Brian Stoddart

I am not long back in Phnom Penh from a week zipping about Chennai during the Cambodian Water Festival period – a good time to get away, particularly as the Chennai weather is now about as good as it will get at any time in the year. And it was good: mid to high 20s with overnight temperatures touching lows that had the locals talking about a “cold snap.” Everything is relative, as we know.

Distressingly, it is now forty years since I first went to Chennai when it was still called Madras as it had been under the British for a very long time. Since then the name changes to Bombay, Bangalore, Kolkata and, yes, Chennai all have a provenance in the twin driving forces of post-colonialism and various forms of what might best be described as localised cultural nationalism. My favourite in all this is Kerala, where the capital known to the British as Trivandrum has now become Thiruvananthapuram, and local poster boy politician Shashi Tharoor has some trouble with that in his Twitter posts.

What a week back in Chennai provides more than anything else is a reminder of the great differences that exist in Indian society, even amidst the global scramble of current world powers falling over themselves to accommodate the new one, even if they do not understand it. And the backdrop for all that is the sheer complexity of everything that goes on in places like Chennai.

This is captured for me in my favourite photograph from the trip, taken at the wonderful 8^th century Sri Parthasarathy temple, dedicated to Krishna and located in Triplicane, one of the city’s oldest suburbs. The photo displays, along with all the usual symbols, a discreet ad for the electrical shop that provided the lighting – and an ISO 9001:2008 validation. If that does not sum up ancient and modern, then nothing does.

From that Hindu reflection on modernity it is a short mind leap to remember just how multifaith Chennai, and India, is in totality. Not far away from that great temple, and still in Triplicane, stands what is known colloquially as the “Big Mosque” because it can hold about 5,000 devotees. That was built by one of the former Princes of Arcot, and not far away in an impressive complex known as Amir Mahal the present Prince and his retinue still live, supported at least in part by a pension fund that began mid-nineteenth century when the British appropriated the then Prince’s property, notably the Chepauk Palace over on the Marina near the beach and now the subject of a conservation row because it was burned out a few months ago.

Madras/Chennai was always and still is a city with a significant Muslim population, as captured in the work of my great but sadly now late friend, Ken McPherson.  And for the most part, that long Muslim presence has largely been peaceful. One of the other great mosques is at Thousand Lights, up Mount Road now called Anna Salai. Almost the next building past that mosque is one of the most prestigious Catholic girls school, and not too far from that is St George’s Cathedral, the Anglican home since 1816.

St George’s also links past and the very present. Anyone who has been to India will know the on-going issue about needing to get “permission” to take photos at institutions, no matter how innocuous those institutions might be. I started to photograph the Cathedral and a very nice man arrived up on a motorbike. The gist was I could take the photos, but on the other side of the building, because on the side where I was, over the wall was the American consulate. Just a few days earlier that consulate was attacked by a large crowd of Muslims upset over the latest film said to criticise Islam. Feelings were still high, said the man on the bike, there was a “Muslim problem”, and with my beard I looked like a Muslim! Perhaps I should have been at the meetings in Amir Mahal where the Prince of Arcot met the American Ambassador to India to discuss the origins of the problem and some possible solutions. Meanwhile, a few suburbs away back in the old town in areas like Periamet and Vepery, Muslim leather traders still turn out their excellent products that are sent all over the world.

Those small shops and factories contrast mightily with the shopping malls now springing up, particularly Express Mall that stands on the site of the old Indian Express building and also, coincidentally, engulfed the old Madras Club that was at the heart of social life for Madras Europeans (at least, the “respectable” male ones) from 1832-1947. It is now home to brands like Lacoste, Omega and all the others that are part of the global consumer market. In here, too, though, the twists of the new India appear. Canali, the Italian fashion brand, now has outlets in India, featuring the Nawab brand of Indian waistcoats, the sleeveless and buttoned to the neck versions. Made in wool (almost certainly Australian merino) with a linen mix, the price was $US 3,000. Outside that building there are the inevitable beggars, along with a million autorickshaw drivers pressing you for business. The contrasts could scarcely be greater.

India has always been like this, but arguably the rise of the “new” India has created even greater differences of social level, and definitely in the quality of life. As with any Indian city now, the traffic is almost impossible. It is only about seventeen kilometres or so from the centre of Madras to the airport, but the ride will take a minimum of thirty minutes and more likely closer to an hour. That is the result of the sheer amount of traffic on the road, even at two am. Through a week day, a trip to an area like Adyar will take a good hour. It is also the result of civic change – the Madras Metro system seems to have building sites all over the city, many of them having been there now for some years. And even by Indian standards, Chennai is getting to be a hard place to walk, there is little provision for the pedestrian amidst the one way systems and flyovers.

Despite that, Chennai somehow still retains something of its country village nature that many writers commented about well into the twentieth century. In older areas like Mylapore many of the trees remain to provide canopies over the streets. The Luz Church, established in 1516, still has a sleepy and detached air even if it is just off a busy road. At the start of the Carnatic music “season” that takes up all of December, the concert halls and small rooms alike host the sort of singers and instrumentalists who have been plying their skills for hundreds of years. And away over towards Adyar there is a rare book  seller whose holdings are a reminder of the old Moore Market days, when T.N. Jayavelu and his pals became the mysterious conduits for items that began life in the Tamil Nadu Archives but somehow ended up in Australian and other libraries.

That heritage dimension of Madras still exists in buildings like the extraordinary Connemara Public Library in the Museum grounds at Egmore, just along from the equally impressive and ornate Victorian railway station. These and all the other surviving Indo-Saracenic buildings give Chennai an atmosphere that still survives among the increasing congestion, petrol fumes and hi-tech suburbs mushrooming along the coast to the south. It is in the High Court, University of Madras and a host of suburban police station buildings that Madras still exists, within Chennai.