Cross-framed

Through the frame of a rooftop trellis, the four crosses of the Basilica of Our Lady of Good Health appear much closer than they are!

Break. Timepass

Hey. You've come all the way to Besant Nagar, seen the SPACES... how can you go away without tasting some of the beach goodies?

Nothing better than getting some of the grilled corn, right when it is hot. Enjoy!

 

Performance space

At the end of Elliot's Beach Road - rather at its start, for the address is 1, Elliot's Beach Road - is a secluded space, born of one woman's vision: the dancer Chandralekha wanted to establish an artistic-human space within the city. She wanted artists and performers on their human scale to be juxtaposed against the eternal "elemental scale of the sea and the sky". The beach at Besant Nagar was another performance space for her, and it was appropriate that her vision took shape right next to it. 

Established in 2000, SPACES is nestled in a corner at the northern end of Besant Nagar beach. From the road, one does not see any buildings; the stone walls and the wooden gates seem to contain just some greenery within them. But there is more. Chandralekha wanted it to be known over the world as "a Performance Space - a Sacred Space - a Sun and Moon Space - a Sky and Sea Space". And so within the walls, there are a few buildings: a stage with a tiled-roof (and minimal arrangements for lights / audio), a kalari (arena) and some office-cum-residential quarters. There is also the Chandralekha archives, but I haven't had a chance to see those yet.

I'm not sure about the last 3 kinds of spaces, but SPACES is certainly a favourite with teachers / learners of kalaripayattu, and with performers who are keen to explore alternate forms and interpretations, which may not find favour with more traditional performance venues. It is also a good place to rehearse for a performance elsewhere. You will be undisturbed, there is enough elbow room to simulate what you might wish to do on an even bigger stage. And that is what the folks here are trying. No, don't worry about them, they're all okay. In fact, they are all quite superb performers. It is just that they're loosening up in a seemingly unsynchronised fashion before beginning rehearsals for their play. SPACES does that to one!

PS: If you would like to see them on stage, that's easily done. The next show of the production they were rehearsing for is on January 27 (2023) at the Narada Gana Sabha. Get your tickets by clicking this BookMyShow link. 

Bonus - you get to watch me, too :)

Fullish moon

From a few months ago, close to the northern end of the beach at Besant Nagar.

Would the beach be better without the high-mast lights? I guess so, but then, a whole lot of people have to make sure it stays that way for everyone!

Ghostly view

A few days ago, I had a chance to go to one of the buildings at MRC Nagar, right on the beach. The view of the Bay of Bengal was so amazing that not much conversation happened. Couldn't get away without taking a few pictures.

This one shows the mouth of the Adyar as it meets the Bay of Bengal. If you look closely, you can see the 'broken bridge', jutting out from the Besant Nagar shore of the estuary, hopping a bit into the water and then giving up the attempt to get to the MRC Nagar / Foreshore estate side. 

You may remember having seen this broken bridge on this blog earlier. In the time since that post, I have not been able to get any more information on what this bridge was all about. But since then, the legend about the broken bridge being one of the most haunted spots of Chennai has gained ground; if only it were true, this window will have a ring-side view of the hauntings!

Corn on the beach

Evenings are cool enough these days for the grilled-corn sellers on the beach to do good business. Sometimes, just the sparks flying out of the corn griller makes the evening feel that much warmer!

Ocean view

It does seem I am spending too much time behind bars these days. Of the wrong kind. Must do something about that!

Bridge the gap

Once, about a dozen years ago, this bridge made the list of spookiest places in Chennai. Surely you would be spooked too, if you suddenly came upon a bit of concrete stretched over 3 pillars. It was not built in that manner, but for several - maybe 25 or more - years now, it has remained that way, after the original construction was washed away.

The bridge was intended to help fisherfolk have a short-cut between the fishing villages of Srinivasapuram to the north and Olcottkuppam to the south. It is a narrow path, barely enough to take a stout two-wheeler in any one direction at a time. Maybe that was more than enough in the late '60s. 

But then again, maybe it was not. When the bridge was washed away, circa 1977, there was no effort made to replace it. The fisherfolk also did not raise a demand for it, I guess, for it is difficult to imagine such a demand being ignored for so long. These days it remains a favourite spot to watch the sunrise, a quiet place to sit and chat of an evening and most of all, a gap-tooth in the Adyar estuary as the river goes out to the Bay of Bengal!

Flying saucers

Because 'Frisbee' is a trademark, this tournament is called the 'Ultimate'. Started four years ago, the Chennai Heat is truly the ultimate in throwing that flat disc around. You may have tossed it around for fun, but for the sixteen teams that took part in this year's edition - the 5th - of the Ultimate tournament, it is serious business. How serious? Well, seven of the competing teams are from parts other than Chennai.

If you thought frisbee was meant for the beach, think again. "Ultimate Soldiers of Punjab" is a team from Ludhiana that has taken part in the competition. At least the "Desert Dreamers" from Rajasthan had a lot of sand to run around on, even if they lacked a shoreline. Wonder how "Dishqiya" (Hyderabad), "Stray Dogs in Sweater" (New Delhi) or "DisCreed" (Coimbatore) practiced for the tournament this year.  

Considering that no team from outside Chennai has won in the last three years (the inaugural edition was won by "Learning to Fly" from Bengaluru), it must have been quite a leap of faith for all those Delhi, Hyderabad and Bengaluru teams to come in this year. They played well, but "Stall7" from Chennai retained the title they won last year. Maybe all those other teams are made up of transplanted Chennaiites who use the matches as an excuse to visit their hometown?

Beach food

Yesterday was the last day of the 'Enjoy Arusuvai Tiruvizha - EAT', a festival of street food. One part of the Besant Nagar beach was cordoned off for the food stalls - there were about 20 stalls, but the organizers were not letting anyone enter the venue before 5.30 pm. Besant Nagar beach is quite crowded every weekend, but yesterday seemed to be much more so. 

The turnout had been quite good on the first two days, apparently. The organizers had brought in 50 chefs from all over the country, so it must have been a pan-Indian street food experience. Good food, priced right - and then it was for a charitable cause. Of course Chennai would have turned up in droves.

I had gone hoping to have a street food dinner. Well, it seemed to me that I should have got here right after lunch!

Bright colours

The Olcott Memorial High School merits a separate post for itself, but for today's "Theme Day" post, the colourful wall of its Craft Centre will suffice. The Craft Centre was opened in 1988, adding one more dimension to a school that started in 1894 with the aim of educating "Panchamas" - those of the fifth caste, who at that time were not welcome anywhere.

The intent of the Craft Centre is to provide skill-based education in some crafts such as carpentry, screen printing or pattern making. A few years ago, a student from George Washington University's Art Therapy program (if I'm right, it was Anne Jonas) had worked with the students of the Craft Centre to paint one of the building's walls in bright colours; here they are, still looking pretty vivid!



It is Theme Day over at the City Daily Photo portal; click here to see folks from around the world interpret today's theme. And oh, yes, it is good to be back!

Across the water

Standing at the Besant Nagar end of the 'broken bridge' and looking across into the city, it is not a happy sight, really. What should have been undeveloped land around the Adayar Creek area is threatening to become another highrise heaven. The views around - the Bay of Bengal, the Adayar Creek, the lush green of the Theosophical Society lands - are absolutely amazing, so these apartments (on the left) and the office space (I guess, on the right) will command premium prices for sure.

And those are not the only buildings coming up. Can only hope that by the time all the building gets done, there is still something of a natural view left!

Bridge to nowhere?

Although many people refer to this as the Elphinstone Bridge, there is no reason to believe this is indeed the one built in 1840 and named after Lord John Elphinstone, the then Governor of Madras. By all accounts, Elphinstone Bridge was broad enough to carry vehicular traffic and, despite one of its pillars being washed away by a flood in the Adayar river. Despite that handicap, Elphinstone Bridge continued to be the link between the San Thome and the Adyar sides of the river, until it was replaced by the Thiru Vi Ka Bridge in 1973. Given such references, we are now faced with a problem of what to call this pathway, which seems to have provided a bridge for pedestrians - most likely fisherfolk - coming from Foreshore Estate to Besant Nagar.

Solving that issue very simply, most people refer to this as the 'Besant Nagar Broken Bridge'. Broken it is, as you can see about 2/3rds of the way through this short video clip. Whole portions of it have fallen away, and there is no bridge on the Foreshore Estate side now. From Besant Nagar, this path juts out almost to the middle of the river, after which there is only a standalone piece a couple of spans long.

Given that there cannot be any hope of traffic on this stretch, it challenges the imagination to come up with a good reason why the Public Works Department (PWD) has recently seen it fit to paint the sides with the black-and-white pattern of a regular pavement; stranger still is their meticulous tarring and marking of a median on this 'road'!

Home by the sea

It is not really a pleasant walk northwards from Besant Nagar Beach. Just where the 'popular' stretch of the beach ends is Olcott Kuppam, a fishing village which is normally un-noticed by all those visiting the beach. A few people keep walking, hoping to see some of the birds which stay inside the thick, almost jungle-like grounds of the Theosophical Society (TS). Those grounds come almost all the way down to the beach; the stone wall marking the boundary has in places been overrun by the vegetation from within.

There are birds around, alright. Drongos, lapwings, a few bee-eaters, a juvenile brahminy kite trying out its wings - and then, all on a sudden, the treeline is broken by a building. The first sighting makes it appear more spooky than it really is. Now, look at how secluded it is within the TS campus itself, in this aerial view (yes, that's the one the '+' is on). It will take nerves of some kind of steel to stay alone in this house, especially on a new-moon night - but the grand view and the sound of the waves will surely make it worthwhile!

You get what you see

If this picture makes you drool, you are a true Madrasi. Even though it is nothing more than boiled peanuts and a few strips of semi-ripe mangoes, the memories that a Madrasi associates with the thenga-manga-pattani-sundal are far too numerous to mention.

Unlike the earlier jhal-mudi seller, this vendor is slightly more traditional. Only that he is at Eliots Beach and not at the Marina, the birthplace of the sundal. And no, you won't be successful at getting a true Madrasi to think that sundal could have been thought of anyplace else!

Sea of humanity

Not really, it is more like a small pond.

On our way back from Mamallapuram on Sunday, we had stopped at the Elliots Beach in Besant Nagar. We tried to get off our vehicle close to the spot where I had taken a photograph of 6th Avenue a few weeks ago; but today, there was no place to park and so we drifted down a bit further towards the southern end of 6th Avenue. It didn't get any better, so we just went ahead and jumped on to the sands and walked the short distance to the waterline. As we got closer, I realized that the soft roar was not the sound of waves, but the chants of those getting their feet wet in the waves. It is not usual for people in Chennai to go swimming at these beaches; the bottom apparently drops abruptly after about half-a-kilometre, and the resulting undercurrents can be dangerous. So, there were only a few men who had ventured more than 10m into the water - and they were the ones most excited by the waves tumbling them over.

I saw this as a chance to build up the average number of people-per-photograph. It is also a nod to those like Kris, Ravindran, Ram, Magiceye and Sherry, who found their perceptions of Chennai being shattered by that earlier photograph - folks, there are still some crowds in Chennai!

Still crowded, still the same

My memory of the 6th Avenue at Besant Nagar is that of a wide road, crowded with every demographic category that inhabits Chennai. There was always a variety of everything - age groups, genders, clothes, colours, you name a parameter and you could get both extremes and a lot in between, if you were hanging out along 6th Avenue. The road itself runs parallel to Elliots Beach for about a kilometre-and-a-half. That's a straight stretch, where the motorcycles could show off their pick-up, speed or any kind of calisthenics its rider was inclined to do. And hey, if you were cool, you had to be there on Sunday evenings.

It is surprising how some of those images refuse to go away, even after quite a few years. The Sardar at Cozee Corner reeling off Tamil far more fluently than I could; the lone policeman trying to get a look at the number plate of an RX-100 that did a more-than-usually-noisy wheelie; young couples shutting out the rest of the world by staring ardently at each others' toes as they walked the length of the road - all of these jumped into my mind's eye as I neared the beach on a Sunday, a few weeks ago.

But it was morning, not evening. 6th Avenue was deserted. Even Barista, with its orange board bright in the sunshine, seemed to be drooping off. But it was nice to see it this way. Now I have a reason to come back some other Sunday, in the evening and see for myself that nothing has actually changed on this street!

Requiem for a memorial?

Though not very inspiring architechturally, this structure with the words 'KAJ SCHMIDT' on its leeward side is always eye-catching simply beacuse it is the only brick-and-mortar construction on the sands of the Elliots Beach. Though not as instantly recognizable as Chennai Central for 'hero arrives in Madras' shots, it has played that role in a Malayalam movie (Naadodikattu), apart from minor and major roles in hundreds of other films.

But for all that, the structure is a landmark, a 78-year old one. It is now showing the signs of its age and the complete neglect that has befallen it. Very few people know that it is an expression of gratitude, constructed by the families of two school boys of Madras who were rescued from drowning in the sea close to that spot. Their rescuer, a Danish sailor named Karl Schmidt unfortunately paid for his gallantry with his life.

And we are about to forget that great deed: "...round the decay / Of that (colossal) wreck, boundless and bare, / the lone and level sands stretch far away"^ - words that came to mind when I went to look at this memorial after about 6 years. Is that where the memory of Hr Schmidt is headed? I do hope we can do something about getting this memorial refurbished. Any ideas?

^ from "Ozymandias", by Percy Bysshe Shelly, circa 1815

They don't make them like that anymore!

Over the years, the overhead water tanks maintained by the Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (CMWSSB) have been fading into irrelevance - the water demand in the area a water tank is expected to service outstrips the tank's capacity by over a dozen times, and supplies are not necessarily dependent on the water tank.

One probable reason that they haven't gone away completely is that they still remain key landmarks in many areas. Though many of them are plain and simple cylinders, there is one in Besant Nagar that should be preserved for the sheer adventurousness of the government architect. Apart from a gazebo-like structure at its top, the cylinder itself has six spurs radiating from it, each with a lotus bud (?), supported by a lion figure.

I don't think I have seen any other water tank in the city that displays such maverick design. Do tell me if you know of one!