One of Evie's best friends is moving soon, so we invited him and his mom to come along with us when we took Sarah to visit Fort St. George, erstwhile seat of power for the British East India Company and (here).
Here are Evie and Ruben manning one of the cannons outside the fort's museum. Evie has taken the role of commander, as is her habit.
My favorite thing to look at in the museum is the collection of the company's porcelain, used for "state" dinners. How did a company get so much power? They even had their own army, with which they conquered much of India. It only became the British Raj after the crown took over the company. It's incredible to think that a private group, as opposed to a nation, had that kind of power.
Striking a pose ...
The kids had a great time with this model of the fort ... until a security guard got huffy about a little thing like touching it.
Upstairs there's a portrait gallery with paintings that I think must have hung in the governor's mansion. Here's one of Queen Victoria.
An old painting of the fort ...
Fort St. George houses Tamil Nadu's state government offices, and we had to navigate the crowds and dodge the autorickshaws to get to St. Mary's Church and (here), the oldest Anglican Church in India.
I love reading the grave stones in the church yard, which are the oldest known in India. Ruben's mom Kirstin and I found one for a young mother and her baby, which got us thinking and talking about what Chennai must have been like for those early Europeans.
Ruben and Evie enjoying the church garden ...
Sarah said the tree the kids are standing under looks like a walking tree, which can move up to a foot every year by growing new roots in the direction of light and allowing old roots to die. The exposed roots make me think it might be a banyan tree, which "walks" in the way Sarah described, and which I just discovered is the national tree of India. Any botanists care to comment?
Inside the church we found this woman weaving new cane into a pew ...
... and all kinds of memorials, including this one remembering a soldier who died of sunstroke after a battle. Not too surprising, considering that they wore woolen uniforms!
The flagpole at the fort was orginally made with the mast of a 17th-century sunken ship, though the wooden pole has been replaced with a metal one. It's supposedly the tallest flag pole in India.
And just to prove that Indians don't bother themselves with arguments over separation of church and state, the Anglican church inside is matched by a busy Hindu temple at the fort's exit.
These nine idols represent the navagraha, or nine influential planets in Hindu astrology. Sarah did a jewelry tour (I missed it because Samuel was sick), where she learned that the navagraha are sometimes represented as nine sacred gems, the navaratna.
I like visiting Fort St. George. It's one of those places that mashes the old, the new, and the ancient into one colorful mess.
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