Shaji Karikulathil

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Madurai's Hitler

Prodigal Reruns

K A Shaji
Madurai

A story of filial loyalty and political ambition in which ‘Hitler’ doles out biryani to counter Stalin

For long a regional satrap, Azhagiri now wants to play bigger political roles. Seen here welcoming ADMK supporters into the DMK fold

It happens every 30 January. Traffic in Madurai is thrown out of gear, and about 700 hoardings spring up, some of them in vain competition with the city’s temple shikhars for skyline domination. Nobody can miss the birthday of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi’s elder son Azhagiri. The comparisons range from melodious to odious. This year, he was variously depicted as US President Obama, legendary Tamil kings Raja Raja Cholan and Pandya Nedumchezhiyan, the Dravidian reformer Periyar and Adolf Hitler ‘who overcomes challenges’ in some supporter’s fervid mind.
But then again, that fervid mind might have had a point. Azhagiri, too, has been outmanoeuvred by a man named Stalin. In this case, it’s his younger brother, with whom he has had to forge a peace pact to boost his career. At 58, Azhagiri is at an age when most men retire, but he has just begun his electoral career in politics. He has been granted a Lok Sabha ticket, his first ever, from Madurai by his father.
Voters, going by past experience, are preparing for a feast of money, muscle power and chicken biryani. The Election Commission has already had to step in to put a halt to attempts by his followers to enroll 90,000 new names onto the voters’ list. The EC has also got complaints that Azhagiri forced a local TV channel to scroll his appeal for votes over the live telecast of the annual Kumbabishekam festival at Meenakshi temple, and is distributing cash coupons directly among women voters of the constituency, scraps of paper that can be exchanged for Rs 100 at any local DMK office later. CPM candidate P Mohan has submitted a petition along with these coupons and a video clip to substantiate the charge.
Such tactics have helped the DMK leader’s son ensure victories for the party in three successive assembly by-elections from Madurai Central, Madurai West and Thirumangalam—marginal seats once for the ruling party. “Those were not by-elections but ‘buy elections’,” alleges AIADMK leader O Panneerselvam, “Voters were lured with money and biryani. The state machinery was misused and poll officials remained helpless in the face of intimidation and false voting.”
Azhagiri’s backing by way of money and muscle is so strong that the CPM had even tried to slip away, asking its alliance partner Jayalalithaa (of the AIADMK) to allot it a safer seat to contest instead. Neither partner was keen to represent Madurai in the Lok Sabha, and not only because of shortcomings in appealing to the electorate’s culinary tastes.
It is hard to believe it now, but Azhagiri began his political career as a man noted for simple living. This was in the early 1980s, when he was deputed to look after the DMK mouthpiece Murasoli's Madurai edition. “He was never allowed by the party to interfere in editorial matters of the publication,” recalls K Muthuramalingam, a former associate who’s now with the AIADMK, adding that his lifestyle was indeed Spartan, with a Lambretta scooter and a rented house.
That changed soon enough. By the end of the decade, he was a cash-rich Madurai entrepreneur, dishing out entertainment through Royal Video. Now, his business empire includes a TV channel, cable service provider, big wedding hall and huge showroom of silk textiles. His son Dayanidhi has emerged as one of the topmost film producers in Kollywood with a number of hits to his credit. Through all this, Karunanidhi kept his elder son at a distance.
It was in 1996, when the DMK came to power in Tamil Nadu with a huge majority, that Azhagiri gave in to the temptation of throwing his father’s name around. This caught Karunanidhi unawares, and caused friction with Stalin, the favoured son and presumptive heir (both sons, though, are of Karunanidhi’s first wife Dayalu Ammal). The sibling rivalry began to spill on to the streets, with occasional clashes between their supporters. In 2000, an article by Karunanidhi in Murasoli urging party workers to stay away from Azhagiri provoked a fierce response from the latter’s followers, who vandalised government offices and set transport buses on fire. In 2001, Madurai was thrown into violent disorder when the DMK denied Azhagiri’s nominee C Kaverimanian a Rajya Sabha ticket, giving it to Stalin nominee Tiruchi Siva instead. In the Assembly election that followed, the slighted son’s forces worked against DMK candidates in a swathe large enough to give the AIADMK an edge. Prominent DMK leaders like Palanivelrajan and Velu Swamy lost, and Kiruttinan was allegedly murdered by his loyalists though a trial court exonerated the accused later.
By 2003, Azhagiri had his father’s attention. In a reconciliatory move, he organised a grand function to release Karunanidhi’s book Tholkappia Poonga (a critical study on the Tamil classic Tholkappiyam). Copies worth Rs 28 lakh were sold at the function. The father was pleased.

In between, the sibling rivalry went into another height when Dinakaran, the Tamil daily owned by his uncle's sons Dayanidhi Maran and Kalanidhi Maran, condcuted an `opinion poll' in which a huge majority of voters preffred Stalin as successor of Karunandihi. Azhagiri lagged far behind in the poll and that infuriarated his followers to set ablaze Dinakaran office in Madurai. Two of the newspaper employees were charred to death in the incident.

According to party insiders, it was Azhagiri’s mother who finally brokered peace between the father and prodigal son. But Stalin was a cabinet minister and DMK treasurer by then, and seen clearly as the successor. “Now, an aged Karunanidhi wants to see his family united. He is also ready to do anything to please his children,” says a top DMK leader, talking of Azhagiri’s candidature. There are rumours doing the rounds that the elder son had threatened suicide if he wasn’t allowed to contest at least a single election.
But within the DMK, the ticket is also an acknowledgement of Azhagiri’s ability to ‘inspire’ the cadres and ensure victory even in difficult terrains. After 40 years of shunting him around, the party finally had to make him its South Zone Organising Secretary after the series of by-election wins he pulled off. Ecstatic crowds now assemble outside his TVR Nagar house these days, where he lives with his wife Kanthi Azahagiri.
“There is no challenge to his hegemony over southern districts. Leaders like PTR Palanivel who can check on him have passed away, and he has succeeded in making the party leadership here a pack of his sycophants. Dissenters were either sidelined or expelled,” complains a senior DMK leader.
Tales around him are not about to die down anytime soon. Madurai traders accuse Azhagiri of sending goons to collect protection money from them. Others allege that he holds kangaroo courts, takes his own slice of real estate deals and runs other extortion rackets. “People fear him because he acts as an authoritarian local king,” says Vadivelu, an auto driver.
Meanwhile, CPM state secretary N Varadarajan puts up a brave front. His party, he says, is open to the challenge: “We will face the election without fear. And also write an obituary to all high-handed political activists, who dream of an easy Madurai win.”
For his part, Azhagiri boasts, “I will win by a margin of not less than 3.5 lakh.” It is only the ageing father who seems a little lost in all this: “I presume his life may be under threat. Why does the CPM fear my son so much?”

Spectrum Scam

Out of Thin Air

By K A Shaji

Why does Telecom Minister Andimuthu Raja seem so secure? The ‘code division’ and ‘multiple access’ intricacies of Tamil politics.

The baying for his scalp has gone up a few decibels. Just how much does Union Telecom Minister Andimuthu Raja have to hide? He is being called the architect of the biggest scam that Free India has ever seen. And his party, the DMK, is being called a family business, with him as cash collector-in-chief stationed in Delhi, where money can be made from thin air, literally—so long as telecom firms remain starved of this state-controlled resource, the very scarcity of which ensures the endurance of that relic called the Licence Raj in this business sector.

Telecom licences and chunks of airwave spectrum ought to be auctioned, as anything scarce with multiple buyers vying for it should be. In 2008, what Raja conveniently did instead was give the stuff away to a motley bunch on a first-come-first-serve basis—a practice without precedent—for a song. This, despite objections of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), and in total disregard for orders from the Prime Minister to use a fair and transparent method for awarding second generation (2G) spectrum to cellphone service firms. The estimated loss to the exchequer is in the Rs 20,000–60,000 crore range.

The investigating agencies are not ready to give Raja a clean chit yet, even as industrial groups which missed his generosity lobby hard for his dismissal from the Union Cabinet.

For the DMK, which won back its lost popular mandate in Tamil Nadu by levying heavy-duty corruption charges against former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, the mess looks especially bad because nobody believes Raja would have dared act solely on his own behalf. “Raja is one of the very few top-ranking DMK leaders who come from outside the Karunanidhi family,” says Cho Ramaswamy, a political observer, “He doesn’t have the guts to do anything without the knowledge of his party and its leadership.” That the party’s octogenarian supremo and current CM, M Karunanidhi, has bent backwards to defend Raja only arouses extra curiosity.

For Jayalalithhaa’s All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (AIADMK), this is a touché moment. She has dubbed him the most corrupt Tamil politician of all, and her party has wallpapered his hometown Perambalur with posters belittling him as ‘Spectrum Raja’ and ‘Kickback Raja’.

But Raja is not a worried man. A lawyer by training, he simply repeats his single line defence—that he did nothing illegal. And with Karunanidhi’s backing (who claims he’s being picked on for being Dalit), ousting Raja from his ministry could mean losing the DMK from the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) at a time the ruling coalition’s Parliamentary majority has already been whittled down.

What’s less clear is how exactly the telecom minister fits into the DMK matrix. Asks Ramaswamy, “Why is the CM solidly behind him when Raja has no clout with Stalin and Alagiri?” Some observers believe the party’s coddling of Raja can be traced to Karunanidhi’s younger daughter Kanimozhi, a Rajya Sabha member who had, along with her mother Rajathi Ammal, handled the shift of the telecom portfolio (under UPA I) to Raja from Dayanidhi Maran after the latter fell out with the supremo. It was a family feud which has been resolved since.

Here, a look at Karunanidhi’s family tree is instructive. He married twice after the death of his first wife. Stalin and Alagiri are among the four children from his second wife Dayalu, while Kanimozhi is the only daughter of Rajathi.

What Kanimozhi shares with Raja is a special camaraderie of letters, both being self-styled Tamil litterateurs. Raja’s detractors say Kanimozhi’s keenness to have Raja retained as telecom minister under UPA II has been exposed by phone conversations—eavesdropped upon by sleuths—that feature the alleged voice of PR honcho Niira Radia. “Raja is powerful because he enjoys the confidence of Rajathi Ammal and Kanimozhi. The recently released documents hint at their role in the kickbacks too. They show Radia had good relations with Ratnam, Rajathi’s chartered accountant who was involved in the DMK patriarch’s two family members’ investment in Swan Telecom, one of the establishments figuring in the spectrum controversy,” alleges AIADMK parliamentarian M Thambidurai.

From this angle, Karunanidhi’s affection for Kanimozhi is Raja’s best shield. A Dalit leader who represents the Nilgiri constituency, he is not new to controversy. Not too long ago, Justice R Raghupathy of the Madras High Court revealed that a Union minister had threatened him to grant bail to the accused in an education scam.

Raja had earlier stirred things up when he turned down CBI requests to prosecute some MTNL officials. Then, there was the matter of Raja’s role in awarding Chinese firms some telecom contracts despite misgivings from India’s security establishment.

Raja’s political career, however, seems unaffected. At 47, he is already a four-term MP. With a professed ideological leaning towards Periyar, Raja became a Dravida activist at age 11, joined the DMK in the late 1980s and was helped along by Dayanidhi’s father, the late DMK leader Murasoli Maran. Under the NDA, of which the DMK was a part, Raja had stints in the rural development and health ministries.

Senior Maran’s death in November 2003 made him the DMK’s pointsman in Delhi. “Raja is known for his exemplary skills in public relations,” says C Lakshmanan, associate professor at Madras Institute of Development Studies, “It may have helped him stay afloat all these years, but there are indications that he has difficult days ahead.” The day the Congress decides it doesn’t need the DMK, the air around him might thin faster than the telecom plot thickens.

Sittilingi's good doctors

Doctors on Call

By K A Shaji

How an idealistic couple is changing the lives of a tribal population in a rural outback of Tamil Nadu.

Sittilingi, in Dharmapuri district of Tamil Nadu, looks like an idyllic village. It is a lush hamlet located in a valley at the heart of four green hills. But till 1992, grief was terrifyingly common among the 80,000-odd tribals who lived in this area. With the nearest hospital some 100 km away, one of every five babies born in this valley died before its first birthday. The only recourse usually available was black magic. That is till doctor-couple Lalitha and Regi George arrived.

“The situation was appalling. Women gave birth in the dirty backyards of their huts. And in the process, they had to spend at least a week unclean and unattended,” remembers Lalitha. The idealistic couple—he from a prosperous Kerala Christian family and she from the Hindu royal family of Kochi—met in medical college and decided to forgo urban careers in favour of working in a rural spot. She is a gynaecologist, he an anaesthesiologist.

To figure out where the need was greatest, Regi set out on a road trip through various parts of India that eventually led to Sittilingi, with its 95 per cent tribal population. Till the couple came, superstition and sorcery supplemented illiteracy and malnourishment here.

The couple’s Tribal Health Initiative (THI) began functioning from a mud-thatched hut hospital in 1997. “Apart from direct care administering at the hospital, we wished to focus more on community health in general. In the beginning, it was very difficult to convince tribal women of modern medical practices,” recalls 51-year-old Regi. It took repeated house visits, lots of counselling, and one serendipitous event to finally convince the people.

“A woman with diarrhoea turned critical when black magicians performed crude rituals on her instead of administering medicines. After initial resistance, they allowed me to treat her and fortunately, she was cured. After that, people slowly started approaching us,” says Lalitha, 49.

With funds from friends and a few grants, THI has grown into a 24-bed hospital with a separate operation theatre, labour room, neo-natal room, emergency room, laboratory, even a special TB wing. Facilities like X-ray machine, laboratory, ultrasound machine are also available. THI has also trained a number of villagers as staff.

The outpatient department treats as many as 16,000 people a year. When the hospital began, the infant mortality rate here was 150/1,000. In 2008, that reduced to 30/1,000. “Women now deliver at the hospital and each pregnant woman gets at least three ante-natal check-ups during the maternity period. And there are no deaths due to pneumonia and malnutrition,” says Lalitha. And that’s why this outsider has come to be known as thai, or mother, in Sittilingi.

Propaganda on a Screen Near You

Entertainment in Tamil Nadu is almost entirely motivated by politics, and the DMK is nowhere near loosening its grip on audiences.

By T R Vivek and K A Shaji

Coming as he does from the Cauvery Delta town of Tiruvarur, DMK patriarch and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Muthuvel Karunanidhi fancies himself as a modern-day, mighty-yet-benevolent Chola ruler (and is often flattered by assorted celebrities as one). If Raja Raja Chola built the majestic and towering Brihadeeshwara Temple in Thanjavur, now a UN heritage site, Karunanidhi’s architectural contribution is a spanking new cylindrical monstrosity of a state legislature, green compliant and all. At the peak of the Chola dynasty’s might in the first century AD, their kingdom spanned all of South India, extending up to Bengal and even Southeast Asia. Today, the empire of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) is slightly short on territory, but the party never fails to remind voters that its writ runs in Delhi, and on matters of such national importance as the telecom policy.

But it’s in the sphere of arts and entertainment, and its deft usage in statecraft, much like the great Chola dynasty of ancient times, where the DMK’s enduring achievements lie. Just as it was with the empire 2,000 years ago, the Dravida party is now the purveyor and protector-in-chief of popular Tamil culture. The various branches of Karunanidhi’s extended family already have a vice-like grip on all things entertaining, and it’s only just the beginning. The family rules Tamil airwaves, a near monopoly player in the TV business, and is getting there fast with films as well. MK Stalin, the state’s deputy CM and patriarch’s heir apparent, has a 33-year-old son Udhayanidhi who turned film producer and distributor in 2008, with a production house called Red Giant Entertainment. Competitive family politics forced his first cousin and Union Fertiliser Minister MK Alagiri’s son Dayanidhi to follow as well. The result: a similar company called Cloud Nine. Two of the biggest blockbusters of recent times have come from their stable.

Dayanidhi Alagiri hit pay dirt earlier this year with Tamil Padam, a Tamil spoof (a la Om Shanti Om) of the 1970s and 1980s Kollywood films. In March this year, Udhayanidhi Stalin trumped his cousin at the turnstiles. His latest release, acclaimed director Gowtham Menon’s Vinnai Thandi Varuvaaya (VTV), is a slickly made candy-floss love story that has become the biggest Tamil hit in the last 12 months.

If it was a case of riding the gravy train for these DMK scions, film production was a matter of logical business expansion for Karunanidhi’s grand nephews, the Brothers Maran, who own the Rs 1,000 crore Sun TV Network. Their movie arm, Sun Pictures, distributed over a dozen films, and has recently landed Kollywood’s biggest catch. Sun is the producer of a top-billed Rajinikanth-Aishwarya Rai sci-fi flick being made on a budget in excess of Rs 100 crore. Not to be outdone, Red Giant will produce the next Kamal Haasan starrer.

The three banners put together have distributed and produced over 20 films in the last two years, and even old-time producers say they are fighting for survival in the state’s media and entertainment market, estimated at over Rs 3,000 crore in revenues. “Very soon, every Tamil film that comes out will be either distributed or produced by a ‘nidhi’. When they decide to produce a film, big-name directors and actors have very little choice but to sign on the dotted line, and when Cloud Nine distributes a film, the unwritten rule is that no other big banner film would be released at least for the next two-three weeks. It’s not the ideal situation for a creative industry to be in,” says a veteran filmmaker who’s worked with the legendary Sivaji Ganesan.

The added advantage that Sun Network and Stalin’s Red Giant have is the synergy their TV channels provide. Promotions of their productions are aired ad nauseam, and then there are rave reviews on TV shows as well.

“The DMK has hit upon a blockbuster of an idea that fortifies them financially to take on their political opponents, while giving them the soft power to influence the electorate’s tastes and choice. The party, or more specifically, Karunanidhi’s family effectively controls TV, films, cricket and even mainstream news media in the state,” says a veteran Chennai sociologist.While N Srinivasan, the state cricket chief, high ranking Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) official and owner of the Chennai IPL team, is known to be fairly close to the ruling family, the print media, pockets of which were trenchant DMK critics not so long ago, seem to have realised the virtues of political compliance. On Stalin’s birthday in the end of February, the Ananda Vikatan group, which runs magazines and makes TV software, published an anthology of hagiographic profiles on the politician penned by leading journalists. Media barons, film stars and well-regarded editors (local and national) all hailed Stalin in an apparent contest to cast him as a posterboy of good governance.

Tamil Nadu is entertainment crazed and has close to 50 round-the-clock TV channels that broadcast programmes with political overtones. There’s political merit in owning an audio-visual medium. Even Vijaykanth, the latest in the line of actor-turned-politicians, is expected to launch his Captain TV channel later this year to take on what he dubs ‘the Goebblesian propaganda’ of the DMK through the Sun TV Network and Kalaingar TV, which Karunanidhi’s immediate family owns.

“TV is the most convenient tool for politicians across Tamil Nadu to address their respective constituencies. So they are launching channels despite the fact that competition in the field is getting tough by each passing day. The heavy financial cost of running a channel is deterring no one,” observes P Radhakrishnan of Madras Institute of Development Studies.

Besides the Sun TV Network, the ruling DMK runs Kalaingar TV, launched a few years ago to weaken the influence of the Maran brothers who had fallen out of favour with the state’s first family. There has been a patch-up since, and the two networks now work in tandem, like a ‘double-barrel’ gun, in the phrase of an advertising agency chief in Chennai. The aim is to propagate the DMK’s ideology and showcase its governance. Characters in several soaps on these channels often make glowing references to the party’s Rs 2 per kg rice scheme or get admitted to rural hospitals under the aegis of a new health insurance scheme.

Caste also has a not so insignificant role. The script for Thekkathi Ponnu, a prime-time soap on Kalaingar TV, is based on life in Thevar society, a coveted ‘vote bank’ in the deep southern districts of the state, and eulogises its martial customs. As a counterpoint perhaps, the AIADMK-owned Jaya TV’s flagship soap Enge Brahmanan, scripted by Hindutva sympathiser Cho Ramaswamy, dramatises the virtues of the Manu Shastra and Vedic Brahminism.

Ground-level control of cable TV networks, gaining which often demands strongarm tactics, completes the dominance. Sun TV controls over two-thirds of the cable market through its subsidiary Sumangali Cable Vision (SCV). Back when the relationship between Karunanidhi and the Maran brothers was strained, the DMK government started the state-run Arasu Cable Corporation (ACC) to break SCV’s monopoly. Why the state needs to run a cable business and distribute free colour TV sets may baffle most economists, but in Tamil Nadu, the political returns are clear and obvious.

On his part, Alagiri started his own Royal Cable Vision (RCV) in the Madurai region. It created headlines for the first time when it blocked out Sun TV and its associate channels in the entire Madurai region. There began the politics of blocking the channels of rivals. The PMK-aligned Makkal TV and Jaya TV still routinely accuse Sun Network of blocking their channels in different parts of the state.

If Bollywood’s ‘reality filmmaker’ Ramgopal Varma wants a new ‘gonzo’ script, he could look at the incestuous cesspool of Tamil Nadu’s entertainment politics. And depending on how well he projects his effort, he may find producers and distributors lining up to back him.

God’s Own Drunk Country

The Kerala government is doing a deft balancing act of selling booze and opening de-addiction centres at the same time.

By K A Shaji

Keralites like to drink. And how! Per person a year, they drink eight litres of the demon drink. The national average is less than 2 litres. As many as 2 million Keralites drink every day, according to the Thiruvananthapuram-based Alcohol and Drugs Information Centre. Around 7 million others do so once a month. The age at which Keralites consume alcohol used to be 19 years in 1986; by 2009, it had come down to 13. Around 14 per cent of the state’s regular drinkers have behavioural problems.

The government loves it. It makes them a lot of money. The Kerala State Beverages Corporation is the monopoly distributor of Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) in Kerala. It is the only public sector undertaking that has consistently made profits, which rose from Rs 17.52 crore in 1997-98 to over Rs 100 crore in 2008-09. This alcoholic utopia might not be quite the hallmark of a welfare state, but things got stranger last week when Finance Minister TM Thomas Issac presented the state’s budget. He said the KSBC has been asked to open de-addiction centres for alcoholics. Subsidised healthcare for drunkards would be part of KSBC’s corporate social responsibility.

Concerned citizens in the Marxist ruled state are laughing at the peculiar logic of first creating addicts and then de-addicting them. It is alarming how drunk the population is getting. Last Onam, Kerala’s largest harvest festival that happens during September, Kerala gulped IMFL worth Rs 154.44 crore, an increase of 41.53 per cent over the previous year. Notwithstanding the global recession, sales were an all-time high of Rs 4,600 crore in 2008-09. Ten years ago, it was barely Rs 1,000 crore.

The above numbers are just sales returns from KSBC’s 330 outlets. Add to that the 56 privately owned bars and outlets of the co-operative Consumerfed. If one considers the amount of toddy sold through the 5,000-odd registered outlets, the total consumption would be mindboggling. Arrack, the highly popular cheap brew banned since 1995, flows freely. Its sales value is put at Rs 13,000 crore a year by the state police department. In IMFL, rum sells the most in Kerala, followed by brandy and whisky. The state’s annual liquor business is worth Rs 20,000 crore.

It would take an optimist of gargantuan proportions to believe that a few de-addiction centres solves anything. The government is bankrupt and with liquor being a cash cow, it has no choice but to grow the business. And that means making more people drunk. The contribution of IMFL sales to the state exchequer last year was more than Rs 3,000 crore. That is 25 per cent of the state’s total tax revenue. It gets an additional Rs 150 crore annually from auctioning 5,000-odd toddy shops. Who in his sober mind is going to kill the golden goose?

The Armenian Representative

With no Armenians left in Chennai, an Anglo-Indian takes care of this community’s historic 298-year-old church.

Till six years ago, Michael Stephen was caretaker of the 298-year-old Armenian Church, said to be one of the oldest centres of Christian worship in South India. Then the priest decided to turn infotech professional and left for Bangalore to work in a call centre, and with him went the last of the Armenians, once a sizeable community in the Tamil Nadu capital.

With no one to safekeep the ancient church, the community—there are 275 registered Armenians in India—contemplated bringing in priests from Armenia but the idea was dropped because of the language barrier. That was when the Kolkata-based Armenian Association approached 53-year-old Trevor Alexander, an Anglo-Indian, to be the caretaker. Now Trevor, his wife Loraine and daughter Rebecca live in the church compound, looking after the monument and its rare holy utensils.

Trevor feels there’s nothing strange about a Roman Catholic single-handedly handling the affairs of a church of a different congregation. Every morning, he ensures the church walls are dusted and the altar is cleaned. He also lights candles for the 350-odd Armenians, whose tombs are around the chapel. Every Sunday, Trevor rings all the six church bells at 9.30 am, a tradition that has continued for over 250 years.

Armenian globetrotters come occasionally to the church to kneel before Virgin Mary, in whose name it was built, and offer prayers. Trevor takes such visitors to the Armenian cemetery near Central Railway Station, to Arthoon Road in Royapuram that is named after an Armenian, to the Santhome church where two Armenian tombs are present and other city churches with Armenian ties.

“Only last week, a young visitor from the US told me the Arthoon Road was named after her great grandfather. There are several such Armenians from across the world who come here in search of their roots. Taking them around is also part of my duty,’’ says Trevor.

He says the Chennai church is an integral part of Armenian Christianity worldwide. “Rev Haruthian Shmavonian, editor of the first Armenian journal Azdarar, died in Chennai two centuries ago, and his tomb is in the church complex. He has a saintly status among Armenians all over the world and most of them visit the church whenever they are in India,’’ he says. Tamil Nadu Tourism recently included the church in the list of places with historic value, and so domestic tourists also visit the place on most days.

The Armenian Association, which is planning to celebrate the 300th year of the church in 2012, is not ready to hand it over to any external agency like the Archeological Survey of India. They are happy with Trevor’s caretaking