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The Hindu
The Hindu
National
Sandip Roy

Tamil Nadu’s colourful Chettiar mansions bear testimony to a world that was more open to the other

I thought I knew the traditional emblems of the foreign-returned in India — Camay soaps, Danish butter cookies and KitKat bars.

Then I went to Chettinad.

There I discovered new symbols of the foreign-returned from 100 years ago, things that did not fit into suitcases as neatly as soaps, biscuits and chocolates.

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