Washout

Was hoping to watch the final of the IPL 2023 here at the Madras Race Club. It is Chennai Super Kings playing, after all.

Torrential rains dashed that hope. No, Chennai is still sweltering under the kathiri sun, but the match was to be played at Ahmedabad. Waited a while, then shelved the plan, had dinner and came back home. 

The match will be played tomorrow, but no thrill of watching it here now. 

 

Music under rain trees

The stage is set for an evening of music. It is not often one gets to listen to an eclectic mix of Meera's bhajans, baul singers, a kora performer from The Gambia, devrishes from Turkey and qawwali singers all on one evening. It made sense to get in early and grab the best seats in the house for this performance a couple of weeks ago. 

The 'house' for performances of Ruhaniyat, an annual multi-city music festival, is more often than not an open space rather than an auditorium. The acoustics tend to get a little messy due to that, but the slow darkness enveloping the stage adds to the mysticism of the event. Sounds of nature - parakeets getting back home at twilight - mix with the music. After the first couple of times that aircraft passing overhead distracted us, that buzz disappeared. Ruhaniyat was quite a performance indeed. 

When the organisers started this of this festival in 2001, they were apparently told that it would not be well received in Chennai, probably because of the stereotyped image of the city's fascination for Margazhi season. Thankfully, they were not dissuaded and Ruhaniyat has now become a part of Chennai's annual music calendar; an extension of the Margazhi season, or maybe a counterpoint to it, to savour both better. For me, it was nice to see a programme conceptualised by Banyan Tree Events being held under the rain trees of the Madras Race Club!

Tables

Sometimes, when you get in early for a weekend movie at the Madras Race Club, you get a wide range of seating options. 

Although, with the way these tables are oriented vis-a-vis the screen, at least one person at each table must decide the movie is not worth watching. Maybe there is an opportunity here to design a movie-watching-on-club-lawn table!

Form book

I know little about betting. And I know far less about horse racing. Even so, the name "Original Vel Sporting News" is something I would recognize as being the bible for horse racing enthusiasts in Chennai (and apparently in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ooty, and several other places as well). As a child, It was fascinating to peek into this publication for the sheer exoticness of the names of the horses. 

One of the quirks of this publication, which I couldn't figure out in those days, was the fact that none of the races seemed to be happening in Madras. In the days before the internet and mobile phones - in the days when long distance calls meant 'trunk' calls that had to be booked a few hours in advance - they still managed to get bets out on races in Bombay and Hyderabad and other places. And the books detailed the odds on those races. But never for Madras. It could have been because of the strong public sentiment against horse racing - remember the statues on Mount Road? 

The Original Vel claims to have been established in 1929. A case in the Madras High Court, in 1953, dates its founding to 1936. A record of those court proceedings gives us an idea of what 'Sporting News' could be found in those pages: "The Cricket Test at Delhi" "The Duncan Cup Cricket at Madras" "Five Lucky Charms", "Peter the world-beating athelete" and "Stopping Zatopek"  were some of the articles. But also included were: "The Queen and the Riddle of Minister's summons to Sunday talks at Castle", "Herbert Morrison's attack" and "Hitler's valet held by Reds". Dashed sporting, old chap, but what is it doing in Original Vel? Had such articles continued to find a place in the publication, it would have been fascinating to browse through. But these days, they staple the booklet to discourage flipping through it. And I am not going to pony up 15 bucks to read horse names!

Hold your horses

If ever there is an award for irrelevant statues, this one (and its brother, on the other side of the flyover) will win it, time and again, in a canter. Horse racing, in one form or the other, has been around in Chennai for many years. The Madras Race Club traces its origins back to 1777, though it's formal shape was given only in 1896.

Through the 1960s, there was growing criticism about horse racing, that it was driving working class people into a cycle of gambling, debt, poverty, alcoholism and ruin. The strident demands to do something about it led to the Tamil Nadu Government issuing an ordinance on August 14, 1974, banning horse races in the state. Being very pleased with themselves, they decided to commemorate this achievement and commissioned the twin statues of a-man-and-horse. Nagappa Sculptors - then run, in all likelihood, by Jayaram Nagappa - delivered on the commission and these statues have been flanking the Gemini Flyover for the past 30 years or so.

But the original ordinance was challenged in the courts, and the implementation of the ordinance was stayed by the Madras High Court - that allowed the Madras Race Club to conduct their bicentennial races in 1978. However, it was only sometime in the early 1990s that the Supreme Court of India struck down the Government's contention that horse racing was to be banned. In some sense, racing never went away from Madras, though it was on hold long enough for these statues to be installed!

Open air movie

Chennai has only one drive-in theatre, Prarthana, on the East Coast Road. As I passed that way close to showtime last weekend, I was convinced that I have to either arrive at Prarthana an hour before the show starts or just leave my car somewhere else and walk to the theatre. The rush of vehicles trying to get into the theatre was unimaginable. And with vehicles trying to jump the queue tempers seemed to be on the boil all around. I don't recall it being this bad when I last watched a movie there, about 3 years ago.

The other option for watching a movie in the open, is to head out to one of the Clubs in the city. Almost all of them have a weekend movie show for members and it is usually a recent film that's screened. For a reluctant movie goer like me, it is a good option to go to the Madras Race Club and catch up on a recent Tamil, Hindi or English movie over a couple of drinks. The movies are shown old style, with at least a couple of changes of the film reels on the projector, when the screen goes blank, and folks use that time to refill their orders of drinks or snacks. When there are friends around, it is nice to continue sitting on the lawn after the movie over a slowish Saturday dinner. Yesterday, it was difficult to resist the temptation to go, for the movie was 'Jaane tu ya jaane na' - we arrived early enough to make sure we got good seats.

A movie here comes with a small drawback, though. The Club is right under one of the landing paths to the Chennai airport. As the aircraft comes from behind the screen, you might not get distracted with its light; but when it roars overhead, you can be sure that you'll miss a couple of words from the dialogue!