Registered with the Registrar of Newspapers for India under R.N.I 53640/91
Vol. XXX No. 20, February 16-28, 2021
Heritage Watch
A Series of Disconnects
The Man from Madras Musings has in characteristic fashion expressed his views on the latest memorial to go up on the Marina (see Short N Snappy). These are days when those in office do not take kindly to criticism of any kind but we are constrained to point out that there is really no harmony among the various memorials that now stand on the beach. For that matter, there is no harmony even within the same memorial.
Our OLD, photographed by Ajay Khullar for S. Muthiah’s Madras, the Gracious City, shows the Anna Memorial, as it was originally intended to be. Since then, it has been fronted by what seem like two tusks and then a replica of the Arc Du Triomphe. The MGR memorial, which in terms of design has no connect whatsoever with Anna’s, has also undergone several changes, the latest being the addition of a rearing Pegasus.
And now we have what is touted to be a representation of a Phoenix as a memorial to J. Jayalalithaa, which is our NEW, sourced from The Hindu.
As a publication we have always been against the addition of structures on the beachfront but given that these have come to stay, could the powers that be not have insisted on something in consonance with what already exists? Or is dissonance the new consonance?
