Luz Church
And the interior
4 January Chennai
As usual I spent the morning working on photos—nearly 400
taken at the three dances yesterday—and journal. In the afternoon I went to visit
two women, Glenda and Julie from Sacramento (California) who I would be traveling
with across Tamil Nadu and Kerala states. Glenda had hosted me through the Warmshowers
program when I visited Sacramento last September. She had recently retired and wished
to do some trips, then her friend Julie joined in for what would be their first
visit to India. They should have arrived last night, but Air India had cancelled
their non-stop New York City-Mumbai flight, so they spent an unplanned night in
New York City and caught the next day’s flight to Mumbai, then luckily caught a
delayed flight to Chennai early this afternoon. I walked over to their Airbnb and
found them in good spirits despite their many hours of travel. We talked awhile,
did some grocery shopping, then had a good dinner at a Saravana Bhavan restaurant
near their Airbnb.
5 January Chennai
The dance program of the Indian
Fine Arts Society had ended, but the Music Academy’s 13th Dance Festival had started.
It was close enough for me to walk, and Glenda and Julie caught an Uber taxi there.
We took in the two late-morning programs gracefully performed by solo women dancers:
Bharatanatyam by Medha Hari, then Kuchipudi by Sreelakshmy Goverthanam. The large
auditorium had comfy chairs in contrast to the basic hall with plastic chairs of
the Indian Fine Arts Society.
For lunch we headed across the road to
Amaravathi Restaurant, an upscale restaurant that features cuisine of Andhra Pradesh,
the state just north of Tamil Nadu. My companions had fish dishes while I went with
the ‘special meals’ with many different tasty curries with a mound of rice placed
on a banana leaf. That was so filling I didn’t need dinner!
We hoped
to catch a train on Monday night to Mettupalayam in western Tamil Nadu, then catch
the toy train for the scenic ride into the Niligiri Mountains to it terminus at
the hill resort town of Ooty. Train tickets can be frustratingly difficult to obtain,
so I thought the best chance would be from the tourist counter at the Advanced Reservation
Office near Central station. We headed over by taxi along Marina Beach beside the
sea, then found our way inside the building where we saw a sign for tourist reservations.
But on inquiring, it turned out we should go to the VIP Counter 22. After much waiting,
even though there wasn’t much of a line, we got the correct form and were told to
go to a market area to get photocopies of our main passport pages and Indian visas.
Back at the counter, we had a lot more waiting, then successfully got a ticket for
the three of us on the overnight Nilgiri Express 12671 to Mettupalayam. We would
have two-tier air-conditioned sleeper berths, which tend to be very comfortable.
From Mettupalayam we hoped to catch the toy train to Ooty, but tickets had sold
out, and the agent suggested trying to get on after we arrive in Mettupalayam.
With the afternoon nearly finished, we got back in a taxi, which slowly squeezed
through traffic jams. I got off at the Music Academy to see the two evening performances,
while Glenda and Julie headed back to their Airbnb with the possibility of going
to a vocal music concert nearby. A woman dancer, Rama Vaidyanathan, gave five Bharatanatyam
performances. Although the morning program had free admission, I needed a 500-rupee
ticket for admission in the evening.
Next up, a dance drama “Meera
the Lotus of Prem” told the story of a woman who as a young girl had been taken
to a wedding, then asked her mother who her groom would be. The mother, half in
jest, replied, ‘the god Krishna.’ When Meera grew up she devoted her life to the
worship of Krishna even after becoming a queen. She had no interest in wifely conjugal
duties, which infuriated the rest of the family. Many plot twists and turns later,
she happily merged with her beloved Krishna. The cast had 23 dancers and much beautiful
singing by Meera, provided by a recording, though that didn’t detract from the effect.
The narration and the minimal dialogue happened to be in English, which made it
easy for me to follow the story. Curiously, all the men in the cast—even Lord Krishna—were
actually women.
6 January Chennai
Our plan had been to hire a car
for the day and see a bunch of Chennai sights. The owner of the Airbnb where Glenda
and Julie stayed arranged for the car, but the driver spoke no English and proved
impossible to communicate with. Glenda and Julie gave up, left the hapless driver,
and got an Uber taxi to come over to pick me up at my place. The women took the
problems in stride—they have adapted well to India on their first visit! We headed
east in the taxi to Luz Church (Shrine of Our Lady of Light), an attractive blue-and-white
baroque-style building that’s the oldest European structure in Chennai.
Luz Church
And the interior
Instead of getting a taxi east to San Thome Cathedral near the seashore, we decided to walk and took pleasant village-like side streets most of the way. Glenda and Julie especially enjoyed the walk, something we would have missed out on if we had hired a car for the day. Portuguese built a church here in 1523 for the final resting place of St. Thomas (‘Doubting Thomas’) who had brought Christianity to the subcontinent in A.D. 52, then was killed 20 years later on nearby St. Thomas Mount. Worshippers singing hymns tightly packed the church this Sunday morning, and after listening awhile, we went around back to the tomb of St. Thomas with church museum exhibits above and a subterranean tomb downstairs, though it’s thought that most of his remains now lie in Italy.
San Thome Cathedral
Service inside
Photo-op on the
cathedral grounds
A pose in front of
the tomb
of St. Thomas
Glenda and Julie looked forward to visiting the beach, and heard that the section behind the church is far quieter than the oft-crowded Marina Beach to the north. They enjoyed wetting their toenails in the gentle waves of the Bay of Bengal and meeting a friendly little girl and her family.
On the sands behind
the cathedral with fishing boats and Marina Beach in the distance
Glenda and Julie with
a friend
Playing
in the surf
Back on the road in front of the cathedral, we walked north to a branch of the Saravana Bhavan for a tasty vegetarian lunch. A taxi then took us farther north past Marina Beach to Fort St. George, completed in 1653 by the British East India Company and still keeping its 18th-century ramparts and some of the old buildings. One of these now contains the Fort Museum, full of old guns and other military memorabilia as well as samples of the requisite elegant dinner settings used by British officers. Since my previous visits, the museum offered fewer exhibits about the British years, especially with the closure of the vast portrait gallery that houses massive paintings of British-era royalty and high-ranking officers. Unfortunately the nearby 1680 St. Mary’s Church is closed on Sundays, so we only saw the exterior. On my previous visits I had been impressed with the many memorials that pack the interior.
Model of St. George,
prepared around 1870
Tippu Sultan’s
two sons appear on the base of the ca. 1800 statue of Lord Cornwallis.
Now evening, we got a taxi south to the quiet and spacious grounds of Sri Ramakrishna Math and went inside the modern Universal Temple, which holds a statue of the widely revered 19th-century teacher Ramakrishna.
Universal Temple
Roof detail of
the Universal Temple
Lastly we strolled via a market area to Kapaleeshwarar Temple, a busy place with a towering gopuram covered with colorful figures and architectural elements. Smaller towers rise from entrances of the inner temple and a golden tower marks the roof of the main shrine to the god Shiva. Only Hindus can go inside the inner temple, so we walked around the stone-paved courtyard that surrounds it to admire the stone carvings, shrines, and pavilions.
Street vendor near
Kapaleeshwarar Temple
Colorful beans for
sale near Kapaleeshwarar Temple
East entrance tower
of Kapaleeshwarar Temple
East tower detail
East Tower detail
Strolling the grounds
of Kapaleeshwarar Temple
Roof of a shrine on
the temple grounds
7 January Nilgiri (Blue Mountain) SuperFast Express 12671 Chennai to Mettupalayam
In the morning I returned to the Music Academy for two Bharatanatyam dance performances,
the first by a male dancer, Bhavajan Kumar, accompanied by performers of a mridangam
(double-end drum), and nattuvangam (hand cymbals) for rhythm and a violin and flute
for melody. A singer provided narration and the nattuvangam artist sang short and
fast rhythmic passages.
Next the woman dancer Divya Devaguptapu also
gave a wonderful series of dances. Her musicians included a mridangam (double-end
drum), kanjira (South Indian tambourine), and nattuvangam (hand cymbals), and a
violin as well as a singer. Curiously all the mridangam performers I’ve seen are
men, but either women or men sing and play the other instruments.
I
had a thali lunch at Amaravathi Restaurant across the road from the Music Academy,
then walked back to my Airbnb. Although I had officially checked out that morning,
the manager let me spend the afternoon in the common room, where I worked on computer
stuff.
In the evening I got an Uber taxi to the railroad station, but
my driver needed to get diesel for his car and the first two filling stations were
out of stock. He went into a mild panic and seemed doubtful that his car would make
it to the railroad station, but luckily the third filling station did have fuel
and we made it to our destination. Chennai Egmont is enormous, so Glenda and Julie
were keen to meet up with me there before boarding our train. Everything worked
out OK and we got on our train, which left on the dot at 8:55 p.m. Luckily we had
berths in the same compartment for the overnight journey. I didn’t sleep well and
the cold air gave me a sore throat that would last a week.
Back to Beginning of South India Backpacking Dec. 2018-Jan. 2019