Clumps of earth on a traveller’s boots
The Hindu
The monument — a chatiram (an overnight halting place) for wayfarers harking back Mahabalipuram — now stands uncomfortably close to the newly-laid road, so close that the carved personages on the pillars find exhaust soot settling on them day in and night out.
When road-widening work got started on the Mahabalipuram section of East Coast Road, fears about the future of a monument standing smack by the side of the road were raised.
These fears expressed by heritage enthusiasts were fuelled by the plan for this section which included a flyover.
When a more revealing light was shed on the plan, the fears were convincingly allayed. The alignment of the pillars for the flyover would fortunately miss the monument, it was reported. The fears stay allayed, but there is now concern of a different kind.
The monument — a chatiram (an overnight halting place) for wayfarers harking back to the Pallava period — now stands uncomfortably close to the newly-laid road, so close that the carved personages on the pillars find exhaust soot settling on them day in and night out.
Dug-up earth sits on some of the pillars and most strikingly, the carved image of what is believed by many heritage enthusiasts to be a representation of a nameless Dutch traveller is marred by dirt, his travel boots sunk in clumps of earth.
The whole chatiram would in fact do with a thorough scrub. Part of protecting the monument would be to keep it in fine fettle and looking its best.
This monument is part of a familiar geographical landscape for day-trippers from Chennai, and for heritage trackers, it helps puzzle out questions about the social, civic and political past of the region.