Here’s the call.

The May edition of the walk is here. This time we hit the areas in and around Purasawalkam. In fact there are so many interesting sights over here that we have planned to have the next few walks in the same area to do justice to the place. For starters this is what’s in store:

We start at Sydenhams Road (Now Called Raja Muthiah Road on the side of Ripon Building), enter Vepery High Road, take a right at the junction and enter EVK Sampath Road, continue straight and take a left at Purasawalkam High Road. The walk ends at Doveton Cafe where we can feast ourselves to some awesome breakfast!

This walk has an interesting confluence of cultures. We will be passing by Periamet Mosque, Baynes Baptist Church, Jain Temple, Mathais Church, Narayana Guru Temple. Not to mention TN Veterinary College and the Doveton Clock Tower.

Being summer we would like to start the walk early and finish early (the heat can be sapping). We request all of you to be on time.

Day 13th May 2012
Time 6:00AM
Starting Point: Sydenhams Road (Near Ripon Building)
Ending Point: Doveton Cafe

If you need directions contact – Srinath (9962510275) or Ram (9444062684)

Called “An Introduction to Contemporary Archaeology”, the film is all about the growing interest in the relatively new area of study in Archaeology – called, well, Contemporary Archaeology. The film has been selected for screening at the Eugene – Orgeon Archaeology Channel International Film Festival.

My friends – Ros (who played Brooklyn Hornswoggle-Smythe) and Pods (who played Max ‘Exeter’ Dexter) – are flying to Oregon in a month to talk about our film and the implications of it at the festival. Too bad the US visa process for an Indian passport holder is atrocious, or I would too.

So, my reading public, the legion of my fans in the USofA, please book tickets, make arrangements and plan to be at the festival. And cheer our film to victory.

The Chennai Corporation has grown. Chennai has swallowed up nearby villages/districts into the metropolitian area. This photowalk goes to one of the villages that have grown to become a part of the city. Thiruninaravur.

Why does one ascribe greater relevance and import to books, a greater signifying power than are theirs intrinsically. The value of information about/on the book is indeed greater than the value of the book itself.

Photos – shot, printed and framed by me.
Books – bought, read, enjoyed and savoured by me.

I’m giving them away for a couple of reasons.

1) I am going away for a bit of time and won’t be carrying these books with me. 2) I need the space for new books.

So here’s a list of books.

• The Fourth Protocol, Icon, Fist of God, Veteran & the Negotiator – Fredrick Forsyth


• 1984 – George Orwell


• Amazing Maurice & Educated Rodents – Terry Pratchett


• Gift of Wings & Illusions – Richard Bach


• Short Stories of Kafka


• Fountainhead, Anthem & We the living  – Ayn Rand


• The Plot – Irving Wallace


• Lord Kim – Joseph Conrad


• Last Don – Mario Puzo


• Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe


• Siddharta – Hermann Hesse


• Sandman 1-10 – Neil Gaiman


• Footloose Doll/Perry Mason – Erle Stanley Gardner


• Milo Talon – Loius L’Amour


• Richard III – Manga in Shakespeare


• Hammer of Eden, Triple, & Modgiliani Scandal – Ken Follet


• Train to Pakistan – Kushwant Singh


• Labours of Hercules, Miss Marple’s final cases &  N or M – Agatha Christie


• Lighthouse – PD James


• Ranch War – JT Edson


• Eureka – Edgar Allan Poe


• Three Men in a Boat – Jerome K Jerome (leather bound)


• Hotel – Arthur Hailey


• The Spy’s Bedside Book – Graham Greene


• Lolita – Vladimir Nabakov


• Complete short stories of Sherlock Holmes


• Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell


• Machine that changed world – James P Womak et. al


• Being Indian – Pavan Varma


• Guns Germs & Steel – Jared Diamond


• Candy is Dandy – Ogden Nash

Don’t forget – I am also selling framed (thin, black frames, matte, black padding) photos of Madras, shot between 2007 & 2008. 25+ photos.

Anyway, stone circles, cairns and dolmens are common across the world. We’ve all seen them, seemingly random boulders strewn across our landscapes. But they are in fact the result of human agency. For instance, here’s one.

(Photo credit: Pandiyan)

The petrified trees and the surrounding land have been fenced off and put under the Geological Survey of India care. On my many visits there, a tired old man repeats the much-abused information+legend of the trees, and people go away barely interested. Instead, if archaeologists, historians, story tellers, documentary filmmakers were allowed to study and talk about this fascinating place, imagine what it could do, what it could tell us.

When did people first come here?

Why did they come here, what did they do?

What they ate and when, how did they cook their food?

Are the people of the villages nearby related to the people buried under the hills?

How old is the piece of rock, formerly a living tree? Where did this tree come from? Why did it land here?

When did this place flood up? When did this place dry out?

So many questions can be answered, if only people looked at their landscape as something more than just a maze to conquer on the way to work or play. Which is something I do, try and get people interested in their landscapes and city scapes. Because:

That was shot, to complete the loop, on another old site with a stone circle. Hawkcombe Head in Exmoor.

I mentioned this on Facebook, but I thought I might stress the point here.

When I began the Chennai PhotoWalk, I had intended it to be a fairly regular event that showcased Chennai and help clear the city’s name somewhat. As you all know, the walks have managed that. For the good part of four years, we’ve had one walk everymonth, with the odd 3 walks in a month every so often.

Unfortunately I have been unable to keep that pace up through 2011. For professional, health and personal reasons I’ve had to abandon walks I’d planned, or have just not organised any. I don’t see this situation changing much. For one, I have very little time. And what little time I do have (nil) I have to spend chasing up doctors or that little elusive thing called money and personal glory.

So here’s what I propose we all do. The Chennai PhotoWalk community is rather large and quite well connected and well informed. So, why not let the community take charge of the very thing that brought the community together? So, from March 2012 onwards, I’d like one of you (or a lot of you in turns) organise walks every month.

Pick a route, read up/ask people about it, figure out historical and other significant information about the routes, the landmarks and the buildings, get in a word or two about the architectural merits and such and you’re in game. All you then have to do, of course, is turn up to your walk and lead the assembled masses to their goal. Deal?

For my part, I solemnly promise to pimp your route here on my blog, on flickr, facebook and twitter.

Some really lovely old houses, art deco and earlier constructions, litter the tiny lanes of an Agraharam in this town of Sayyed/Said Khan. 3 streets from my new flat is a pretty old temple for the rest of the world that’s still an upstart young one for Tamil Nadu. Karneeswarar is about 400 years old; 40 odd years the city’s elder brother. From the gopuram of which, you could, if you wanted to, see the bridge Cojah Petrus Uscano built to help seekers of a legend about 1600 years old. Now, of course, Marmalong is long gone, Maraimalai connects Little Mount to Mount Road.

On to other things, then.

If you haven’t caught on yet, this blog has become an exercise in lethargy, procrastination and vanity. As it always has been. It also has become less of a blog and more of a place to announce the next Chennai PhotoWalk. Which’s cool, yes. But what this blog also is, is one of the few that’s survived almost entirely intact through all the heaving changes in the world of personal publishing since 2001.Which is cooler, I think.

Before I go on to the next thing, however, an apology. A big, heartfelt, sincere apology to all watchers of Tamil Cinema. You must have seen ‘Ko’, you must have seen ‘Mayakkam Enna’. Maybe not you individually, but some of you. You’d also have seen instances of ads on TV and elsewhere featuring Yuppies and Lalas pursuing a big of Hippie-ness in the form of photography.

I’d like to apologise for that. You see, barring Kamal Haasan (hello boss) in Tic Tic Tic, I can’t recall a single movie in which the protagonist was a photographer. But since I began the Chennai PhotoWalk (4 years old, people. We celebrate by ordering t-shirts.) we’ve had 2-3 films with photographers as heroes, and ads featuring wildlife photogs, portrait photogs, wedding photos, Deepika Padukone as Photog and more.

I know the world is a random stochastic nothing-makes-sense place. However, if you must blame some agency for this surfeit of films about photographers, blame me.

On to further things.

If you’ve been following this little blog for a while, or at least through 2011 the calendar year, you’ll know I’ve spent an extraordinary amount of time with doctors and hospitals. Add one to that. I got beaten up, recently. A cut on the upper lip, some assorted bruises (not to my ego) needed fairly urgent medical attention. 3 sutures, 2 doctors and 3 nurses conspired to keep me in pain over the weekend. I now look and wheeze like Michaeol Corleone as rendered by Al Pacino.