VGP Golden Beach Resort, Chennai, India

Most people from America go to India to see its antiquities. The U.S., after all, is only 200 some odd years old; this, compared to India’s millennia. Relative to what India has to offer devotees of antiquity, everything from Plymouth Rock to Disney World is kitsch.

But India too has kitsch. I’ve passed it often on the way down and back from Mahabalipuram, on the ocean side of the East Coast Road: VGP Golden Beach Resort. It consists of 33 oceanfront acres of family fun. There is an amusement park, hotel and restaurants. The prime attraction, of course, is the beach. It is there that most people gather after having paid Rs. 150 entrance fee.

I was reading about Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, NJ filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy – not surprising with the recession and all hitting New Jersey especially hard. Still, I read that attendance at Florida’s Disney World is also down. Yet, by all accounts, they’re still hanging in. And I ask myself, WHY? So, I came up with a theory that has probably not much to do with anything, but here goes anyway:

Maybe, for a theme park to be successful – to give it the edge, so to speak – it needs to be character based. Disney has all those delightful Disney characters; ditto France’s Parc Astérix. VGP’s Universal Kingdom Amusement Park has the gods and goddesses from the Mahabharata throughout the park. There’s Shiva dancing; Vishnu reclining; Buddha meditating and all those voluptuous multi-limbed attendant maidens poised gracefully in stone. There are sculpted elephants, horses, mermaids, birds, etc. – all to make visitors feel comfortable thus surrounded by their traditions. Six Flags has six flags and rides, which is quite enough for the 13-21 set, but often leaves those paying the bill strangely empty – especially in the wallet.

The pictures I took at VGP (named for its founder, V.G. Paneerdas) were mostly of the characters that seemed to make the entire extravaganza come to life. It was interesting to see the families enjoying themselves under the lush shade of greenery. It was a garden like none I had ever seen before, opening up to a broad view of The Bay of Bengal just beyond a gentle rise. The warning flags were up the day we went. There was a storm out at sea, kicking up the surf. Still, the people were gathered at the waterline, cooling their wrists and ankles.

It’ll likely never be a tourist spot for the Asia cruise crowd unless they happened to bring the young ones along, but it’s nevertheless an example of how India manages to copy the West in so many ways without giving in to the impulse to totally give in to Western pressures, thus managing to preserve an essence of its own. The amusement park was specifically built to give the people of Chennai a world class amusement park – a boyish fantasy, perhaps – but nevertheless a dream made real by a twelve-year old who left his rural village to arrive in the city of his dreams (Madras) with only the clothes on his back and the drive, vision and endurance required to succeed. Today, VGP Holdings is vast and worth in excess of Rs. 5 Billion and growing every year.

Peter Koelliker; pkoelliker8@yahoo.com