Kanniyakumari
Mani Medai Clock Tower
Photo: arunpnair_787 · CC BY-SA 4.0
Nagercoil & the Pass · Heritage

Mani Medai Clock Tower

மணிமேடை

An 1893 clock tower at the centre of Nagercoil's traffic

You arrive

You do not visit Mani Medai so much as get caught in the traffic around it. The tower stands on a small island at the centre of a busy junction, with shop signs and overhead wires crowding in from every side. Its pointed metal roof rises above all of that, an odd and lovely shape against the sky. You wait for a gap in the vehicles, cross carefully, and look up.

Mani Medai Clock Tower
Mani Medai Clock Tower · Photo: Infocaster at English Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0
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From across the junction

Begin at a distance, since you cannot see the tower properly from directly underneath. Find a safe place at the edge of the junction and take in the whole form: square tiers, arched details, and the sharply pitched roof with its fringed edge. Photographs from 2007 and 2017 show it painted in quite different colours, teal and yellow in one, red, white and yellow in the other. Notice what it wears today.

Mani Medai Clock Tower
Mani Medai Clock Tower · Photo: Infocaster at English Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0
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At the base

Close up, look for the plaque reading 1893, the year of its inauguration. An external staircase climbs to a balcony holding a statue, and a low wall keeps the traffic at bay around the base. The clock face is high above you. Be aware that Wikipedia reports it has stopped working, with no expert available to repair it. You are looking at a landmark that no longer does the job it was built for.

Mani Medai Clock Tower
Mani Medai Clock Tower · Photo: arunpnair_787 · CC BY-SA 4.0
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The city going around it

Stand a moment and watch how the city uses this place. Buses, motorbikes and autos swing around the island, and for many people here Mani Medai is simply a way of giving directions. That is a sort of survival in itself. Walk the nearby streets when you have seen enough, and look back at it now and then, framed by wires and signboards, still the point that everything turns around.

Being here

You see

A pointed metal roof rising above wires and shop signs.

You hear

Horns and engines circling the junction.

You smell

Exhaust and the mixed air of a commercial street.

You feel

The heat of the road and the jostle of a busy junction.

The story

The clock tower was built at the centre of Nagercoil to mark a visit by Sri Moolam Thirunal, ruler of Travancore, and he inaugurated it on 15 February 1893. Designed by Hogeorf and S. Horesly of England, it houses a clock presented to the Maharajah by the missionary Rev. Duthie. The mechanism, attributed to Smith of Derby, ran on a weight and a 60-foot chain through pulleys. Wikipedia describes the tower as a landmark in a state of neglect and says the clock has stopped because nobody with the expertise is available. Since 2009 it has been under private care through a contract with the municipality, and the sponsor renovated it in 2010 and 2012.

Sources: Wikipedia: Nagercoil Clock Tower · Wikimedia Commons: Clock Tower, Nagercoil (2007) · Wikimedia Commons: Nagercoil Clock Tower (2017)

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Photo: Infocaster at English Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0
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