Mylapore

Although the latest title of my blog (as frequent visitors here know, I keep changing it ever so often) sounds good to me, I do realise that not everyone may know much about Mylapore. So, a post dedicated exclusively to that.

___________________________________________

Mylai or Mylapore was a thriving port during the mighty Pallava dynasty. It is older than the city of Chennai itself by many thousands of years. Steeped in history, it is also steeped nowadays in dirt, crime and all the ills of modern society. At a cross-roads, just like the rest of India.

Mylapore was first built on the Coromandel shore. The arrival of the Portuguese in the mid-sixteenth century changed the town's history. They built Fort San Thome (now known as Santhome) by pushing Mylapore inward, where it has stood since. And they also gave the town some of its unique place names like Luz (meaning 'light' in Portuguese).

The famous Kapaleeshwarar temple that stands at Mylapore (all said and done, Mylapore is a temple town) is only about 300-400 years old, although the temple contains parts of inscriptions dating back to 1250 AD. These inscriptions are traces of the earlier shore temple that once existed in Mylapore. This temple, dedicated to Shiva stood for many centuries in the ancient coastal township of Mylapore, until the Portuguese pushed Mylapore inward to make way for Santhome and demolished the original temple.

It is this ancient temple that the relatively newer Kapaleeshwarar temple replaced. Mylapore, literally translated from Tamil, means ‘A Town of Peacocks’, 'mayil' being the Tamil word for peacock.

At the eastern entrance is the temple chariot, drawn by devotees during the annual Ther Thiruvizha or the ‘car’ festival as well as the parading of 63 idols around the temple square, known as 'Arubathumoovar' festival. This is when the whole world and its cousin land up in Mylapore, when buses are stopped a mile away from the city and the town chokes on its own popularity. A high point in the annual calender.

Although for me, the crowd is a big no-no (the deeds of the crowd could contribute thousands of blog posts worth to the Blanknoise project), the actual festival itself is really beautiful.

The temple tank is now again full of water (at least it was, when I saw it last year), thanks to unseasonal and generous rains in Chennai. The theppam or float festival happens in the tank every January (when there is enough water to so).

Today, Mylapore is full of shops of every variety and hotels, all sorts of offices, hospitals etc. And as it has always been, it is full of places of worship - there are temples, churches and mosques galore.

It is old-fashioned and represents the (supposedly conservative) city of Chennai. But in it, old values and traditions are still alive.

I've lived there for most of my life - about 25 years and that's a long long time. And it is still home.
__________________________________________

As befitting a Mylaporean, I am off to a Carnatic music concert of Unnikrishan this weekend.And just to tie this whole thing up with my previous post: I have done articles in the newspaper on both Unnikrishnan and the Arubathumoovar festival during my 'glory days' (not).