A city of character
If Chennai is a bustling metropolis today, with a night life not far behind that of Bangalore or Hyderabad, two other metros of the South, Madras, its previous avatar, was the epitome of conservatism, viewed as an overgrown village, where everyone went to bed at 8.00 pm and woke up at the crack of dawn to drink a ritual cup of coffee and read the newspaper, before dutifully trotting off to the streetcorner temple to pay obeisance to his or her personal god.
A magnificent stretch of sand and bright blue sea is the most visible physical feature of Chennai. Among the longest beaches in the world, the Marina has for hundreds of years been the local residents’ refuge from the sweltering heat and humidity. At the crack of dawn, you will find vast numbers of people, young and old, walking or jogging on its paved footpath, while an equal number of men, women and children relax on its sands in the evenings, seeking relief in the seabreeze from the sweltering heat and humidity of the day.
Many of the buildings on the promenade are impressive examples of architecture that blends western and Indian traditions, a legacy of the British empire, with the Madras University, Presidency College and Queen Mary’s College, prominent among them.
These buildings and these health and fitness-conscious, daily visitors to the Marina perhaps truly reflect the essential character of the city: solid, quietly conservative, peace loving, by and large.
The British gave the city its modern infrastructure, its institutions of higher education, its judicial system, and its uncommon fluency in the English language, while a rich continuum over the centuries of Indian traditions, art, literature, music and dance, religion and philosophy, have all combined to develop its unique culture—at once traditional and open to new ideas and thoughts.
Within walking distance of the Marina is the Parthasarathi Swami temple, and just a long run away is the Kapaleeswara temple of Mylapore‑‑but two of the city’s many temples, churches, mosques and other places of worship. Somewhere in between is the Santhome Church, while a sizable Muslim minority offer their prayers in the Triplicane mosque, again within easy reach of the beach—each of these a splendid tribute to the city’s multi-cultural ethos.
Triplicane or Tiruvallikkeni, to give its correct original Tamil name, was home to at least two great sons of pre-independence Madras: Subrahmanya Bharati, the fiery poet whose electrifying verses inspired many a freedom fighter, and Srinivasa Ramanujan, the mathematical genius of world fame. In Mylapore was born a couple of centuries earlier, Tiruvalluvar, the great saint-poet famous for his Tirukkural, a compendium of 1330 couplets, which offer complete guidance on every conceivable aspect of life.
While Tanjavur was once rightly regarded as the cultural capital of the state of Tamil Nadu, today the centre of gravity has decidedly shifted to Chennai, with, for example the great musical compositions of the Trinity of Tyagaraja, Muttuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastri, practised, sung and celebrated in profusion in this city, whose December music and dance “season’ is probably unparalleled for size and diversity of programming. The city is also a bustling film producer, with the second largest movie industry in India after “Bollywood” of Mumbai. A R Rehman leads a pack of talented composers whose music for films has achieved international recognition. The Tamil film industry has also been a continuous supply line of politicians at the state level, including a few chief ministers down to the present one, a legacy of the Dravidian parties using cinema as a medium of political propaganda back in the fifties.
Fast emerging as India’s Detroit, with Ford and Hyundai setting up manufacturing bases here, Chennai is also an important centre of computer software, IT and IT enabled services, second only to Bangalore, and second for reasons not of talent, but of locational advantage, in which the Karnataka capital scores better, thanks mainly to its pleasant climate. While Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh together account for a substantial percentage of the world’s software population, Chennai and the rest of Tamil Nadu are the most computer and Internet savvy in all India, with Tamil second only to English as the language most used on the worldwide web in this part of the world.
It is a sports-conscious city, with a large number of passionate enthusiasts of cricket, followed closely by a burgeoning chess community, led by Viswanathan Anand, one of the world’s best players. The city has some of the best cricket grounds in India, most of them developed and maintained by corporate patrons of the game on college campuses, a unique brand of industry-institution cooperation. Chennai also has excellent, world standard facilities for other ball games, track and field and aquatic events, golf courses and even a top class motor racing track not far from the city. Tennis, squash, badminton, table tennis, field hockey, soccer, athletics, beach volleyball, swimming and sailing are some of the popular sporting activities. Tamil Nadu has a talented cricket team, which figures prominently in the national championship and the M A Chidambaram Stadium, the headquarters of cricket in the state, has been the venue, since the 1930s, of several international matches and the cricket World Cup.
Chennai is an important centre of school and higher education. The State government sponsored mid-day meal scheme has for decades been a model for third world countries to emulate in their attempts to spread literacy and ensure nutrition for the children of their poor. In addition to conventional, state approved streams of schooling, the city has had the benefit of the pioneering initiatives of some of the finest educationists of modern times. Staying at the Theosophical Society of Adyar during the years of the Second World War, the great Italian, Maria Montessori, introduced her world-renowned method of education designed to exploit the potential of a child to the fullest extent, to students and teachers she trained here, thus laying the foundation for the Montessori movement in India. Eminent thinker J Krishnamurti, who founded the Rishi Valley in nearby Andhra Pradesh, spent many productive years at Chennai; the school run by the Krishnamurti Foundation is another important landmark of Adyar. Not far from there is the Kalakshetra Foundation, an international institution founded in the 1930s by Rukmini Devi Arundale, dancer, dance teacher, choreographer and institution builder extraordinaire.
The Guindy Engineering College, now part of Anna University, the colleges of Madras University, the Indian Institute of Technolgy, and autonomous institutions like Madras Christian College, Loyola College and Women’s Christian College are among the oldest and finest centres of graduate and post graduate education in India. Amazingly, some of these are among the oldest modern institutions of learning in the world!
There are ever so many other things that Chennai is famous for—from its ubiquitous Udipi restaurants specializing in idli-dosa-vada and south Indian “degree” coffee, its many silk sari shops and jewellers, a great variety of entertainment options covering dance, drama, music and cinema, religious discourses, Gita lectures, yoga, pranayama, reiki and pranic healing, a bewildering array of martial arts, alternative medicine and healing systems, both indigenous and exotic. The British Council, Alliance Francaise, Max Mueller Bhavan and the American Consulate, all of them in the forefront of cultural interchange between India and these countries, have over the decades succeeded in bringing some of the leading artists, poets, authors and other men and women of eminence to perform for and interact with the residents of Chennai.
The Chennai climate is healthy, by and large, and its standards of hygiene are of an acceptable standard. The Madras Medical College and the General Hospital are institutions with a rich history, and the city is today the home of some of the best medical talent in the country, and of a number of excellent diagnostic centres and hospitals. A whole new hospitality industry has grown in the last couple of decades around the thousands of patients (and their families) coming to Chennai from all parts of India for specialised treatment.
No account of Chennai can be complete without a word about its traffic and its roads. If you think the Chennai traffic is bad, it’s a sure indication you haven’t seen much else of India. And as for the poor condition of our roads, we can assure you it’s a temporary inconvenience. After all, people in Chennai have only had to put up with bad roads for a mere ten years or so! Who knows, we may even have the best bus and metro rail service in India before the 21st Century runs out, at the pace at which these are being developed.
A magnificent stretch of sand and bright blue sea is the most visible physical feature of Chennai. Among the longest beaches in the world, the Marina has for hundreds of years been the local residents’ refuge from the sweltering heat and humidity. At the crack of dawn, you will find vast numbers of people, young and old, walking or jogging on its paved footpath, while an equal number of men, women and children relax on its sands in the evenings, seeking relief in the seabreeze from the sweltering heat and humidity of the day.
Many of the buildings on the promenade are impressive examples of architecture that blends western and Indian traditions, a legacy of the British empire, with the Madras University, Presidency College and Queen Mary’s College, prominent among them.
These buildings and these health and fitness-conscious, daily visitors to the Marina perhaps truly reflect the essential character of the city: solid, quietly conservative, peace loving, by and large.
The British gave the city its modern infrastructure, its institutions of higher education, its judicial system, and its uncommon fluency in the English language, while a rich continuum over the centuries of Indian traditions, art, literature, music and dance, religion and philosophy, have all combined to develop its unique culture—at once traditional and open to new ideas and thoughts.
Within walking distance of the Marina is the Parthasarathi Swami temple, and just a long run away is the Kapaleeswara temple of Mylapore‑‑but two of the city’s many temples, churches, mosques and other places of worship. Somewhere in between is the Santhome Church, while a sizable Muslim minority offer their prayers in the Triplicane mosque, again within easy reach of the beach—each of these a splendid tribute to the city’s multi-cultural ethos.
Triplicane or Tiruvallikkeni, to give its correct original Tamil name, was home to at least two great sons of pre-independence Madras: Subrahmanya Bharati, the fiery poet whose electrifying verses inspired many a freedom fighter, and Srinivasa Ramanujan, the mathematical genius of world fame. In Mylapore was born a couple of centuries earlier, Tiruvalluvar, the great saint-poet famous for his Tirukkural, a compendium of 1330 couplets, which offer complete guidance on every conceivable aspect of life.
While Tanjavur was once rightly regarded as the cultural capital of the state of Tamil Nadu, today the centre of gravity has decidedly shifted to Chennai, with, for example the great musical compositions of the Trinity of Tyagaraja, Muttuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastri, practised, sung and celebrated in profusion in this city, whose December music and dance “season’ is probably unparalleled for size and diversity of programming. The city is also a bustling film producer, with the second largest movie industry in India after “Bollywood” of Mumbai. A R Rehman leads a pack of talented composers whose music for films has achieved international recognition. The Tamil film industry has also been a continuous supply line of politicians at the state level, including a few chief ministers down to the present one, a legacy of the Dravidian parties using cinema as a medium of political propaganda back in the fifties.
Fast emerging as India’s Detroit, with Ford and Hyundai setting up manufacturing bases here, Chennai is also an important centre of computer software, IT and IT enabled services, second only to Bangalore, and second for reasons not of talent, but of locational advantage, in which the Karnataka capital scores better, thanks mainly to its pleasant climate. While Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh together account for a substantial percentage of the world’s software population, Chennai and the rest of Tamil Nadu are the most computer and Internet savvy in all India, with Tamil second only to English as the language most used on the worldwide web in this part of the world.
It is a sports-conscious city, with a large number of passionate enthusiasts of cricket, followed closely by a burgeoning chess community, led by Viswanathan Anand, one of the world’s best players. The city has some of the best cricket grounds in India, most of them developed and maintained by corporate patrons of the game on college campuses, a unique brand of industry-institution cooperation. Chennai also has excellent, world standard facilities for other ball games, track and field and aquatic events, golf courses and even a top class motor racing track not far from the city. Tennis, squash, badminton, table tennis, field hockey, soccer, athletics, beach volleyball, swimming and sailing are some of the popular sporting activities. Tamil Nadu has a talented cricket team, which figures prominently in the national championship and the M A Chidambaram Stadium, the headquarters of cricket in the state, has been the venue, since the 1930s, of several international matches and the cricket World Cup.
Chennai is an important centre of school and higher education. The State government sponsored mid-day meal scheme has for decades been a model for third world countries to emulate in their attempts to spread literacy and ensure nutrition for the children of their poor. In addition to conventional, state approved streams of schooling, the city has had the benefit of the pioneering initiatives of some of the finest educationists of modern times. Staying at the Theosophical Society of Adyar during the years of the Second World War, the great Italian, Maria Montessori, introduced her world-renowned method of education designed to exploit the potential of a child to the fullest extent, to students and teachers she trained here, thus laying the foundation for the Montessori movement in India. Eminent thinker J Krishnamurti, who founded the Rishi Valley in nearby Andhra Pradesh, spent many productive years at Chennai; the school run by the Krishnamurti Foundation is another important landmark of Adyar. Not far from there is the Kalakshetra Foundation, an international institution founded in the 1930s by Rukmini Devi Arundale, dancer, dance teacher, choreographer and institution builder extraordinaire.
The Guindy Engineering College, now part of Anna University, the colleges of Madras University, the Indian Institute of Technolgy, and autonomous institutions like Madras Christian College, Loyola College and Women’s Christian College are among the oldest and finest centres of graduate and post graduate education in India. Amazingly, some of these are among the oldest modern institutions of learning in the world!
There are ever so many other things that Chennai is famous for—from its ubiquitous Udipi restaurants specializing in idli-dosa-vada and south Indian “degree” coffee, its many silk sari shops and jewellers, a great variety of entertainment options covering dance, drama, music and cinema, religious discourses, Gita lectures, yoga, pranayama, reiki and pranic healing, a bewildering array of martial arts, alternative medicine and healing systems, both indigenous and exotic. The British Council, Alliance Francaise, Max Mueller Bhavan and the American Consulate, all of them in the forefront of cultural interchange between India and these countries, have over the decades succeeded in bringing some of the leading artists, poets, authors and other men and women of eminence to perform for and interact with the residents of Chennai.
The Chennai climate is healthy, by and large, and its standards of hygiene are of an acceptable standard. The Madras Medical College and the General Hospital are institutions with a rich history, and the city is today the home of some of the best medical talent in the country, and of a number of excellent diagnostic centres and hospitals. A whole new hospitality industry has grown in the last couple of decades around the thousands of patients (and their families) coming to Chennai from all parts of India for specialised treatment.
No account of Chennai can be complete without a word about its traffic and its roads. If you think the Chennai traffic is bad, it’s a sure indication you haven’t seen much else of India. And as for the poor condition of our roads, we can assure you it’s a temporary inconvenience. After all, people in Chennai have only had to put up with bad roads for a mere ten years or so! Who knows, we may even have the best bus and metro rail service in India before the 21st Century runs out, at the pace at which these are being developed.
posted by Ramnarayan at 9:44 PM
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