Last Day in Chennai—At the Government Museum—and Back in Bombay

Tuesday, January 15, 2019

Chennai

Last Day in Chennai—At the Government Museum

Namaste from Chennai!

I had arrived finally at the last day of my travels in Tamil Nadu. It was sad to know that it had come to an end as all good things must. I’d had a lousy night with several wake-ups and a sole mosquito bothering me before I finally fell asleep rather early in the morning. I awoke at 6.00 am when I heard Blossom pottering around. I joined her for a cup of coffee as I continued to get my things organized. 

Blossom’s maid was expected to clean the house; so we ate our breakfast together—muesli with yoghurt and milk and the last of my decaf coffee. When the maid left, we called for an Uber as I had told Blossom that I wanted to visit the VTI (Victoria Technical Institute) from where she had once gifted me really lovely cut-out embroidered place mats. I wanted to see what else they had on offer.

Sadly, the place was closed as today is Pongal.  Although Blossom had called yesterday and someone had confirmed that it would be open today, she was obviously misinformed. Still, we simply called for another Uber and went off to see the Government Museum as I did not have my flight until 4.30 pm. This left us the entire morning to do something worthwhile.

Visiting the Government Museum:

I had never been to the Government Museum in Chennai before—so it was worth finding out if it was open today—it was! For just Rs. 15 each, we were able to enter and enjoy the highlights that are spread out over about 8 buildings.

The Museum was commissioned in the 1850s by the then Surgeon-General of Fort St. George, Balfour, who went on to encourage the collection and acquisition of items that would be of public interest as well as serve scholarly pursuits. The main building, now the Museum Theater is made of red bricks and is circular in shape. It has white Greek style ornamentation and reminded me very much of the Royal Albert Hall in London. Blossom sat out for most of my visit, finding comfortable benches on which she could find relief from her painful knees. 

Here are the highlights of what I saw during my visit:

1. British portraits in oil of the erstwhile Governor-Generals of India or of the Governors of Fort St. George done by leading portrait artists of their era such as Thomas Lawrence and Hickey. Among them were Lord William Bentinck (who was active in Hindu Reformism) Lord Cornwallis (who infamously took Tipu Sultan’s sons as hostages), Lord Connemara (he of the marital woes), etc. They were brilliantly executed and are in quite a good condition—all in the same life-size frames. Quite remarkable. 
2. Paintings by Raja Ravi Varma, a Keralite king, who turned to painting and paved the way for the number of Indian artists who would dominate the twentieth century landscape of art. His Shakuntala, and Old Miser were the few that were actually done in oils as there were quite a few prints. In addition, there were some works by other well-known contemporary Indian artists.
3. Chola Bronzes: These were truly exceptional. They are the best bronze collection in India and some of them are gigantic.  Using the lost wax (cire -perdu) method that originated in South India, these massive works have been created in bronze alloys that are heavy and truly difficult to manipulate. Many versions of Shiva as Nataraja (doing the Cosmic dance) dating from the 9th century to the 19th were on view. There were also any number of other Hindu and Buddhist deities in varying sizes (Ganesh, Uma, Parvati, etc.) and for the first time, I saw two sculptures of Ardhanareswara (half-man, half-woman) deity which was a true revelation to me. 
4. Amravati Sculpture: This is a collection of sculpture that has been obtained from a Buddhist stupa in Amravati.Many different parts of this Buddhist shrine are on display in tiers together with clay models which give us an idea of how they might have looked in situ.  

It was interesting to note that almost all the sculpture I saw everywhere was actually plastered or mortared to the base on which it sits. This will make it impossible to ever move them—leave alone steal them or send them out on loan to other galleries or museums. Eventually, we saw all we wanted to see and decided to get some lunch before we returned home.

Lunch at Palmshore Restaurant:

For our last meal, we chose a very modest place right opposite the main entrance of the Museum where we decided to eat a very light meal of what looked like lamb quesadillas and what was called special falooda but turned out to be  delicious sundae of ice-cream with fresh and dried fruit. We were also given two gulab jamuns by the management in a gesture of goodwill! Considering that it was our last meal together, we truly enjoyed every last bit of it and felt that we had lucked out big time for having found it.

A little while later, we were back in an Uber and heading home to Blossom’s. I had only enough time to do last-minute packing before I was calling an Uber again to get to the airport. By 2.15pm, I was saying goodbye and thanks to Blossom and getting out of the house and just a half hour later, I was at the airport. Check in went smoothly as did security but when I arrived at the gate, I discovered that my flight was delayed by half an hour.  Bummer!

Return Home to Bombay:

Eventually, my flight left just 20 minutes behind schedule. However, we arrived in Bombay half an hour later than scheduled. I took a rickshaw directly home where I reached at 8.45pm given awful traffic. I just left my case and backpack there and went directly to see Dad and Russel (who were both doing fine), had dinner with them and went back home to get myself ready for bed. I will deal with unpacking and getting ready for my next trip tomorrow morning—because, if you can quite wrap your mind around it (I can barely do so), I am off on a trip again next week—this time to Goa for a conference and the official launch  of my new book on Goa.

     Until tomorrow...