Dakshinachitra

Dakshinachitra is the cultural heritage center located on the ECR highway. On 28th September, the last day of dussehra as well as the last day of my long weekend, we (myself and Jeevi) planned to visit Dakshinachitra. We started at around 2.10 PM and reached there at around 2.50PM. It was a pleasant 40 minutes drive from my home (thiruvanmiyur) to the Dakshinachitra in the ECR highway. This place is located just a couple of metres next to MGM Dizzy world theme park.

The entrance fee for this place costs Rs. 75/- per head and a small mini map is provided along with the ticket to explore the place. We soon realized that this place is meant to reflect the culture and lifestyle of the south-indians during the ancient period. This Heritage center is broadly divided into four regions Kerala, TamilNadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. There are model houses built in each region in their style. Inside each model house, there are arts, photos, idols, articles, jewels, clothes etc used in ancient period are put on display.

Though Kerala and Tamilnadu regions are very impressive and have a lot of infrastructure, the Karnataka and the Andhra Pradesh regions are still under construction. At each structure, there are some activities performed like grinding rice using ancient grinding equipments, Pottery, Puppet making using paper, glass blower etc. In addition to this, the Heritage center consists of an art gallery, Library, Restaurant and Craft shop. The art gallery and library available are not very impressive; the Library has very few books. The art gallery has photos of our ancient Chennai and rare paintings. Through one of the employee over there, we came to know that there are dance classes and special programs conducted on the Sunday and there are guest house facilities available in this place for a nominal price.

Though I wouldn’t recommend anyone to visit this place with friends, but it’s really a good place to hang around with family. This place could be more informative and fun for a foreigner, who is unaware of Indian culture rather than for a south Indian like me. For some reason or the other, jeevi was really impressed with this Place. After spending around two and half hours at this place, we started back to home at 5.40 PM.

On way back home, we thought to visit the ISKON temple. The ISKON also known as “Hare Rama Hare Krishna” temple is located opposite to VGP Golden Beach at the ECR. This temple is under construction. Since it was too dark, I couldn’t get a better picture of the place. Since the place is located a KM interior to the ECR highway and the way is not safe to be visited during night, we left the place early and reached home safely at around 7 PM.