The other church

It is natural that when one thinks of St Thomas' Mount and church in the same sentence, the building that comes to mind is the Church of Our Lady of Expectation. That's the one on top of the mount and perhaps the one that's much better known over the world. However, there is one other old church in the vicinity - one that goes by the rather workmanlike name of St Thomas Garrison Church. 

It was built sometime in the 1820s and was intended to serve as a place of worship for the garrisons stationed at St. Thomas' Mount and at Pallavaram. It is not clear why these garrisons could not go up the mount - probably it was difficult for the horses and carriages to climb up that winding path and so they had to have a church right at the foot of the hillock. Over the past two hundred years, this church has seen a lot, as can be gathered from all those memorial tablets inside. 

In the 1950s, when the Meenambakkam airport was getting ready for regular air traffic services, it was found that the spire of the St Thomas Garrison Church was impeding the flight path for aircraft landings. Ever since, it has had to do with this truncated top - the third storey and the spire had to be taken down to ensure aircraft safety!

Watch this space

Well, if you keep staring long enough, you might just see that aircraft on the tarmac take off. Though I'm not in it, I am away from Chennai today. This one is coming to you from Bengaluru!

The other end

If you've read an earlier post about Chennai airport, you would have seen the silhouette of what was the earliest passenger terminal of the airport. The aircraft rolled towards that building, turned around and sped off along the runway to take off.

At the other - the southwestern end - it rose over the boundary walls of the airport. Beyond those yellow lines of the wall is the space where the airport will expand into, over the next five years or so. And about time too!

Old terminal

It was on October 15, 1932 that the first commercial airline service began in India. Tata Sons had created its Aviation Department in July that year and it was JRD Tata himself who flew the first mail service, from Karachi to Bombay, landing on a grass strip at Juhu. That's pretty common knowledge. What is lesser known is that Bombay was merely a wayside stop on the journey; the de Havilland Puss Moth JRD flew was scheduled to take the mail from Karachi (now in Pakistan), all the way to Madras. The second leg, Bombay to Madras via Bellary, was piloted by Neville Vincent, an ex-RAF pilot and probably the nucleus of Tata's aviation foray. So it was that Madras added another first to its record, even if it was at the tail end of the schedule.

But many years before that, Madras was ahead by quite a nose. Giacomo d'Angelis, the Messinian hotelier of Madras, made the first ever flight in Asia. That was on March 10, 1910, when he flew an airplane of his own design, with the engine built by E & A Levetus & Co and Simpsons. That first flight was at Pallavaram, quite close to where Chennai's airport is today. Much, much later, Madras was again at the tail, being the final destination of Air India's first flight, from Bombay via Belgaum, in 1954.

For all those early records, and its current status as India's third busiest airport (after Mumbai and Delhi), Chennai airport still has a rather old-world charm to it. Not for it the miles of moving around the terminal buildings or not knowing which gate your flight is at. All that might change once the current modernisation effort is complete; however, that effort will surely spare this original terminal building which is now being used as the cargo complex!

Delivery mode

Stuck behind this mini delivery van on the road, unable to get ahead of it. And when I look up, I see this plane belonging to a courier company coming in to land at the Chennai airport.

Too many deliveries that morning!

Sightseeing spot

Of course it should be a natural impulse for first time visitors to desire to see more of Chennai. I however have a gut feeling that many of the visitors who come to the city are either business visitors or those who are passing through Chennai towards Pondicherry or parts of Kerala rather than having an intent of staying in the city itself. And that includes a huge number of domestic tourists who regard Chennai as nothing more than a point to change trains. The rank of Chennai in the list of tourist destinations in India is heightened only because it is a point of entry to a range of locations catering to a variety of tourists.

In a dangerous portent of a self-fulfilling prophecy foretold, the state government has excluded Chennai from the list of cities where tourist facilities are proposed to be augmented. Mr. V. Sriram, the writer, has detailed several reasons why Chennai's wonderful tourist attractions are overlooked - and in doing so, has given enough ideas for entrepreneurs to come up with business plans centered on Chennai tourism. One of the points has to do with lack of information at the airport. It may not be what Mr. Sriram had meant, but for a long while, there was not even sign indicating the direction to take towards the city, at the airport. The sign shown here came up only a few years ago.

Behind the sign is the new flyover, allowing vehicles coming into Chennai from the southern districts to go over the traffic that turns into the airport. That vehicle to the left of the sign stood on the flyover for quite a long while, allowing its passenger the chance to see several aircraft taking off and landing - now, that seems to be a new kind of sight-seeing tourist demographic that could be tapped into!

Secure the airports

Airports all across the country have been on high alert. Chennai's airport has been no exception. A couple of days ago, the police had begun to check vehicles entering the airport area before allowing them to go near the terminal buildings. Now they have restricted vehicles from even coming close to the buildings; passengers are required to get off around 100m away from the buildings and walk into them. There is an advisory that passengers have to get to the airport at least 3 hours ahead of their flight time. That's a big bummer, especially if you're travelling to Bangalore; another two-and-a-half hours on the road and you'll reach Bangalore... that sounds like an easier way to travel!

The last really serious incident at the Chennai airport was 24 years ago, when a bomb planted by Tamil extremists went off at the airport on the night of August 2-3, 1984, killing 30 people. At that time, it was described as 'an accident'; the nascent Tamil militancy in Sri Lanka was looking for ways to harm and this bomb was to be ferried from Madras to Colombo on an Air Lanka flight and was timed to explode at the Colombo airport. One version has it that the flight was delayed and so the bomb went off at Madras; another version has it that the luggage was misrouted to a London flight and then was not allowed on the plane because they couldn't match it to any passenger, so it remained in Madras airport.

Took this photograph because I spotted the tail of an Air India jet. The police checkpoint was just after this point where we turned left. Looking at the photograph later, I was thinking about how trusting we are - even when we are carrying out all the security checks, we trust that anyone trying stunts would come in, take the left turn and move along the normal road. It certainly wouldn't be too much trouble for a madman to drive straight on from this point and maybe smash through that wall itself!

Much before the city

If it weren't for the buildings, you could stand at any point in Chennai city and see clearly all the way through to the edges of the city. Except for a couple of places, where the St Thomas Mount and the Pallavaram hills rise like pimples, the terrain of Chennai is... well, a flawless cheek! It is said that the tallest peaks are in the young mountains and that the oldest mountains show up as low, rounded hills. By that hypothesis, the Pallavaram hills in the picture would be a billion or so years old (the Himalayas are estimated as being about 150 million to 200 million years old).

With that kind of evidence being put forward in support of their longevity, it should not be a surprise that the locality of Pallavaram pre-dates the emergence of Madras. The name itself is a corruption of 'Pallavapuram' - the land of the Pallavas. It is believed that the Pallava kings ruled from here during the 6th / 7th century CE, but there are very few extant relics or monuments from that period here. In 1863, Robert Bruce Foote, working for the Geological Survey of India, discovered a hand-axe from paleolithic times near these hills. Somehow, this discovery is not well remembered today; with Pallavaram having become a bustling suburb, any mention of carrying out archeological excavations there would be met with violent opposition.

So, these hills stand, having seen it all, from pre-historic badlands to the landings at Chennai international airport, just across the road. Ah, the stories they would tell, if only these hills could talk!

Open air movie

Chennai has only one drive-in theatre, Prarthana, on the East Coast Road. As I passed that way close to showtime last weekend, I was convinced that I have to either arrive at Prarthana an hour before the show starts or just leave my car somewhere else and walk to the theatre. The rush of vehicles trying to get into the theatre was unimaginable. And with vehicles trying to jump the queue tempers seemed to be on the boil all around. I don't recall it being this bad when I last watched a movie there, about 3 years ago.

The other option for watching a movie in the open, is to head out to one of the Clubs in the city. Almost all of them have a weekend movie show for members and it is usually a recent film that's screened. For a reluctant movie goer like me, it is a good option to go to the Madras Race Club and catch up on a recent Tamil, Hindi or English movie over a couple of drinks. The movies are shown old style, with at least a couple of changes of the film reels on the projector, when the screen goes blank, and folks use that time to refill their orders of drinks or snacks. When there are friends around, it is nice to continue sitting on the lawn after the movie over a slowish Saturday dinner. Yesterday, it was difficult to resist the temptation to go, for the movie was 'Jaane tu ya jaane na' - we arrived early enough to make sure we got good seats.

A movie here comes with a small drawback, though. The Club is right under one of the landing paths to the Chennai airport. As the aircraft comes from behind the screen, you might not get distracted with its light; but when it roars overhead, you can be sure that you'll miss a couple of words from the dialogue!

Cleared for landing

St. Thomas Mount is well known for quite a few reasons, not the least of which is the legend of it being the site of St. Thomas' martyrdom. There are many lesser reasons - one of which will appear tomorrow - but for me, the hill is associated with two images.

The first is of a huge cross, at the crest of the hill, almost at its very edge. That's my first memory of any kind of Christian image. But what was exciting about going up the hill was the wonderful view it gave of airplanes coming in to land - you stand at the the east end of the hilltop, sight the silhouette of the approaching plane, wait for it to go past you and then run across the church yard (more about the church another day) to watch it drop onto the runway of the Meenambakkam airport. Thirty years ago there were probably 4 landings a day - but during last week's trip up the hill, we saw 4 in the space of about half-an-hour.

And we watched this Sri Lankan airlines flight from Colombo, coming in from over the Bay of Bengal to the east, all the way through the last stage of its flight. There is not much of Chennai that can be identified in this picture, but I'm sure you'll take my word that it is indeed the city that was Madras!

Departure Gate

Somehow, it seems that most departures - and quite a lot of the arrivals, too - at the Aringar Anna International Terminal (the Chennai airport, in other words) happen after the sun goes down. I don't remember ever being at the international terminal in the daytime.

Wanted to take this photo, but was slightly apprehensive about it. Until a couple of years ago, taking photographs inside airports in India was illegal; with the growing number of mobile phones and cameras, the authorities just heaved a sigh and junked that section of the law, I guess. Still, the word might not have reached the cops on duty and I did not want to get into a debate with a policeman at 2.00 am. So, a quick photo and scoot!

Compared to the Chennai Central railway station, the airport seems completely impersonal - it certainly does not comes across as being symbolic of a proud heritage; people have far less time to gather around or to exchange notes. Entry into the building itself is restricted and no one would like to stand around outside, when there is nothing to do but just stand around! Not a great option at night - like I said, the terminal probably shuts down when the sun comes up.

(Is there anyone who has travelled out of this terminal during daylight hours? Just curious!)