Imagine you’re a sailor out in the Bay of Bengal. Imagine you’re caught in a storm. And with your GPS and other digital navigation systems floundering, your only hope for survival is to find land and find it quick... When, suddenly, you see that ever so faint light, reappearing like a heartbeat on the horizon, and you steer your vessel, the largest of containers or the smallest of sailboats, towards it, towards land. At a longitude of 13 degrees 2 minutes and 22 seconds, that beacon can only mean the Marina lighthouse on Chennai’s coastline.
Built to an imposing 58-metre height and overlooking the Marina beach, the lighthouse has for 37 years emanated four 10-second blinks every minute, visible up to a distance of 50km (26 nautical miles). It was closed to the public in the mid-’80s for a range of reasons — from security concerns, owing to its proximity to the director general of police’s office diagonally opposite it, to rumours of a woman plunging to death from atop it.
Growing up in Madras, the lighthouse was always on my bucket list of sorts, ever-present at the end of the Marina but never accessible. So when it finally reopened its doors to visitors last year, I got to see the inside of a structure that dominates our image of the city. And the footfalls — about 2,000 a day — since the reopening prove that I’m not alone in feeling this way.
“It’s part of a larger project to renew 15 lighthouses across India,” says K Sakthi, deputy director (Directorate of Lighthouses and Lightships), in the Ministry of Shipping office at Deep Bhavan in the city. “We’re renewing the Mahabalipuram lighthouse as well. The one on Marina though is special because it’s the only inner-city lighthouse in the country, and the pride of our operations.” Under a collaboration between the Ministry of Tourism and Ministry of Shipping, renovated lighthouses along the country’s coastline will soon play host to ‘lighthouse tourism’.
At the Marina lighthouse, R Neelakandan, a navigational assistant, acts as our guide and directs us to a small museum set up recently on the ground floor. “This was earlier the generator room,” he says. Dipping into the State’s rich maritime history, he explains the various exhibits that include samples of previous light sources, maritime instruments such as sextants and compasses as well as replicas of lighthouses in other parts of the country, including its only floating lighthouse on a ship near Jamnagar, Gujarat. The show-stealer, however, is undoubtedly the rotating two-metre, white light lantern assembly that was originally commissioned for the lighthouse on Karumbhar Island in the Gulf of Kutch.
“The Olakaneeswara temple, in Mahabalipuram, where a bonfire is said to be lit every night atop the temple to guide sailors is believed to be the first lighthouse in Tamil Nadu,” says Neelakandan. In Madras Lighthouse, ICR Prasad, a lighthouse official and researcher writes how this was done by using 12 coconut oil wick lamps, behind which 12 reflecting mirrors were placed for better beam formation.
Before the Marina lighthouse was built in 1977, there were three others at different points along the coastline — the first was inside Fort St George, the first British fortress built in India in 1644, while the second and third lighthouses were built within the Madras High Court premises. While the Marina lighthouse has changed places down the years, what has remained unchanged is its reflector glass setup manufactured by Chance Brothers in Birmingham, England, and first installed on June 1, 1894.
From the museum, we accompany Neelakandan in the lift to the 10th floor, where a stunning view of the Bay and the city’s coastline await us. The panorama takes in the 16th-century Santhome Church flanked by the slum tenements in Foreshore Estate and the Marina beach, numerous government buildings that stand out for their Indo-Saracenic architecture and, of course, the ships on water. One floor above us is the light itself, accessed only by the staff. The coastguard has installed several pieces of equipment at the lighthouse, including a radar beacon, a National Automatic Identification System (NAIS) antenna, Sonar equipment and a static camera with a 15-km zoom, all of which are remote controlled.
After an hour at the top, we finally descend to the ground level. From the outside, the standard navy protocol red-and-white structure looks just like I have always remembered it, but now that I have seen the inside of it, it will never be the same.
The Chennai lighthouse is open from 10am to 1pm and 3pm to 5pm, on all days except Mondays. Tickets are priced ₹10 for adults, ₹5 for children.