The delightful architectural jumble that is Chettinad

So much of Chettinad is improbable that where the magic ends and the realism begins is hard to determine

- Rahul Jacob

To wander through an inner courtyard with a display of the silver, brassware and lacquer that would typically accompany a Nattukotai Chettiar bride to her new home is to immediately understand why so many Chettinad mansions have rooms with large locks on them. The 50-60kg of silverware included salvers and fruit baskets that could have doubled as props for Downton Abbey.

Walking visitors around the dining room, large enough for a state banquet, with Chettinad saris dropped from the high ceiling as if for a kite festival for giants, Sivagami Subbiah remarked that the last large celebration in the house was her wedding more than three decades ago.

Her poignant comment brought back the discussion from lunch with visitors from Mumbai and Goa that Chettinad would be ideal for destination weddings. Indeed, it is hard to think of a place other than Sicily where gigantic homes in a jumble of architectural styles ranging from Neo Classical to Art Nouveau to Art Deco rise out of an arid, rural landscape as if in a hallucination. The Nattukotai Chettiars, however, are likely too reticent a community to hire out their homes, jammed full of silverware and other family heirlooms, as marriage halls.

Instead, the Chettinad Heritage and Cultural Festival, the second edition of which was held earlier this month, is a sumptuous alternative. Evenings featured concerts by flautists, dance performances and talks by the photographer Bharath Ramamrutham and the historian Manu Pillai. Mornings featured tours around ninth century temples in the area and walks through palaces built in the 19th and early 20th centuries by the Nattukotai Chettiars as a celebration of their success in banking and trade in Burma (now Myanmar) and South-East Asia.