[I wrote this in January 2001, when we first arrived in Chennai. The Connemara Hotel is an Art Deco masterpiece, Spenser Plaza is the oldest shopping plaza in India, built on the site of the original Spencer’s Department Store. To retrace this walk at present is tricky due to the excavations for the Chennai Metro. The pavement shops have gone and the hoardings are mainly plastic sheet, now, instead of hand-painted. But the buses still stop at the junction!]

When I leave the Connemara to walk round to Eunice’s office, I am leaving a place where a room and breakfast cost $130 a night: that is 8000 rupees a day. The official poverty line in India is about 60 cents a day, so what I spend on a night in the hotel could support 216 people. I find this quite difficult to imagine.

Anyway, on leaving the hotel, I first see the auto-rickshaw drivers waiting by the gate (they’re not allowed into the hotel grounds). They don’t try to persuade me to use their services any more, as I do this walk every day. If I do want to do a trip, I try to use Navin, who is a good driver and has a good rickshaw. He lives with his family in a slum replacement property by the river, measuring 10 x 15 feet. One door and no windows, and I don’t know how many people live in it.

Then comes the first stretch of “pavement” up to the corner. I put it in inverted commas, since it is really only earth and broken slabs. There is a useful electricity junction box here – useful as a place behind which the men can go for a pee (although it is not exactly private, and I don’t know what the reaction would be if I went for a pee there). There is also the first of the beggars, a guy with withered legs who has a hand-pedalled cart to get around on. Two lads of about 7 and 10 work here with a hand pump, inflating bike tyres for a small charge.

Approaching the corner there are some stalls which conveniently block the pavement and force pedestrians into the road. We have:

1. a fast food stall, serving water, tea and coffee; curry and rice (and pretty good it looks)
2. a stall from which you can phone and fax (international too)
3. a flower stall
4. a woman with a machine which crushes sugar cane to make juice
5. a cobbler
6. a guy who appears to cut up inner tubes, for some mysterious purpose
7. a book seller.

Towering above these are the advertising hoardings for which India is famous. These are mainly made of tin sheets tacked to flimsy wooden or bamboo poles, and hand painted, even down to extremely accurate trademarks. Camel trousers are on one, and Arrow shirts on another. Most days there are some guys clinging onto the poles with one hand while painting with the other. There are certainly no safety harnesses. These hoardings are perhaps only 30 feet above the pavement, but some in the centre of town are about 120 feet up.

On the corner, which is railed off for safety, is the unofficial bus stop where everyone gets off into the middle of the turn left lane, since the official stops are too far away from the junction for convenience. It adds another thrill of excitement to getting off a bus, to add to the thrill of hanging onto the outside since the inside is full. I have seen 10 lads hanging on to one bus doorway with just the toes of one foot in contact with the bottom step.

Next I see the two old men, one who makes belts and the other who mends sandals. They can’t afford a stall, so they squat on the pavement at exactly the right level to inhale the exhaust fumes. They shade themselves with gunny bags tied to the railings behind and stretched forward to loop over one toe.

There is usually a woman with a baby begging here – I am in two minds whether to give, but the advice from Eunice’s staff is not to – and 2 or 3 kids who shout hello and try to shake my hand. They also want rupees.

We hit the entrance to the Spencer Plaza next, a multi-storey fully air-conditioned shopping centre. Only cars are allowed in the parking, so the rickshaws are forced to park illegally outside on the road, adding to the congestion. Spencers is popular in Chennai because of the a/c, but it is claustrophobic inside, full of little stalls, and I was glad not to have been there the other day when FoodWorld caught fire.

This is the main road of Chennai, so some big offices come next, each with its pavement resident: the man who sells lottery tickets, the woman who sells fresh coconuts, the two elderly cripples outside the shop which sells fridges, more books and belts, a guy who appear to sell plastic netting which I think is for storing fruit in.

The exciting part of the walk, where the pulse rate goes up, is where the pavement disappears for 50 yards. Pedestrians are the lowest form of life, whatever their skin colour, but just here there are not many places to jump to, as there is a high wall along the road. At least going to Eunice’s office I can see what is coming and squeeze in – coming back, I need eyes in the back of my head.

Just where the pavement restarts you get a part you don’t want to use. I am no electrical expert, but I feel somehow that cables sheathed in metal which is peeling off should be safely underground and not poking out of the ground. I tiptoe amongst them, but in the rainy season it must be interesting just here.

Across the entrance to the garage forecourt I stop and start, as the cars and rickshaws wheel in at full speed from the main road and I am expected to know which point they are aiming at. The same is true of the two streets whose entrances I cross here, where vehicles coming in and out do not stop for people. I have had cars nudging my legs before now.

I am approaching the lane to the office now, and only have to detour round another informal toilet (behind another junction box – I am glad I don’t work for the electricity board) and sidestep another beggar, before I can turn in. I have been ignored by most people, stared at by some, importuned by about 6, and that’s life on this bit of street.

It is the long school holidays and Hubert recently took his family down to Gingee for the day. This is a historic site a couple of hours drive south of Chennai, and is pronounced “Shinji”. Getting there from Pondicherry is even easier, but despite its attractions few westerners ever visit – perhaps this is because it does not fit into a standard touring programme.

Gingee needs a full day, and the challenge is to get there as it opens and do the hill-top sites before midday; you can then picnic under the trees at the foot of the hill and have a siesta through the worst of the heat before finishing off with the tanks and temples.

For Gingee is a royal site, constructed around three isolated hills of tumbled rock. Stone stairs take you up each hill, through gateways and a series of encircling walls, to the summit from which a stunning view opens out of the plains: and from there you see the strategic nature of the place, guarding a key route from the plataeu to the plains. The stonework is particularly fine in the way in which it is buttressed into the huge boulders, leaving little or no room for invaders to clamber up.

It was Vijayanagara who developed Gingee into a strategic outpost from the 15^th century, but like all South India forts it changed hands many times, ending up with the East India Company forces in 1762. By the end of the 18^th century it has lost its value and was abandoned.

The Archaeological Survey have been busy in Gingee for years and are gradually bringing back to life the massive granaries, the elephant tank (with a ramp down which the elephants could walk into the water), a possible royal residence, a mosque and several temples.

On arriving in India it was not long before we were struck by the way in which religion is interwoven into all aspects of Indian life, rather than being compartmentalised to certain days or certain events, as is so often the case in the west. Everything, in India, has a religious aspect. [The office even had to sign the lease on our house during an auspicious time slot].

The recently concluded Chithirai festival centred around the Meenakshi temple in Madurai exemplifies the central role of the gods in Indian life.

This is a 12-day festival celebrating the two gods who reside in the temple – the Goddess Meenakshi herself, who presides, and her consort Lord Sundareswarar. Meenakshi was the daughter of a Pandyan king, and is an incarnation of Parvati, sister of Lord Vishnu, and Sundareswarar is an incarnation of Lord Siva, and so the festival is also seen as bringing together Saivites and Vaishnavites – two sects of Hinduism who have not always seen eye to eye.

The wedding is often depicted as a relief on the gopurams of a temple – our photo is taken at the Meenakshi temple itself.

The Celestial Wedding was celebrated last Tuesday. 13,000 people packed into the temple to witness the event and thousands more saw it relayed onto LED screens around the city. From the temple at Tirupparankundram (see our blog of 21^st February) the deities Lord Subramaniasamy and Lord Pavalakanival Perumal came on their chariots to be witnesses to the marriage.

On the same day, Lord Kallazhagar left his temple at Alagarkoil (some 20km to the north of Madurai) riding his golden horse to join the celebrations. Legend has it that he was angered by the fact that the original wedding was solemnised before he got to Madurai, and so now his journey from Alagarkoil is timed to arrive two days later, when he is bathed in the waters of the Vaigai river to cool his anger.

This year, as so often these days, there was no water in the Vaigai, but due to the importance of the festival a certain amount was especially released from the Vaigai dam. I read in the papers in February an estimate of water needs for the district, for irrigation, industry, household use – and for Lord Kallazhagar’s sacred bath, despite the drought. Some things are important.

Chennai has naturally expanded over the centuries to incorporate a number of what were once small villages. Mylapore existed in fact many centuries before Chennai was founded but is now surrounded by modern high-rises and offices and cut in half by the Chennai Metro (the new elevated railway): however, it still has a traditional small-town “feel”.

Most visitors to south India pass quite quickly through Chennai – it is true that since the city has no centre, and using public transport is a bit of a challenge, seeing the sights involves a lot of driving around getting steadily hotter and more and more stressed. But for those with time and energy, a walk around Mylapore is worthwhile.

The focus is the Kapaleeswarar temple and its tank, which were recently spruced up. The temple is dedicated to Siva in his incarnation as a peacock. The Tamil word for peacock is mayil, and puram is a word ending meaning town or village, hence “peacock-town”. [Tamil Nadu is full of -purs and -purams]. During the 7^th and 8^th centuries it was an important port of the Pallavas, but it must have declined after that since when the Portuguese arrived in the 16^th century, taking over the coastal strip and developing the settlement of San Thome, they were easily able to destroy the original temple and nudge Mylapore inland where the temple was rebuilt.

The streets of Mylapore are busy in the early morning with visitors to the temple and the morning walkers: Chennaites who are retired or who don’t have walk for a living are keen on the exercise and after the morning puja take to the streets around 5am before the increase in traffic makes walking too exciting. Then in the late afternoon and evening the shops are alive with customers.

We go to Mylapore for certain key items. I buy my lungis there, for example. The main Nalli shop is in T Nagar, and you would need to go there for silks and saris, but for the simple Madras cotton lungi, Nalli’s in Mylapore has an excellent choice. I shall blog later about the lungi and its versatility. Then there are a number of good shops selling steel kitchenware including plates and tumblers, which are invaluable as they are completely indestructible. We use them on picnics, and in the hotel rooms for that necessary nightcap. When we lived in Chennai a German woman took an entire dinner service home from Chennai, all in steel, and apparently caused quite a stir in the fashionable part of Berlin!