Mischievous kids and their crackers

Fireworks every night

Rangoli at the mall

Diwali

Shortly after my arrival in India, there was already a buzz around the office due to the upcoming Diwali holiday.  Although not an official national holiday, it is primarily a five-day celebration observed by Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs alike.  Also known as the “festival of light”, Diwali is celebrated by lighting small clay oil lamps to welcome Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity, into the home.  It might be considered the Indian Thanksgiving as it is tied to the end of the harvest and also involves the gathering of families.

Another common site during Diwali is the geometric pattern called a rangoli.  These designs can either be painted on doorsteps with chalk or intricately created on the floor with different colored flower petals to make the home more welcoming to guests.  But the main means to celebrate Diwali is firecrackers known simply as crackers in India.  Leading up to the festival, they were being sold on every street corner.  Our driver boasted that he would spend a month’s salary on crackers for his two children.  For five days, the neighborhood in which I was staying was besieged by kids with firecrackers – really loud firecrackers – that went off day and night.  It sounded like 1980's Beirut.  I had a phone conference one night, and the participants thought it was gunfire.

It is relatively rare to get more than one day off for the festival, but everyone in the office was discussing the arrival of family.  Hindus tend to have large extended families, so the logistics of family gatherings during Diwali can be rather stressful.  That said, there was a general excitement, and someone brought in a box of homemade goodies each day.  Most of the treats were foreign to me, but I latched on to these silver leaf coated cookies made out of cashew nuts called barfi (no, I did not know what they were called when I tried them).

As I was preparing to settle down for a casual evening with a bottle of Kingfisher and some EPL, my boss in India called to tell me that his kids’ school was having a Diwali function and that he had bought an extra ticket for me and would I like to go?  It was to be a night of Bollywood-style dancing by middle schoolers.  How could I say no?  The school was far enough away that traffic prevented us from seeing all but the last dance number.  The show was followed by a brief tour of the school which is a fairly massive complex with a pool, an athletic field in the courtyard, and three separate buildings for elementary, middle school, and high school students.  It is actually an American school, and eligible students must have at least one parent who is a foreign national.  Thus, the student body is made up of children of diplomats, CEOs, and any other foreigner who can afford the tuition.  Despite the Diwali theme, it seemed that the event was an excuse for the foreign parents to wear traditional Indian clothes such as saris, sherwanis, and turbans – not a pretty sight.  The evening was capped off by a dinner where I had a unique Alfredo pasta dish with mushrooms, peppers, corn, and dill pickles.

Fort St. George as it was

Fort St. George as it is

A peak into George Town

Fort St. George

Modern day Chennai owes its origins to painted cloth.  After facing some issues with other European powers in the region, the British East India Trading Company was looking for a place to setup shop along the Coromandel Coast.  The local Vijayanagar ruler paraded wares of hand- and block-printed calico, and offered the foreign investors some land on the Cooum River near the fishing village of Madrasapatnam.  Having been made an offer they couldn’t refuse, the company established a trading post and began working on a fort in 1644 - the first of several British forts in India.  With a Dutch settlement to the north and a French one to the south, the East India Trading Company created a private army to protect the fort from potential hostility.  It became the genesis of the modern Indian army.

The fort contained the company’s administrative buildings and also housed most of its officials and their families.  The settlement inside the fort was called White Town while the community of local merchants and craftsmen that grew outside the walls of the fort became indelicately known as Black Town (since renamed George Town).  The neighborhood of George Town is now a nest of crowded, narrow streets with separate sections specializing in the sale of textiles, hardware, electronics, stationery, and much more.  Eventually, the settlement engulfed more of the surrounding area and became known as Madras.

St Mary’s Church, one of the more well-known buildings in Fort St. George, is the oldest Anglican church in India having been completed in 1680.  Though a relatively small church, it dominated the fort’s early skyline.  It also hosted the wedding of the Elihu Yale, the second Governor of Madras and future chief benefactor of Yale University.

Today the fort contains buildings housing the administrative and legislative branches of the state government as Chennai is the capital of the Tamil Nadu.  There are also a number of Indian Army facilities inside, so access to some of the areas is restricted and diligently enforced as I found out by accident.

St. Mary's Church

 Burmese cannon

Fort Museum Gallery

Kapaleeswarar Temple

Some of the more striking sights of southern India are the colorful Hindu temples scattered around the region.  One of the largest in Chennai is the Kapaleeswarar temple with its 100 ft pyramidal gopuram over the entrance gate.  Hundreds of painted figures adorn the side of the temple representing a large number of Hindu gods and deities and their incarnations.  As with most Dravidian temples, a large reservoir or tank is included in the complex for bathing before worship and as a supply of holy water.

The history of the temple is a little unclear but it is believed to have originated in the 7th century by the Pallavas who had control of the area.  The architecture, however, suggests that it is only 300-400 years old, and it is generally accepted that the original temple was destroyed by the Portuguese around that time.  My driver tried to explain the significance of the temple to me, but I think he assumed I knew more about the Hindu religion than I actually do (which is essentially nothing).  What I was able to discern is that it is dedicated to Shiva and his wife Parvati.  As with every other place in Chennai, there were quite a few people in and around the temple, and I could not muster up the courage to go inside.  Instead, I had to be satisfied with a walk around the perimeter of the complex.  A visit inside a Hindu temple will have to wait for another time.

The Kapaleeswarar complex

The gopuram

Hindu figures