sunday evenings in madraspatnam

Lack of a social life has resulted in me relying on my wandering spirit to provide some interesting moments. This is especially true on sundays, when most of the shops are shut and am itching to get out.
Chennai does have a history - and more than that its a city with a sense of history about it. Ofcourse, you need to go in select pockets to find out where all that history has disappeared beneath the fumes of buses and auto-rickshaws. Chennai museum is one such place.
A visit there resulted in one of the most interesting moments of my being in Chennai so far. "Discovered" a Ravi Varma (http://www.answers.com/topic/raja-ravi-varma) collection in the Chennai museum. Ravi Varma was probably the first indian painter who utilized the european styles (full fleshed, sensuous depictions of humans, with a very renaissance look as far as lighting and color are concerned) with Indian subjects ! I have, sometimes perchance and sometimes by design, visited collections housing paintings by this genius painter in different Indian cities (in Mysore, Baroda and Indore). Surprisingly, the very first visit to a Ravi varma gallery (i think it was indore) did not strike me as unfamiliar territory. Later, several years later, actually, some netsurfing revealed the answer. Till date, many of the hindu gods and goddesses printed in calenders are direct copies of Ravi Varma paintings. He, of course, depicted subjects other than those of a religious disposition. But the religious ones, were most easily picked up for use by the masses and got meshed with collective memories!
Another wonderful moment was this sunday, spotted a dead pufferfish (I hope i got the name right, maybe its time to watch more discovery channel) on Injambakkam beach. I usually end up on this particular beach on weekend evenings - its rather less crowded (by indian standards - u can visualize about 1 person per 25 feet of beach width) . Sudden death of my camera battery ensured that i could not photograph the unusual creature - so lucasian (more than a foot long, 8 inch dia, with all those spines, and big eye sockets - could have gone straight to any star wars installment) and so dead.