The Celebration
Originally, this celebration used to last for a day but now it extends for a week. Madras Day focuses on the city, its history, its past and its present and the core team motivates communities, groups, companies and campuses in the city to host events that celebrate the city. The celebration consists of events such as heritage walks (including a "tree walk"), public talks, exhibitions, poetry reading sessions, public performances, food festivals and special programs on local radio. It also includes contests such as, T-shirt designing, documentary film contest, multimedia presentation for schools and quiz in both Tamil and English. T-shirts to mark the event are also released. The talks delivered to mark the week long celebrations usually involve lectures explaining the heritage and history of the city. There are also events for the retired citizens where they can post their life years ago on the "Stories about Madras section" on Madras day's website and their views on how Madras grew into the Chennai of today.
Indian postal department released a postal cover to commemorate Madras day on 22 August 2007.
Read more about this topic: Madras Day
Famous quotes containing the word celebration:
“No annual training or muster of soldiery, no celebration with its scarfs and banners, could import into the town a hundredth part of the annual splendor of our October. We have only to set the trees, or let them stand, and Nature will find the colored drapery,—flags of all her nations, some of whose private signals hardly the botanist can read,—while we walk under the triumphal arches of the elms.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“And, indeed, is there not something holy about a great kitchen?... The scoured gleam of row upon row of metal vessels dangling from hooks or reposing on their shelves till needed with the air of so many chalices waiting for the celebration of the sacrament of food. And the range like an altar, yes, before which my mother bowed in perpetual homage, a fringe of sweat upon her upper lip and the fire glowing in her cheeks.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)