People sketches at Marina

After a hectic week of work, I found our CWA group was meeting at Marina beach on saturday evening. I decided to try and focus on sketching people like I did some time back at the park.  But somehow the architect in me always gets drawn to straight lines and perspectives so just to get that out of the system I did a quick one of "Endrum Vasantham Cool Bar" a shack that sold water and soft drinks on the beach.

Then I told myself firmly "only people!!"" and loosened up with this sleeping guy. After that I turned around 180 degrees exactly where I sat and before I knew it another perspective sketch. Oh no! What's wrong with me :(

An hour had gone by and I could stay at most another hour. By then I realised I was on the last 3 pages of my sketchbook so I decided to make it count.

Lot of people just come and sit on the promenade wall as its the largest free open space with great breeze.

By then we were a group of 6 or 7 sketchers so I sneaked one of Kandaswamy. That guy in the upper corner was on his phone the whole hour and probably longer after I left.

And I finally reached the last page of my sketchbook. It's a fat one that I inaugurated in June 2011. Felt great to reach the end and then flip back and look at the journey. By 7.30 I wrapped up at the beach and headed to a friend's house for dinner. Their daughter is six and a half months old and moves with blinding speed on the floor!

A historical link across two weekends

Over two weekends I visited first St Thomas Mount and then the Santhome Basilica. It was mainly because someone in our sketch-group was kind enough to organise sketching permissions at both these places one after the other. But having gone to each place I started reading up about the connections - and was amazed at the variations in the stories that are available.

First off, the basics. St. Thomas Mount is a small hillock near the Chennai Airport. Legend has it that St Thomas, one of the original apostles of Christ came to Kerala in 52 AD and slowly made his way across to Madras where he was killed in 72 AD on the top of that hillock. His body is said to be interred in a tomb in Mylapore over which is built the Santhome Basilica. This is the most popular legend.

There is a Shrine - Our Lady of Expectation - which is a pilgrimage site on the top of the hillock and a winding stairway up to it. Very picturesque and very hot in the mid-day sun. The stairway has resting points and 14 "stations of the cross" along its side which are statues showing Jesus dragging the cross flocked by a small crowd.

As I was there sketching on a sunday, I experienced the full force of the Sunday Mass. As soon as a sermon in English concluded and the people poured out another wave of them would go in and another sermon would begin in Tamil. Once that was over there was one in Hindi and there was one in a European language as well (Portugese? Latin?)

People who came out would walk back down the stairway in groups singing hymns or some would hang around at the top as there was an excellent view of the airport from here. The children especially were endlessly thrilled to watch flights take off and land.

While the legend of St Thomas is questionable, the location is famous for another event which is completely factual and extremely impressive. Colonel William Lambton began the great trigonometrical survey if India from the top of this hillock in 1802. There is a commemorative bust of the great man at the very spot. I felt humbled thinking about the enormity of the task - few dedicated men  holding chain links and spot levels going all across our huge country and coming up with a highly accurate map.

In comparison,  my visit to Santhome was on a saturday and the Basilica was very quiet and peaceful. No matter what the veracity of St. Thomas's presence in India, the building is beautiful and a pleasure to sketch. Oh, and one last thing - did you know that St Thomas is the patron Saint for Architects?!