Tondaimandalam · Eastern Coastal Plains
Festivals
| Festival | When | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| The Madras Music Season | Mid-December to mid-January, with the fringe running from November | Several dozen sabhas run concurrent concerts across the city for about six weeks — well over a thousand performances by hundreds of musicians and dancers, on season tickets, with the halls' canteens forming a parallel and seriously discussed circuit of their own. It grew out of a music conference held in Madras in 1927 and the academy founded from it, and it is among the largest cultural events anywhere. |
| Margazhi | mid-December–mid-January | The month itself is the festival. Pre-dawn processions singing Andal's Tiruppavai and the Shaiva Tiruvempavai, larger kolams at every threshold, Vaikunta Ekadasi at the Vaishnava temples, and no weddings at all. |
| Arupathimoovar at Mylapore | Panguni, March or April | The images of the sixty-three Nayanmar saints are taken through the four Mada streets around the Kapaleeshwarar temple in a single day-long procession, with the streets closed and the whole neighbourhood on the pavement. |
| The Draupadi Amman festival and theemithi | Aadi and Vaikasi, varying by village | Up to eighteen nights of Therukoothu performance of the Mahabharata, ending with vow-keepers walking across a bed of embers. It is the characteristic village festival of this plain and is kept in the same form by Tamil communities across the Indian Ocean. |
| Athi Varadar darshan | Once in forty years; last held in 2019 | The fig-wood image kept submerged in the Varadaraja Perumal temple tank is raised, dried and displayed for some weeks. In 2019 it drew crowds in the millions and the town ran on shift queues for a month and a half. |
| Mamallapuram Dance Festival | December–January, over several weeks | Classical dance performed on an open stage with the Descent of the Ganga relief as the backdrop — a twentieth-century programme, but the only context in which most visitors see the relief lit at night. |
| Bastille Day in Puducherry | 14 July | Veterans of the French forces parade, the tricolour and the Indian flag are both flown, and the town keeps a public holiday that exists nowhere else in the country. It is a small event and a genuinely local one. |
| Masi Magam | Masi, February or March | Temple images from inland shrines are carried to the sea and immersed, with the Puducherry and Mamallapuram beaches among the main sites. Thousands bathe at the same hour. |
| Navaratri and the golu | Purattasi–Aippasi, September or October | Nine nights of tiered doll displays in the house, with visitors invited to see them and sent away with sundal, kumkum and a song — the visiting is the festival as much as the display is. |
The festival calendar of Tondaimandalam — what is celebrated, when it falls and what happens. (9)