chettinad architecture

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Monday, Dec 20, 2010

Metro Plus Chennai

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Architectural tourism

It was in Bangalore that I caught up with another of the consequences of The Chettiar Heritage. The first consequence of the book, much of which focused on the architectural splendour of the area, was to unwittingly kick-start tourism in Chettinad, for better or for worse. The second consequence I was invited to see at the Eagleton Golf Course 35km on the Mysore Road. The five-star golf course and clubhouse itself provided a lesson in how luxury properties seeking tourist patronage have to compromise to keep themselves afloat; in this case, the clubhouse was over-run with farmers' families being hosted by a business house and who thought the floor was the best place to sit on. That's something that could happen to any tourist destination, once the tourist buses begin to ply, but that's another story. Also to make itself viable, Eagleton has sold a few hundred plots around its periphery for buyers to put up week-end or retirement villas. It was to Antique Villa that I was invited by M. Arunachalam who kept insisting that The Chettiar Heritage had inspired it.
What Arunachalam has done is to create a three-bedroom house using decorative elements faithfully re-created from pictures in the book. To be honest, many of those features even I hadn't noticed in that pictorial publication. But he and his colleague had pored over the pictures for over two years and meticulously re-created many of them sitting with carpenters and masons from various parts of Tamil Nadu. With traditional vegetable dyes not available and vaastu colours — as I call them — chosen, with bar, swimming pool and interior decorative waterfall thrown in, they have gone a bit overboard, but the woodwork is outstanding, the artefacts of the past are fascinating and as a learning exercise for them it has been a truly worthwhile experience. What has resulted, particularly without any courtyard, is a Chettinad-inspired house that's a museum that visitors will thoroughly enjoy. It has also provided the pair the knowhow to attempt to re-create or restore a three-courtyarded traditional Chettiar house, something he dreams of doing, or be in a position to offer advice to others interested in embellishing their homes Chettinad-style, either with genuine antiques and bits and pieces from homes pulled down or by re-creating the embellishments anew.
I don't know what the eco-tourism experts will think of such a showpiece, but at the national eco-tourism conference I attended in Mamallapuram, what tourism is doing to Chettinad was a topic of discussion. If the remains of pulled down houses — reminiscent of the Colosseum in Rome in mini-scale — are to be destroyed and parks and groves created in their place, if fountains and swimming pools, bars and fast food cafes offering Chinese, and North Indian and Western food are to be part of the hospitality, if Chettinad food in an area famed for its cuisine has to be ordered several hours ahead, if decorum in dress and behaviour are to be ignored, if earthen roads are to be replaced with macadamised ones, and if bullock carts are to sport rubber tyres and plush seats, are these all acceptable features in promoting eco- and heritage-tourism, was the subject of debate. Which, of course, got nowhere! Nor did even the suggestion of a protocol for listed heritage areas.

S. MUTHIAH

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