city, in the heavy Friday night traffic. But these are part of life in Chennai, after all.)

In the course of his remarks, LS said that corporates generally sponsor things like fashion shows, and that it was good that they had come out in support of classical music on this occasion. I hope that this may become a trend.

Fortunately, we belong to the Automobile Association of Southern India, which will help with this kind of thing. You have to fill out one form; get a doctor to fill out another, stating that you are neither mentally nor physically unable to drive, and that you can read the numbers of the license plate on the car in front of you; provide FOUR photographs; your old license, and its copy. Pay the Rs. 200 fee. Then they assign you a date and time when you must appear at your local RTO (Regional Traffic Office), and assure you that someone from AASI will be there to help you.

We appeared, so did he, he told us to sit. Our RTO - in Mandaveli - is quite cruddy: crammed into what must have been a private house, in a narrow street, with a corrugated fibreglass roof put up in the front yard to shelter narrow and tottering metal benches. Three ceiling fans mainly benefited the RTO employees, each sitting at a small table with a big ledger. Many people, almost all men, crammed together on the benches, waiting.

Eventually my husband was led into a tiny room to get yet another photograph taken. More waiting. While I waited I sketched people waiting.

It was interesting that the signs of admonition: AVOID STANDING. DO NOT SPIT. SILENCE PLEASE were in English and Tamil, while the large signboard which tells you what you have to actually provide (I made out several instances of ‘one original and one copy’) was in Tamil only.

Eventually the AASI man brought my husband his unlaminated licence (as he said, the photograph looked as if it had been taken AFTER the post-mortem). He had to verify that the information on it was correct, sign that he had received it - and then give it back.

More waiting.

Eventually the laminated license was handed over, and my husband had to sign that he really really had received it this time.

What would we do without the ledger suppliers? I think I’ll get one of my own, and begin to record EVERYTHING, and take your signature, and your thumbprint too.

And that was it for another five years. I can’t wait.

The Wikipedia defines Indo-Saracenic architecture as:

a style of architecture used by British architects in the late 19th century in India. It drew elements from traditional Hindu and Islamic architecture, and combined it with the Gothic revival style favored in Victorian England.

It officially arose after 1857, when the British in the Subcontinent began to see themselves, and to wish to be seen, as rulers, not merely as traders. It is an (often-glorious, in my opinion) mishmash of styles. Think lots of cupolas, pointed domes, arches like flower petals, and so on. According to the Bombay Museum and History Today, Indo-Saracenic architecture had its birth in Bombay or Jaipur respectively, in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

However, in our own Chennai, nestled among a number of excellent Indo-Saracenic buildings from the late nineteenth century, is a neglected jewel. As Chennai historian S. Muthiah writes:

The high noon of [Indo-Saracenic] architecture was Lutyens’ and Baker’s New Delhi… Few remember that its beginnings were in the palace the first Nawab of the Carnatic, Mohamed Ali of Wallajah, wanted built in the Fort and then agreed to on a site across the river from its glacis.

He also accepted the services of Company engineer, later Company contractor, Paul Benfield to design and build the first British vision of a Hindu and Muslim architectural amalgam.

The Chepauk Palace was built in 1768 - almost a century before the term Indo-Saracenic came into official use.

You can see some excellent photographs of the palace, taken by ChandraChoodan Gopalakrishnan, in a previous posting here on Chennai Metroblogging.

In 1801 the British government took over the palace, along with the Carnatic - the Nawab’s kingdom - in return for settling part of the Nawab’s enormous debts. Later, as a consolation, they presented him with a new palace, which had been built as a British police court: the Amir Mahal, in Triplicane. The Amir Mahal is also Indo-Saracenic, but it owes more to the western side of that amalgam. It is earthbound compared to the Chepauk Palace.

Today the Chepauk Palace remains in government hands, housing the Tamil Nadu Public Works Department and several other offices.

The Nawab of the Carnatic is today known as the Prince of Arcot. The Arcot family (the only royal family in India which is still officially designated as such) still occupies the Amir Mahal, in Triplicane’s crowded heart. The current Prince of Arcot, Mohammed Ali, is known for his work toward harmony among religions. The prince has a website which includes a photo gallery, including a number of pictures of the Amir Mahal and its rooms.

Some of the many other Indo Saracenic buildings in Chennai include: the Madras University Senate House; the High Court (and another picture here); the Government Museum; the General Post Office; Egmore Station; Central Station.

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7Gifts
Metblogs7Gifts

I had wondered about it before: When you drive by, you see only a sign pointing in to a very narrow lane, with an indistinct building at the end of it. In fact, you do not reach the end of the lane, but turn right about midway, and drive into the yard of a small house which has been converted to the café and an art gallery.

The place was completely empty when I arrived at about 1:30 in the afternoon, but still the watchman waited for me to park, and then instructed me to park somewhere else. Since this is a typical Chennai phenomenon I complied meekly. Later, when I was eating my lunch, someone else came and asked for my car keys: I was parked in the wrong place. Again, not unusual. I came out at the end to find my car exactly where I had put it in the first place.

Once inside, I turned left for the café. Inside were poufs and legless chairs arranged with tables in an empty room. One wall had a stone facing, and there were a few paintings.

A man who had followed me in from the garden handed me a largeish menu, which included sandwiches, pastries, even risotto. There was something called cappuccino, but it came with flavoured syrup. I had a barbecued chicken sandwich - pieces of chicken, capsicum, onions, sauteed in a sauce. It was served hot, and was quite okay. The cappuccino wasn’t really cappuccino, according to me, but flavoured coffee with the top whipped to a foam. It was good, but… still not what I was looking for. Rs. 134 for both. After having prepared my food, the cook came out and relaxed in a chair in the corner of the still-empty room, and stared steadily at me throughout my meal. Luckily several newspapers were strewn around, so I read some Hindi film gossip, to prevent myself from meeting his eyes again and again.

On the way out I took a quick look at the food section (home-made marmalade and mango jam; brownies; cheesecake), the jewellry section (silver-and-bead handmade earrings, neclaces, bracelets) and part of the gallery (modern oil paintings).

Summing up, it looked like a mildly quirky place where one might relax with friends - they have a weekend evening barbecue, too, I noticed. The décor was not slick but homey… but it was not the place to go for cappuccino.

According to a report on NDTV 24X7, an Indian news channel, the Indian government’s clampdown on blogsites (and some websites) is NOT connected to the recent blasts in Mumbai, but is an effort to curb the propagation of religious extremism on the Net. If that’s true, the ban may not be lifted any time soon. The Indian government, however, has yet to issue an official statement on the subject.

If it’s not clear from what has been said so far, the Indian ban applies to ALL blogs from these sites, not just those originating in India: ALL blogspot, typepad, geocities blogs worldwide. If you have a blog from one of these providers anywhere in the world, I cannot read you.

It’s odd that we can still post to our own blogs, and read the blogs that we have had the foresight to subscribe to through RSS. These loopholes may be closed soon, if this is to be a long-term policy.

The list of blocked sites includes:

• hinduunity.org
• hinduhumanrights.org
• princesskimberley.com
• bloodspot.com
• dalitstan.org
• clickatell.com
• blogspot.com
• geocities.com
• typepad.com

More to come when we know more to tell.

There’s a new place at No. 64 C.P. Ramaswamy Road, Coffee World. It’s part of a chain, with outlets in Thailand, India and Reunion. This is its first outlet in Chennai.

The first thing I saw when I walked in was that every seat was upholstered. Usually in such places, most of the chairs are hard and small, and the one or two sofas are invariably occupied by people who look as though they are planning to remain there for a long time. Here, every seat is comfortable, and the place, being new, is clean and well-maintained.

One the menu were the usual espresso / cappuccino, etc., in three sizes. Various cold coffees. Oh, and filter coffee is available too. There are sandwiches and waffles made to order, salads, desserts, ice creams.

I had a medium cappuccino and a piece of chicken quiche, for Rs. 117. The quiche was fine, but I found the coffee a little bitter — it lacked the creamy feel of Barista and Coffee Day’s cappuccino. It wasn’t bad, but it didn’t give me that sigh of pleasure which a coffee-addict seeks.

You can buy a wi-fi card for Rs. 57, for one hour of browsing.

Coffee World has a couple of parking spaces in front of it, but they were occupied, and I had to park illegally across the street. The Pizza Corner upstairs will put additional pressure on the small parking area; and I expect it will get more crowded when more people come to know about it.

Summing up, I was very pleased with everything but the coffee. But I’m willing to put that down to the fact that it’s still quite a new place. I’ll certainly be going back to try it again.

Look at this poor, architecturally-challenged creature. I am posting it not because it’s ugly — we have plenty of ugly buildings to look at out our windows as it is — but because it represents three of the city’s current architectural trends:

First, see a portion of the building on the left. This is the way most of the city’s buildings look: no architect consulted; slabs extending over the windows to act as sun / rain shades; general boxiness. Flat roofs; generally many small rooms.

If you look at the side of the building in the center, you can see that it is really the same as its neighbour.

The upper part of the facade, made of reflective glass, typifies the new buildings coming up here, of which this is a very modest version - most of them look as weird in their context as if an alien spaceship had come down in (in this case) Santhome High Road.

And finally, we come to the street-level facade, in a style which refers to Tamil traditional domestic architecture: tile roof, columns, verandah. I like this style a lot, myself, and it has come back into fashion once again, primarily for expensive houses — for people who can afford nostalgia, while concealing inside all the modern conveniences.

Any one of these three styles would have been fairly unexceptional in the Chennai of today; it is the combination which makes this a remarkable object lesson in how not to make a building.

For me, part of a real education is a knowledge of and ability to appreciate cinema; and the best place for a non-film student to learn to do that in Chennai is at Cinema Paradiso. They have a good selection from the European masters of the sixties and seventies (Truffaut, Godard, Fellini, Bergman) the light, fun films of Erich Roehmer, some excellent Eastern European films (No Man’s Land, Kolya), Kieslowski’s great trilogy Blue, White, and Red. They have a good selection of Iranian films (Baran, the White Balloon, anything by Kiarostami). They have a lot of Kurosawa. You can see Eat Drink Man Woman, the wonderful film Ang Lee made before he went to Hollywood.

Anyway, I could go on and on, but just go there and dive in. The website link above allows you to browse through their collection, but not to search it, unfortunately. But finding something great without knowing about it in advance is wonderful too.

Now, though, the liquor stores are filthy, with only the cheapest brands on sale, and are apparently intended to convey the message that if you keep alcohol in your home you are destined for one of the lower circles of hell. Drink in hotels or clubs (independent restaurants aren’t allowed to sell alcohol): fine. Drink at home: hell.

I went to a Wine Shop on the corner of Mandaveli High Road and C.P. Ramaswamy Road, because I was headed to Cinema Paradiso. I walked inside the gate. A group of what the Indian press used to call boozards clustered around the doorless opening to the Wine Shop. To the left was a makeshift stall featuring some kind of bright orange-red fried snacks. I walked through the assemblage to the counter, told the man inside that I wanted Kingfisher beer, which fortunately he had, and waited while he hauled a case from the back of the small room.

As I stood there, I felt a tapping on my shoulder. I turned, and a horrible-looking, toothless fellow grinned at me and said, “Hello, Madam.” I said quietly in Tamil, “Don’t touch me.” He immediately stepped back, and one of his comrades said, “Sorry, Madam.” I paid for my beer and carried it out to my car. It was nothing at all, really, it ended almost as it began; yet it upset me.

I would be grateful if someone could tell me a) where to find a decent Wine Shop in Chennai with a good selection; and b) why the Government took over this business in the first place. They were already auctioning off licenses to run the Wine Shops for large sums, and there is already a tax on every bottle sold. Why did they need to take over alcohol retailing?

The beer was good. But that’s another story.