India (Frommer's, 4th Edition) - Keith Bain [263]
Note: Kanyakumari, the venerated southernmost tip of Tamil Nadu, and another worthwhile addition but best reached from Kerala, is discussed in chapter 7.
Tsunami Aftermath
On December 26, 2004, that infamous earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale struck Indonesia’s coast, triggering the tsunami that sped across the Indian Ocean, destroying everything in its path. The Andaman Islands and Tamil Nadu were the worst-affected Indian states, with an estimated loss of 8,000 lives. In Tamil Nadu, the districts of Nagapattinam and Cuddalore suffered most, but the Coromandel Coast’s tourist sites emerged more or less undamaged; in fact, a new discovery was made at Mamallapuram when the wall of water receded (see later). The destruction also produced some good initiatives. Besides plans to install an internationally coordinated high-tech tsunami early-warning system, a program called the Loyola Empowerment and Awareness Programme has offered alternative, more secure career paths for hundreds of children on the north coast. Linked to Chennai’s respected educational institutions, the program has offered a new generation of kids—once slaves to their destiny as fisherfolk—opportunities to pursue careers in diverse new sectors such as catering and publishing.
Rule of the Screen Gods
It’s not just temple gods who are worshiped here—screen “gods” are adored by the local population, enough to elect them to the highest political office: In fact, the majority of Tamil Nadu’s leaders have kick-started their careers on the big screen, and nowhere else is politics quite as colorful (Schwarzenegger, move over). Across the state, you’ll still see peeling billboards featuring the swollen face of Jayalalitha, the controversial actress-turned-politician who has been in and out of political power for almost 2 decades. Kicked out of office on corruption charges in 2001, she jumped back in to reclaim her position a few years later, tossing her successor in jail in a drama worthy of a high-voltage Bollywood spectacle. Jayalalitha made the headlines again in 2009 when she vowed to support efforts to create a Tamil homeland within the island nation of Sri Lanka. The 30-year Sri Lankan civil war, in which the minority Tamil community was seen to be dominated and discriminated by the Sinhalese majority, was always of importance in Tamil Nadu, but gained international attention during April/May 2009, when the Sri Lankan government finally crushed the Tamil Tigers, a terrorist organization said to have pioneered the use of suicide bombers. Despite her promised strong-arm tactics, Jayalalitha, leader of the AIADMK, was not voted back into power during the 2009 local elections, but posters of the winning DMK leaders (including the actor J. K. Ritheesh) were splashed with milk when the results were announced—an act of reverence usually associated with worshipping deities in Tamil’s temples.
1 Chennai
Tamil Nadu
Chennai, India’s fourth largest city, is neither ancient nor lovely but it is—like Bangalore and Hyderabad—booming. The first British settlement in India, it was established in 1639 by the East India Company on the site of a fishing village called Chennaipatnam. Madras, as the capital of Tamil Nadu was formerly known, is today a teeming, sprawling, bustling industrial metropolis, a manufacturing hub occasionally referred to as the “Detroit of the South,” where many of India’s IT companies are located. Unless you’re here on business, or keen to shop, the city itself is only marginally fascinating—a strange mix of British Raj–era monuments, Portuguese churches, Hindu temples, and ugly 21st-century buildings, massive billboards, and concrete overpasses;