Musical Mylapore...day one in Singara Chennai

Talking to my wife and son, soon after landing in Chennai yesterday, I realised that I had missed what looks like the first major snowstorm of this winter, for the Toronto area...not that I am complaining about having missed it...just that the first big snowstorm in Toronto, is like Bombay's first big monsoon downpour that happens every year in the first week of July...the city stops for a moment, heaves a collective shrug of the shoulder and moves on for the rest of the winter/monsoon.

While I am all praise for German efficiency, I must say that the in-flight entertainment for coach class in Lufthansa sucks big time.  The only movie of some standard I could watch was Despicable Me (2) and I must thank my niece Vasanthi for having recently introduced me to the Minions through her FB posts.  Vasanthi, sorry to say that Subraminion, who is your current profile pic, did not appear in the movie.


Anyway, the upside to the sub standard in-flight system was that I ended up meditating for about twelve of the sixteen hours on board, and, feeling as fresh as a daisy (or whatever one feels fresh as in Chennai) when I stepped off the plane in Chennai.

Taking off from Toronto Pearson and flying east, an hour or so after take off the in flight map starts showing up cities in Europe and as you continue travelling the names London, Berlin, Paris and so on start appearing on the map and in a somewhat panoramic way the history of these places flashes past the mind.  And then, on the Frankfurt-Chennai sector, Turkmenistan, Azarbaijan, recent additions to our family network with Sid's wife tracing her roots to those parts; then, mighty Persia; followed by the gateway to Asia, Afghanistan and then what was till 1947, a part of British India, Pakistan.  Such history...and as I saw the name Kandahar come up on the map, I remembered Tagore's Qabuliwallah and the dream that was Afghanistan in the days I was growing up...Here is a particularly wistful clip from that movie...ai mere pyare watan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAdeqOrfzPA

Coming in to land in Chennai or Mumbai I always crane my neck to catch the lights of the city.  Generally the plane takes a short turn around the Bay of Bengal and then comes in to land from the east.  Growing up in the Theosophical Society, when Air India introduced its first flights to Australia, we would often stand in our courtyard and see the underbelly of the aircraft as it came in to land late night.  We could often make out the markings as we watched. 

Yesterday the plane came in to land from the Pallavaram (land) side and I couldn't see much except that progressively the city lights are growing in number and density.  I couldn't get a glimpse of St Thomas Mount (which does not, of course, come in the flight path if the aircraft comes in from the Pallavaram side). St Thomas Mount is my signal, when coming in by air, that we are in Singara Chennai.  The towers of Basin Bridge perform that role when I come in by train.

Customs and Immigration these days are not the unending wait that they were when I first started travelling overseas.  I remember Lakshmi and the children once waiting about four hours for me to clear customs, and, that too green channel, sometime in the 80s.  These days it is a breeze and within twenty minutes of landing I was out, getting into my niece's car, heading to Besant Nagar.

December is a pleasent month to land in Chennai and the weather is a pleasent nineteen Celsius with a calm sea breeze...so, you will realize why I am not upset at having missed the first snowstorm of the
season in Toronto.

The highlight of the first day was the Musical Mylapore walking tour conducted by Sriram Venkatakrishnan, the young (relative to moi) and well known history chronicler of Madras aka Chennai.  The tour started at 6am outside Saravana Bhavan, and, waiting for the tour to start I was watching women cleaning the entrance to their houses and hand stencilling the decorative kolam motif  with rice flour that adorns the entrance to the house...here is a simple but elegant motif

If I were to describe Sriram's Musical Mylapore walk in one word ... fabulous, and, since one word does not do justice, I shall add fantastic.

Sriram packs into the two hours of the walk knowledge of history and society along with a great sense of humour.  During the two hours that he took us around the the four temple streets of the Mylapore Kapali temple he told of us the intricate relationship that existed between the legal luminaries who lived in the area and their sponsoring of music.  There were also very interesting flashes of the society of those days ... the nagaswarm players had to stand outside the hall, bare chested and play the instrument ... their being bare chested was reflective of their relatively lower caste status in those days ... till the great Rajaratnam Pillai came along said the equivalent of 'screw you' and once even wore a three piece suit when he played the instrument

Sriram also gave some very interesting anecdotes of the personal lives of several musicians.  One very famous musician of those days was well known for not paying his rent. Another would receive payment for his concerts in two envelopes, one of which went to his wife and the other to his mistress.  No names mentioned ...  The same celebrity would always insist that his concert be preceded by a short piece that the audience would have to endure, sung by his mistress ...  That might give a hint as to who that celebrity was.

So many rich and colourful stories that helped us construct a beautiful tapestry of the four temple streets that were Mylapore in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Papanasam Sivan was one of the best known names of his days. In 1921 or so he started the margazhi bhajans when he and his troupe would go around the temple streets singing (bhajans) hymns.  The picture below shows Sriram standing at the place where the bhajan singing would start and telling us the story of Papanasam Sivan

And the bhajans would always end with the troupe facing the Kapali temple,

and singing Gopalakrishna Bharati's kaana vendamo ... here is the version of that song sung by Dandapani Desikar in Nandanaar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GXOf_8oWnE

The walking tour ends with a hearty breakfast at Saravana Bhavan,  Jet lag was beginning to catch up and more than that the words of my Weightwatchers 'teacher', '...don't come back with pounds that you will have to work off...' made me say 'No' to the invitation for breakfast.  Thanked Sriram for the fascinating start to the holiday and headed home to catch up on some long overdue sleep.