Higginbothams.....What looms ahead?

Last sunday morning I managed to sketch something I've been meaning to capture for a long time now. On the arterial and busy Mount Road there has been hectic construction activity for the last couple of years as Chennai hopes to have the first phase of its Metro Rail Project up and running by year end.

Mount Road is one of the five old arterial roads radiating outward from Fort St George, it was a major road when Madras was the capital of the British colony of India and still has several old buildings on it. Hopefully the metro rail in this area will be completely underground and one hopes further that the structures put up as station entry and exit points are done sensitively keeping heritage structures in mind. One can only hope, though, as such plans are not very openly shared in the public realm in this country.

I had particularly wanted to draw this building - Higginbothams - as it is India's oldest bookshop in existence. Yes, that is right! Built in 1844, it has stood to this day housing books of all kinds and even until twenty five years ago it was the place to go to for book lovers.

Soon after it was built, Lord Trevelyan, who was the Governor of Madras wrote :
"Among the many elusive and indescribable charms of life in Madras City, is the existence of my favourite book shop 'Higginbotham's' on Mount Road. In this bookshop I can see beautiful editions of the works of Socrates, Plato, Euripides, Aristophanes, Pindar, Horace, Petrarch, Tasso, Camoyens, Calderon and Racine. I can get the latest editions of Victor Hugo, the great French novelist. Amongst the German writers, I can have Schiller and Goethe. Altogether a delightful place for the casual browser and a serious book lover"

Today, digital technology, the internet, e-books, the ipad and the kindle are elbowing out the good old paperback while at the same time, over-crowded cities bursting at the seams and choked with traffic jams are trying to magically bring in the infrastructure that was never planned for.

Lets hope the metro project has been planned well. Lets hope the project is completed despite whatever the result of the next election, and lets hope it works beautifully for the citizens of this city.

A messy kitchen

Yup. That's a messy sketch of my messy kitchen. I bought a set of markers a while ago and this sunday I wasn't able to go outdoors to try them out. I realised that the vanishing point for the door and the sink are not the same but alas! This is not graphite. No erasing.

Revisiting an old spot

Summer is back, and any outdoor sketching needs to happen early. I attempted a different view of the famous Gandhi statue this time but was interrupted at 8 am when the sprinklers came on.  I wasn't the only one. A group of men doing the sarvangasana in front of me all came toppling down too!

Mylapore again

Thanks to a wonderful group of Chennai sketchers from Penciljammers, I seem to be finally sketching again. Last sunday we all met up in front of the Mylapore temple which I had visited before with Uma, but this time instead of going into the temple I was happy roaming the streets outside.

As I started this sketch of the Nandi sitting atop the temple wall, I felt something crawl up the back of my neck. I was sitting on the ground of a dusty street after all. So as I flapped at my neck with my hand I felt a sharp pain shoot up my middle finger. It was an idli ant! (That's what a friend of mine calls them, the big black variety, because when they bite you, your skin swells to the size and shape of an idli!). Within a minute my left middle finger was double the size of the right one and couldn't be bent :( but anyway I carried on and actually the sketching made me forget the discomfort. I think I've found the best antidote to ant-bites finally!

Something to look forward to

Every year, in december or jan, the Kalakshetra foundation hosts a Dastkar Bazaar where over hundred different traditional craftsmen from all corners of India set up stalls to sell hand-made products. The bazaar is a platform to interact directly with craftsmen who man their stalls and also to marvel at the few people of each of these far flung communities who passionately hang on to their traditional skills that could otherwise so easily die in our fast paced industrial and digital world today.

Many craftsmen have innovated with traditional wisdom to bring new products that are relevant to the city-shopper. Paper, jute, bamboo, clay, wood-work, textiles, jewellery, leather. The place looked festive with colourful penants strung from the trees and hundreds of eager shoppers strolling around.

I did this sketch on 21st January for the 34th worldwide sketchcrawl day! It is now well into february and about time I shared it.

Madras Margazhi sunday

This year I have eagerly looked forward to the december music season, promising myself a lot of concerts. And so far I haven't let myself down. Sunday was a particularly musical day starting early in the morning. We went to hear Vedanth and Bindu sing songs based on Kabir's poetry. It started at 7 am at Nageshwara Rao Park. It was a beautiful morning and the green outdoor venue was perfect for the songs being sung.

Initially the audience was huddled in front of the stage but slowly as morning walkers and joggers passed by they paused, listened and the crowd grew on all sides of the stage. Here is one such mama in a veshti with a fanny pack who strolled by and decided to pick up a plastic chair and sit himself down near me. He stayed till the end and listened with rapt attention.

The concert wrapped up by 9 and a lot of people including me made a beeline for the canteen at Music Academy after which I went on to attend two more concerts there - a vocal by T.N. Seshagopalan and in the evening Ravikiran on the Chitraveena. One more sunday well spent :)

A Family sketchcrawl!

This sunday was a long awaited fun family sketching day. My parents, cousin and I went with our sketching bags to the Thiruvanmiyur temple in the morning and each found our own nook to settle down in and sketch. I chose the sacred tree of the temple. It's supposed to be the oldest part of the temple and has some old mythological link to the sage Valmiki's resting spot on his travels here. 

All large temple complexes have a sacred tree. This one is medicinal and called locally as the Vanni tree. It is very very old and gnarled and has been protected by a fencing. People go around the fenced enclosure praying. Inside the enclosure are very old black snake-worship idols. I don;t know the story behind that, I'm afraid. And on the eastern side of the enclosure where I sat there was another altar with seven more idols which are accessible to the public. These are smeared with turmeric and kumkumam dots.

There was a constant coming and going of worshippers on sunday morning. They would first go around the tree and then come to the eastern altar and either offer flowers or light a small lamp and pray. This spot was secluded from the main outer walkway of the temple compound. It was tucked away in a shaded grove of trees and I found a nice flat stone on the ground with a lovely brick wall as a backrest. It was bliss.

My cousin sat herself down on the main walking thoroughfare and had to persevere through bright hot sun and a lot of crowd. You can see her final sketch here. My dad (check his blog here) went into another shaded corner to sketch the gopurams and my mum, ever the quick one, did two sketches in the time I did my one. Then we met back at the car and went down ECR to tryst cafe in neelangarai.

The cafe has a wonderful display counter at one end with all kinds of breads stacked up in a tantalizing display but  it was crowded and we couldn't sit facing the counter. So we just cooled off, looked at each others sketches, drank and munched some stuff and sketched each other. It was so much fun!