The Gods Are In The Details

Spirituality infuses every part of Tamil Nadu, from the temples to the trees. Hor at io Cl ar e journeys through the state’s colorful layers of history and finds an India unlike any other.

On the Coast of Coromandel Where the early pumpkins blow, In the middle of the woods Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo...

As a child I assumed that these lines by Edward Lear, England’s 19th-century master of nonsense poetry, described a magical home for the Yonghy, his fantastical protagonist. So it was with a shiver of thrill, as at a spell taking effect, that I landed in Chennai, on India’s southeastern shore—the actual Coast of Coromandel. Lear himself visited the city in the 1870s, when it was called Madras.

Lear’s primary modes of transportation then were bullock carts and sedan chairs. I was grateful to be riding in a Toyota minivan steered by my driver, S. Jayapaul Sreenevasan, a gentleman of courtly manners dressed entirely in immaculate white, who navigated the roaring capital of the state of Tamil Nadu with a mixture of nerve and verve. The morning rush hour was thick with traffic, crow calls, and the salty air of the Bay of Bengal.