Diwali Night

As I type this,whooshes and explosions surround me on all sides.The windows periodically light up with different colours. Any non-Indian would probably think I'm in a war-zone. But it's just Diwali in Bangalore.

I didn't think much of Diwali when I was a kid. Unlike today, we didn't have too many varieties of fire-crackers back then. There were the the usual sparklers in white and red and green, and there were the chakrams (wheels) and the conical thing that goes whoosh into the air with a lot of light, I can't remember the name of it. If we were lucky, there would be one or two rockets, and a big red malappadakkam, which was scary. These would be saved till the end, and only one of the grown-ups was allowed to light them.

When we became a little older, we decided that crackers were for kids, and stopped pestering our parents to buy them. I think this was also the time the Sivakasi child labour aspect gained publicity, so that may have played a part. And so Diwali became just another holiday for us - no crackers or lights or anything. It helped that we Malayalis don't celebrate Diwali in any case. We have no puja or sweets associated with Diwali.

It wasn't until we moved to Delhi that I realized how big Diwali actually is as a festival. Our first Diwali there, we went up to the roof of the house to see the fireworks. Flowers of light bloomed all around us. Rockets went up into the sky with a whoosh and exploded. Below us, our neighbours lit sparklers wished each other. And then it hit me, in a way it had never hit me before, that the ENTIRE CITY was celebrating that night. Young and old, rich and poor, everybody could see and enjoy these lights.

I didn't think much of it back then, but apparently there is a reason that Malayalis don't celebrate Diwali. Somebody told me once that it's because Diwali is associated with Rama's victory over Ravana. Apparently we Malayalis identify more with Ravana than with Rama. But that didn't make much sense to me. Why would we identify with a Sri Lankan king?

The story I heard recently makes more sense. Apparently, Vamana vanquished our beloved King Mahabali on Diwali day. For us, it's less about the victory of some North Indian king over some Sri Lankan king, and more about our own king being sent underground, poor guy.

But Diwali seems to be spreading south as well, if how Bangalore is tonight is any indication. Maybe it's the number of North Indians here, or maybe it's the fact that it's such a fun festival, but Bangalore tonight reminds me of that first Diwali night in Delhi long ago.

Trivandrum Through Green Glasses

In Trivandrum, in the house that is 'home' still for another six months, it always sounds like it's raining. The house is surrounded by trees - coconut trees and banana plants of course, but also teak and jack-fruit and mango and coffee and others I don't know the names of. They loom over the house and protect it from the sun, but not from the rain. The wind riffles through their leaves up above, and I'm always looking out of the windows, fooled by the wind and the semi-darkness, to check if it's raining.

Why is it that these trees don't exist in Bangalore? Why is it that the first thing people do when they want to build a house is cut off all the trees in sight? Is there a law that says that the size of a city must be inversely proportional to the density of trees? Does that mean that these trees will soon disappear from Trivandrum too?

Trivandrum, it seems to me, has managed growth well. Technopark is one of the three largest IT parks in India, but it is situated well outside the main city; visitors can go there directly from the airport without having to touch the city proper. Around Technopark, multi-storeyed apartment buildings are coming up one after the other. Fast food restaurants have popped up like so many mushrooms after rain.

It's a strange sight. Coconut trees, thousands upon thousands of them, lay a green carpet along the shore of a lagoon. And between these coconut trees, a few tall cuboids, mostly white, have sprung up, and they hold their heads up proudly, despite being outnumbered by the trees. Technopark is expanding; I saw construction as I went by yesterday, ugly glass buildings that will suck up electricity. Soon, more people will arrive to occupy those glass office buildings. And then more tall cuboids will spring up among the coconut trees, until finally the coconut trees will be lost amidst all the white buildings. And that will be that.

Ah well - it's selfish of me to want things to remain the same. After all, Bangaloreans have been forced to give up their peaceful city and put up with migrants like me.

But then again - maybe I'll go back to Trivandrum too. Every time I visit, I sit on the terrace staring at the greenery, and I think of the drabness of Bangalore, and I shudder at the thought of going back. If it's so bad for me, a city girl, imagine how it must be for the true-blue village-born Malayali who has to go back not to the well-behaved benignity of Bangalore, but to the torturous sick desert heat of the Gulf.

It's such an irony that Malayalees, despite having such a beautiful home, choose to live outside all their lives, toiling in hot yellow deserts and cold grey cities, only to come back in their old age to Kerala and spend all their money on opulent houses, painted all the colours of the rainbow and then some.

***

Trivandrum is actually a nice little city, especially when it's not summer. It has cute narrow roads that go up and down like a roller-coaster. It has colonial buildings that look like red ice cream houses with silver icing. It has a pretty boast-worthy culturati. It has the sea, and really - what more do you need?

The Real House

I learnt last month that the house that partly inspired this story has been demolished. An apartment building is going to come up in its place, each flat selling at the astronomical initial rate of Rs 5, 500 per square foot. Like dozens of other old houses in Trivandrum, this house too had become out-of-date, it couldn't live on in the new century, in the new Trivandrum.

(For those who've read the story, don't worry - the owner of the house, my grandmother's eldest sister, is not in the situation I've described in the story. She has five sons who take very good care of her.)

I couldn't help feeling a little sad about the house's demise, though I was never more than a casual visitor to the place. Somehow, despite never having spent too much time there, I have very clear memories of the house. But then, large houses are quite magical to young kids, especially when the adults are busy and the kids are left to their own devices. My brother and I have explored the large grounds, played hide-and-seek in the rooms, read books on the verandah.

I think the only occasion on which I spent a few days there at a stretch was during the monsoons of the year I was five. The house we were staying in at that time was on the banks of the Karamana Aar, and it flooded. Our house was in knee-deep water. To make matters worse, both my brother and I had chicken-pox. So we shifted to the grand-aunt's large house for a few days. Of course, I've also visited the house multiple times over the years I've spent in Trivandrum.

The house had a rare characteristic - two gates, one on either side, because the house was on a large plot between two roads. On one side, the road was much lower than the house, and steep steps led down to the gate. This gate was supposed to be the front entrance of the house, but later on, when cars became more common, the back gate of the house was more frequently used. The front gate was locked pretty much all the time. I remember my brother and used to find the moss-covered steps leading down to the front gate spooky - we rarely played there.

My grandmother's father built the house for his eldest daughter after she got married. So it can't be more than fifty or sixty years old, because she got married in the late forties. The rooms are not as small and dark as rooms in older Kerala houses generally are. They have high ceilings, large windows, cold red floors. Somehow, despite being so large, the house always seemed very warm and welcoming to me. I don't know if it was the house itself, or the warmth of the people who lived there.

I find it so weird that the house now lives on only in the memories of the people who lived there and visited there. Also, if I feel so sad about the house's demolition, I wonder how the five sons of my great-aunt must feel - they grew up there.

But I guess time has to pass, and the world has to change.

Mistress - Anita Nair

Mistress is the story of four people - Shyam, a resort-owning businessman in the town of Shornur in Kerala; Radha, his wife; Koman, a Kathakali artist and Radha's uncle; and Chris, an American journalist who is visiting Shornur to interview Koman. 

The novel has two different threads. One is Koman's story, as he narrates it to Chris. The other is the love triangle of Radha-Shyam-Chris. Radha and Chris are attracted to each other from the beginning, and the fact that Radha and Shyam's marriage is a sham doesn't help. Running through everything and acting as a colourful backdrop is Kathakali, the Kerala art form. 

I have mixed feelings about the book, though it's more positive than negative. The negative was the writing, which stuck me as forced sometimes. But perhaps that's just me and my mallu-ness. The fact that I know the place and the people and the language probably made the descriptions feel slightly stilted.

But I loved everything else. The characters are brilliant - especially Radha and Shyam. Radha is a snooty  convent-educated city-girl, and Shyam is an ambitious small-town guy. Their emotions and the realities of their marriage are scarily real. Though I was tempted to sympathize with Radha initially (Shyam treats her really badly), we're also shown Shyam's perspective, why he does the things that irritate Radha so much, how helpless he feels against Radha's snootiness. And we start sympathizing with him as well. 

Koman the Kathakali Artist still feels slightly... 'wispy' is the word that comes to mind - insubstantial. This despite the fact that the focus shifts to him in the latter half of the book. He's too much of an idealist, not as flawed and real as the other two. But perhaps such people do exist in the art world - I haven't met too many artists. 

Kerala is depicted in all her glory. The rains, the greenery, the arts. Nair has divided the book into nine chapters, and used the nine expressions of dance to title each. She also manages to link each of the nine expressions to Kerala's weather. Setting the novel against the backdrop of Kathakali was a brilliant idea too. Some of the most vivid narrations are of Koman's performances, and of the mythological stories that underlie them.

Nair's main strength seems to be in depicting emotions - she starts off strong with the Radha and Shyam story. But the parts of the book that deal with Koman's life and loves are weak. I got the sense that she had tried to include too many things, and ran out of time and pages. The ending is weak and flat as well. It's inconclusive - I was left wanting to know what finally HAPPENS. 

***

Now that I've read this book, I'm very tempted to do some research on Kathakali. It's shameful that I know so little about the most majestic art form of my own state. Admittedly, Kathakali, though colourful and mysterious, has a high entry barrier. The padams are in an old form of Malayalam that isn't easily understood. And the way it's sung doesn't help either. But I'm hoping that the internet will help me overcome these difficulties - Youtube-aaya Namaha!

***

The cover page of the book I read features half of a made-up Kathakali face, and is brilliant (part of the image is featured at the top of this post).

But I found the image on the left while googling, and just had to crib about how stupid and wrong it is. A Malayali woman does NOT wear toe-rings. She's unlikely to be wearing silver anklets either. 

Interestingly, it was extremely difficult to find the right cover image. When I googled, I got more photos of the author than the book cover! I guess Anita Nair is so photogenic herself that her book covers tend to get lost on the net.

W is for Wayanad

Are you sick of my Wayanad travelogues yet? This is my fourth post this month that features Wayanad - all written for the A to Z Challenge of course. (Here are the others - the trip to Calicut and Wayanad, the Edakkal Caves, the trek up Chembra Peak)

But I can't help it. I've visited the district twice in the last one month, after a gap of at least four years. (Here's a post on Thirunelly Temple from the 2009 visit.) The trip last weekend was at least my fourth visit to the district. 

Before my recent visits, I used to think that Wayanad was over-hyped - that it had become so famous only because it's so close to Bangalore. It's a quick nature-filled weekend getaway for the pollution-weary residents of Bangalore.

Maybe it's because I've now become one of those weary Bangalore citizens that Wayanad seems so much more appealing now. I've become a confirmed Wayanad fan. The greenery, the variety of places to see, the now-familiar towns and villages.

Strangely enough, the trip last weekend was the first time I was travelling from Bangalore to Wayanad by car. There were four of us, and we had hired a taxi for the weekend. We had been told that the road through Bandipur National Park is closed from 6 PM to 6 AM. And there was no way we could leave Bangalore on Friday afternoon. So we left early on Saturday morning - around three. 

The drive through the empty Bangalore roads was surreal - I've never seen Bangalore so empty. We were out of the city in no time. While we were on Mysore Road, I was thinking of how choked and dusty and LOUD the road is during the day, and thanking our own planning skills. 

The towns went by quickly. I mostly slept till Mysore, but kept waking up in between and heard the names of the towns we were passing through. Channapatna - famous for its colourful toys; Mandya - famous for its sugarcane; Srirangapatna - famous for its Tipu Sultan. 

After Mysore, I changed to the front seat, since I had had the most sleep out of the three in the back seat. It was around six, and dawn was just breaking. The crickets were creating a huge racket amongst the trees on either side. Beyond the trees, the fields stretched out to infinity. 

We got slightly lost around Nanjangud. The driver decided to take a left for some reason, whereas he should have just stayed on the straight road. But we somehow found our way back to the main road. The detour wasn't entirely a bad thing, because we passed a beautiful temple on the way. But I started using the Google Maps app on my phone because of this incident - which would prove disastrous later on in the journey.

On and on we went, passing quickly through barely-there towns and villages, till we reached Gundlupet. I must say, the roads were superb. They're not as good as Tamil Nadu highways, which are wide and multi-laned and have good signals, but they were miles ahead (no pun intended) of the roads you generally find in Kerala. It also helped, I suppose, that they were empty.

We took a right at Gundlupet to enter the road leading to Bandipur. Though we were now passing through forest, the trees were dry and scraggy, because we were on the rain-shadow region of the Western Ghats. It was difficult to believe that the lush greenery of Wayanad would start just a few dozen kilometers ahead, once we'd crossed the hills.

The trip through Bandipur was strange, at least for me. Just a couple of days before, we had seen a pic on Facebook of a car smashed out of existence in Bandipur by a lone elephant. One person had been killed. We kept looking around for signs of rampaging elephants. Nikhil scared us by telling us that elephants could run at sixty kilometers per hour. 

But we crossed safely, and cheered when we saw the "Welcome to Kerala" sign at the border. More forest lay ahead, but it somehow felt safer. 

Unfortunately, we got lost on our way to the homestay we had booked. The homestay owner had sent us the route details by SMS. If we had stuck to that route, we would have reached just fine. But my Google Maps told me different, and we used my route. The thing is, Google Maps tells you the shortest route - it doesn't consider the state of the roads. And the roads in Wayanad are pretty terrible once you're off the main highways. So we ended up spending at least half an hour more on the road than we should have, and reached the homestay only by 10:30 in the morning.

On this trip, we visited Banasura Sagar Dam, Pookot Lake, Lakkidi Point and Chembra Peak. I will hopefully summon up enough energy to write about these soon. But only once the A to Z Challenge is over!

T is for Trekking: Up Chembra Peak

This post is part of the A to Z Challenge.

The first I saw of Chembra Peak was a dot on a map of Wayanad during our Calicut-Wayanad trip last month. We didn't have time that weekend to attempt a climb, but I knew we would be back soon enough. So when Anu excitedly included a trek up Chembra Peak in the itinerary of our Wayanad trip last weekend, I was very happy.

The best time to visit Chembra, we were told, was early morning. Get there around seven, and be done with the climb in three-four hours. The top half of the peak was shut for the summer, unfortunately - the authorities feared forest fires because of the heat. We could trek up half way, till the famously heart-shaped Love Lake, and then climb back down. 

The route to Chembra is off NH 212, a little after Kalpetta when you're travelling from the north. It was nine by the time we reached Chembra - we had left our homestay late, and had decided to have breakfast before climbing.  

The tickets have to be bought at a place lower down the slopes. The entry fee is Rs 500 for groups of up to ten. The treks are organized by the Vana Samrakshana Samiti, which seems to be a collaborative effort between the locals and the Forest Department. They provide a guide for each group. 

The road, which is reasonably good till the ticketing point, becomes pretty bad later on. We were told that the local Panchayat plans to fix it with this year's budget amount. Because of the condition of the road, it takes about twenty minutes to get from the ticketing point to the parking lot. From there on, we had to proceed on foot. 

The walk was beautiful from the first. Tea estates in general are quite pretty, of course. The road we were on was cut into the side of the hill. The tea plants ascended up the hill above us, and stood in rows below us. Other hills were visible in the distance. Some parts of the estate are as much as three centuries old - created by the first Britishers to come up here. They used to ascend the peak on their horses by an easier trail, and hunt animals on the slopes. 

After about a kilometer of easy walking, we arrived at the place where the climbing actually starts. They've built a sort of viewing point here. But we didn't ascend, as we were eager to start climbing.

The trek was very steep and tiring in the beginning, even though we were under the shade of some trees. Or perhaps it was that the guide over-estimated us and set an ambitious pace. Thankfully, he realized pretty quickly that we were desk-bound usually-inactive people, and slowed down considerably. He advised us to go slow and not tire ourselves out too much.

After some time, the trees thinned down, and the grasses began. Now we were climbing up in the hot sunshine, and we understood why we had been advised to start the climb early. But it wasn't too tiring, because there was a cool wind blowing. We ensured that we took plenty of breaks to drink water and enjoy the view. 

Step by step, the valley of Wayanad opened out below us. The guide pointed out Kalpetta, Vythiri, and all the other towns we had passed through. Dark green hills surrounded the valley on all sides. We seemed to be above cloud level, or maybe it was the mist that was covering some parts of the valley slopes here and there. Little black birds flew up and down the slopes around us, and we envied them their wings.

To reach Love Lake, we had to climb up one hill, pass through a flat valley, and then climb up some more. I was enjoying myself by this time, despite the warmth. It's so much more fun to be climbing up rather than down. Finding the right stone to put your foot on, feeling your own breath resounding in your ears, becoming aware of your body stretching itself - just feeling so very alive and so very young! I wanted to tell Quindon Tarver that he was wrong when he wrote the below lines. There are at least a few times when you do realize how young you are and how amazingly healthy your body is. (Touch wood!)

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth

Oh, never mind

You will never understand the power and the beauty of your youth

Until they've faded

But trust me, in twenty years

You will look back at photos of yourself

And recall in a way you can't grasp now

How much possibility lay before you

And how fabulous you really looked

Love Lake turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. If it were up to me, I would rename it Love Pond, because that was about how big it was. Possibly, the lake had shrunk because of the summer heat. 

It was pretty dirty and muddy too. The guide told us that the lake used to have a rock floor, and that the water used to be crystal clear and drinkable. But now the rock floor is covered under a foot of mud, because of erosion from the upper slopes. And it's become dirty because every tourist who climbs up insists on washing his/her feet and face in the water. (If you're planning a visit, PLEASE don't touch the water!)

We walked on a bit further from the lake-pond, and sat down on a bit of grass from where we could see the entire valley again. It was peaceful up there - Chembra Peak was above us on the left, and the valley opened itself out below us on the right. A cool wind dried the sweat off our faces, and no sounds broke the silence except our own voices, the whispering of the grass, and the chirping of birds.

The trek up the top half of Chembra Peak might soon be closed down for good. Apart from the risk of forest fires, there are six species of rare birds up there. Thirdly, the path from Love Lake to the peak is apparently more dangerous than the climb up the lower slopes. The guide told us that a girl had tripped last year and broken her jaw. He had to carry her all the way down the hill for medical aid.

The peak is open for trekking in the monsoons and the winters as well. When I heard that, I couldn't help but imagine how lush the place would look in the rains. I really want to go back during the rains, though I'm told the place will be rife with leeches then.

***

If you're planning a visit, here are the basics:

• Water: Carry your own water - at least 1-2 litres per person
• Food: There is a sort-of restaurant on the road up from the ticket point - an open bamboo building beneath the trees. We had our lunch there, but the food wasn't particularly great.
• Clothing: Wear comfortable clothes - preferably sweatpants and shoes. 
• The guide will come from the ticketing area to the parking lot in your car. It's a journey of about twenty minutes through bumpy roads, so you'll need to squeeze together and make room for one more person.

N is for Nambiar Sir: A Short Story

This post is part of the A to Z Challenge.

It was mid-morning, and there was a call for Nambiar Sir. There was a parcel for him, could they deliver it now?

"Of course, of course," Nambiar Sir said. "I am available right now."

He laid the phone down.

"Sharade!" he said.

His wife had just put up her feet after the morning chores. She lowered her newspaper and looked up at him.

"There's a parcel, it seems," he said.

She made a non-committal sound, and the newspaper went up again.

Nambiar Sir went and sat on one of the cane chairs in the patio. It was a hot day, yellow with sunshine. No sounds broke the silence, except for leaves singing in the wind. He opened a magazine and pretended to read.

Who could have sent the parcel, he wondered. His friends usually sent letters. Short terse messages, obligation more than a desire to communicate.

The postman came before the courier did. The Nambiars had a letter box, but he wheeled his bicycle up to the patio. Nambiar Sir had taught him in school.

A bill, a newsletter. The postman spent some time talking about how hot it was. He drank a glass of cold orange Rasna in one gulp, waited to see if he would get some more, and left.

Nambiar Sir opened the newsletter with pleasure. It was run by a classmate of his from college. It was famous in the literary circles; many sent in content, hoping to be printed. She printed it whenever she had enough good material. The work was usually good - insightful, well-written, eclectic. Nambiar Sir couldn't think of a better way of spending a hot summer day.

The courier arrived just as he was finishing the editorial. A black scooter with a yellow box at the back; a hassled young man in a black uniform and a yellow cap.

"Ravichandran Nambiar?" he asked.

"Sign here," he said, without waiting for an affirmative.

Nambiar Sir signed, and was handed a small white parcel, crisscrossed with brown tape. The man walked quickly to the scooter, and left without closing the gate.

Nambiar Sir felt the parcel. It seemed to contain something with a hard cover - maybe something electronic? There were several indecipherable symbols on it, random sequences of numbers and letters. It had clearly been sent from abroad. The sender had not written his name on the parcel, but the markings said ‘United Kingdom’.

Mr Nambiar put the parcel on the patio table and went to close the gate. The sun was almost overhead, and his shadow clung close to his heels like a scared puppy. The guava tree near the gate cast a pleasant shade, and he was tempted to stay under it rather than go back to the veranda. He dawdled a bit on the half wall bordering the guava, looking up at the pattern the sunshine made on the leaves.

When he looked back down again, eyes dazzled by the sunlight, Sharada was standing on the veranda, examining the parcel. She had brought him a glass of Rasna, and the thought of it made him go back to the veranda.

“What is this?” she asked.

“How do I know,” he said, suddenly irritated. “You can see I haven’t opened it yet.”

“Well, open it then,” she said. “Let’s see if one of your old revolutionary friends has sent you a bomb from London.”

“Bring me a pair of scissors.”

“But I only have my milk scissors,” she said. “I don’t think they’ll be able to cut through this material.”

“Then bring me the knife, woman!”

Her face changed, but she went inside without a word. He sighed. He knew his temper was getting worse these days. She was tolerating him for now, but who knew how long it would last. For the umpteenth time in the last one year, he resolved to treat her better.

The problem was that she wanted him to run for the Panchayat elections, now that he was retired. Her logic was that he wouldn’t even have to campaign - practically everyone in the village had either been taught by him, or had children who had been taught by him.

Sharada had come back with the big knife. He took it and carefully slit open one end of the parcel. He peered in, and saw stacked white sheets of paper.

“What is it?” Sharada asked.

“It’s a book!” He said in wonder. Who had sent him a book all the way from England?

He slit the parcel open further, and the book fell into his hand.

It was a beautiful little thing, a hardbound. The front cover was a palette of pinks and oranges and reds and purples, the whole framed in white - as if a sunset had been imposed on a snow field. The golden crown of the publisher’s logo winked at him from the bottom of the spine.

Across the Fiery Fields, embossed letters proclaimed in white. Smaller letters traced out the author’s name below - Tejas Matthew Roy.

“Tejas? Is that...?” Sharada asked.

Nambiar Sir nodded. He suddenly realized that his eyes had filled up. He bent further over the book so that Sharada wouldn’t see.

He was in shock. He watched, aloof, as his left hand lifted itself and opened the front cover of the book. He tilted his face and tried to read the text on the inside cover. But his eyes were full, and he couldn’t read.

His right hand flipped the first couple of pages. Suddenly, it stopped. Five words had arrested it.

For Nambiar Sir and Sharadamma.

Simple words printed in beautiful black italics on thick creamy paper. They seemed to dance before his eyes, helped by his tears.

Sharada gasped the same moment his tear fell on the page, so that he wasn’t sure if she had gasped at the dedication or the fact that he was crying.

He turned the page quickly, hoping she hadn’t seen the tear. The blot was visible on this side of the page, so he quickly flipped to the back cover.

And there he was, in black and white. Slightly long black hair, a messy beard and the same lazy smile as ever. Light fell on the right side of his face, leaving the other side in shadow - it made him look slightly forbidding, despite the smile. Was it the bulky sweater that was making him look chubby?

They stared at the photo in silence for some time.

Finally, Sharada sighed and rose.

“Drink your Rasna - it’s becoming warm.” There was a break in her voice.

“Sharade,” he said.

She didn’t reply, but he knew she was listening.

“Did you ever believe - it? Them? What they said?”

Silence.

“No. I don’t know. I didn’t know what to believe, or even what I wanted to believe. They were questioning you, your reputation - so I hoped it wasn’t true. But then...” Her voice faltered. “I loved him like a son, so I wanted to believe them. I wanted him to be your son at least, even if not mine.”

Nambiar Sir smiled sadly, gazing out at the yard. “I used to wish that too, often. I wished he had been ours. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t mine, Sharade.”

He looked up at her. She was drying her tears on the edge of her sari.

“But he was!” She suddenly burst out. “He was ours. We almost brought him up, didn’t we? It was our house he used to come to after school, it was my rice and my pulisseri that he used to love. It was here that he learnt to love books. He was ours!”

He smiled at her. “Is it any wonder that people started saying what they did?”

“Well, he needed parents, and we were right next door! His mother certainly had no time for him.”

“And that was another reason for people to talk, wasn’t it? Why come and settle in this village if you worked two hours away?”

“I’m glad she did - otherwise we wouldn’t have had a son for twelve years.”

He looked down at the book.

“Does it have a return address?” she asked.

He checked the parcel - nothing. He flipped through the pages of the book, and a folded piece of paper fell out.

He opened it. It was a note from Tejas, in Malayalam. The letters were awkward, as if not used to being strung together. Sharada leaned over his shoulder, and they read it together.

Nambiar Sir and Sharadamme,

This book happened because of you both, so I thought you should know.

I am returning to India in two months. I will be in Kochi for some time. Amma said I should check with you both before I come and meet you, but I know that’s not necessary. See you soon!

Love,

Tejas.

This time, two tear drops fell on the sheet of paper. Nambiar Sir didn’t care. He held Sharada’s hand and squeezed it tightly. Sharada smiled at him through her tears.

“So who gets to read the book first?’ she asked.

K is for the Kochi Biennale

This post is part of the A to Z Challenge. 

The first edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale was held from December 2012 to March 2013. I visited it in February and wrote half of this post back then. I've now dusted off the draft and brought it back to life for the A to Z Challenge.

I openly call myself a philistine. The little I know about the arts is limited to the field of literature, and even that knowledge is quite superficial. Poems go over my head. I don't understand paintings. I can't tell a good sculpture from a bad one.

But still, I couldn't NOT go to the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. Something that big happening in my own backyard wasn't to be missed.

An early train got us to Ernakulam one Saturday morning in mid-February. The plan was to spend Saturday and Sunday in Kochi, and then go on to Trivandrum by train on Sunday afternoon.

The best way to get from Ernakulam to Fort Kochi, we were told, was to take the ferry. A two-rupee ticket for a scenic tour of the Kochi Port? Just the 'ticket'. The ferry was large and noisy, with benches all in a row like in a church. The passengers seemed to be daily commuters, with a few tourists like us thrown in.

The water was truly astounding. I may be from the sea-side city of Trivandrum, but I haven't seen too many ships in my lifetime. I stared up open-mouthed at the sheer size of the damn things. Colourful and rusted, old and new, Indian and foreign, small and big - they were jaw-dropping. I really wasn't done staring by the time the ferry arrived at Fort Kochi.

We exited the boat jetty, and saw the first signs of the biennale. A large yellow and white map told us that we were at Moidu's Gallery. We looked around to try and buy tickets, only to be told that tickets were available only at Aspinwall House, "just a five minute walk that way." This was the first uneven note of the day. Shouldn't the organizers have realized that many visitors would choose to take the ferry, and set up a second ticket counter at the site closest to the jetty?

Still, we had no choice but to walk on in the heat. As promised, Aspinwall House turned up five minutes later.

This was the image that I had seen over and over again while researching the Biennale. So I'd imagined Aspinwall House to be a dilapidated old building, into which the organizers had tucked in mysterious pieces of art, for art-treasure hunters like us to find.

Not so. The grounds were large and well-maintained. The buildings needed a coat of paint, but otherwise seemed fine.

The 'art' part didn't start off very well, though.

The first installation was inside a dark room that had mysterious sounds echoing off the walls. Once we got our bearings, we realized that the installation consisted of a couple of projectors, with concave black screens opposite each screen. Both screens showed a man's face. The face on one side was mostly expressionless. The other one kept yawning, blowing air at the camera, acting terrified. The sounds we had heard when we entered were the sounds this face was making. Needless to say, the exhibition didn't make much sense to us and we exited feeling slightly stupid.

Thankfully, the rest of the installations were slightly better. Here are some of my favourite ones.

This installation on farmer suicides and land-grab by mining companies was hard-hitting. The installation had multiple components. There were two videos running in curtained off sections at either end. The large hall in the middle had a wall lined with tiny boxes containing forty varieties of seeds. It also had three-four books with accounts of how the farmers had been hounded by  police.

The Rice Grains

Another installation that I liked had an entire city constructed from pottery shards found at the Muziris excavation site.

A City Made of Pottery Shards

The installation that was easiest to make fun of was a room with forty grinding stones. But it was the one I found most poignant, because of the story behind the collection. All these grinding stones used to be part of large mansions. When the mansions were demolished, the stones were cast out into the road. The artists collected as many of them as they could.

The Grind-stones

I liked this one too - a large boat filled with bric-brac of all kinds. It's about displacement, how the things you grab when you're faced with disaster needn't be the most useful. You're so traumatized that you grab the first things to hand.

The Language Series by Rashid Rana was brilliant. The sheer amount of work that must have gone into these made them stand out. The artist is trying to show that we are allowed to see by the Powers That Be isn't usually the same as what's happened. It's either distorted by words, or censored altogether. It makes even more sense because the artist is Pakistani.

Inspired perhaps by the buildings and the water, many of the installations focused on history. My favourite installation of all was a yellow room with walls lined with notes from tourists who had visited Kochi. Notes in a dozen different languages, from people all over the world. Some were simple greetings, others were sheer poetry. All gave the reader a sense of the history of the city, all those races coming here and intermingling across the millenia.

Of course, there were many more that we found as un-engaging as the first one - such as this one, which just seemed like a Flickr album full of photos of the artists' friends, except offline.

Aspinwall House was just one of the Biennale sites. Pepper House and Moidu's Gallery were the others we visited. I believe there was also a site called Burma House, with installations related to the fight for democracy in Burma. But again, I can't find a link to it on the site, so it may have been called something else.

Most of these sites were on the waterfront. So each time we looked up from the art pieces, the water of Vembanad Lake made us revisit them in an entirely new way. Standing and watching the scenery was addictive - the colourful boats and ships, the gentle lapping of the water, the sense of time and history.

The best part of the Biennale for me was the opportunity to visit these old colonial buildings - high-ceilinged, white-washed, large-windowed. That combination of white walls, dark wood and red clay tiles is magical.

Inside Pepper House

The biennale was more than just the installations, of course. There was graffiti on the streets, random scrawls and colourful pictures that pop out suddenly at you from an otherwise dirty wall. 

The effect of this graffiti, at least for me, was that it made me see 'normal' graffiti in an entirely different way.  I was walking around wondering - is that graffiti on the wall part of the biennale? What about those scrawls? And then it struck me - it doesn't matter! That's the whole point of the binnale - the point is to make us look for art in everything we see. 

I started off as a cynic - "Art is not for me, what do I know about art?" And then I sort of, maybe, slightly, became a believer. I've realized that art is whatever WE think is art. The artist who prepared the installations with the projectors and the yawning man felt that he was making art. It doesn't matter that we disagreed with him, as long as others find meaning and value in it.

E is for Edakkal: The Picture-esque Caves

This post is part of the A2Z Challenge. 

The path leading upwards is steep, and we lose our breath within a few meters. It's a good thing that the sky above us is grey with clouds. We're about 4000 feet above sea level, and it's hot only when the sun manages to break through the clouds.

The Edakkal caves are up on a hill surrounded by forests. There are two caves, both natural. Huge boulders lean together precariously to form large shaded cavities. Visitors have to park at the bottom of the hill, and walk up through the greenery.

We pass hordes of teenagers, on their way back down. There are families, some with very young kids in tow. The people we pass speak Malayalam and Tamil and Kannada. Some even speak Hindi and English. It helps, I suppose, that the caves are very close to the the point at which the three states meet. NH 212 runs very close to it, and the road from the highway to Edakkal is well-maintained. Somebody seems to be spending some money on promoting the Edakkal caves as a tourist destination - probably the Wayanad DTPC.

The lower cave is smaller and better-sheltered, but empty of drawings. It stinks slightly of urine. A set of aluminium staircases leads upwards from the lower cave to the upper one. On one of the rocks just outside is an inscription of a more modern sort - four visitors have chosen to inscribe their names, along with the date they visited (some time in 1984).

As we climb the staircase, we pause at intervals to admire the view. The hill falls away steeply in front of us, giving us a magnificent view of the forest we just walked through. Nearer to the horizon is a line of hills, clad in forest and mist. I finally understand why even fellow Malayalees speak in awe-struck tones about Wayanad's beauty.

At the top, we step through a set of grills and climb down a short staircase. The upper cave is larger than the lower one. The rocks form a roof at this end, but the cave is open to the skies at the far end. Through the opening, we can see trees bordering the cave walls on all sides, framing the grey-blue sky. 

The chieftain (a.k.a Fido Dido)

The pictures cover the rocky walls on both sides. They are simple lines on the rock, certain and firm. None of the lines meet, yet stare at them long enough, and the pictures image. There is a man in a headgear of some sort, who reminds me of Fido Dido. That circle with lines must surely be the sun. Another picture shows a woman and a child. On the top left of the wall is an animal of some sort. We try to figure out if it's a goat or a deer. 

The guide finally takes pity on us and draws us close to explain. The pictures in the cave, he tells us, are about 6, 000 years old. They were accidentally discovered in 1894 by the then Malabar SP, an Englishman named Fawcett, when he was descending the hill after a visit with a friend who owned an estate nearby. The caves also have Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions that are newer - a mere two thousand years old. The man in the headgear is a tribal chieftain, while the animal we thought was a deer is, in fact, a peacock. This cave was used as a shelter because the entrance was narrow, and could be guarded from animals.

I stand in the sunlit cave and try to imagine how it must have been six thousand years ago. I summon up images of people in animal skin. They're huddled around a fire - did they have fire back then? - shivering. They look around fearfully at the distant roars of jungle cats, the trumpeting of elephants. 

What made them draw these pictures? Were all the initial paintings done by a single person? An artist who wanted to impress the chieftain by drawing him in his headgear? Was that the woman he was in love with? Did they have the concept of love back then? 

We spend about twenty minutes in the caves, at least twice as long as the other tourists. Large hordes of children and families climb down into the cave. They glance cursorily at the pictures, but seem to be more interested in each other and their mobile phones. Cameras flash almost constantly, as do thousand-watt smiles. They then troop back up, chattering and laughing.

The pictures, the guide, the tourists

I can just see Edakkal five years down the line, a huge tourist spot attracting visitors from all over South India. The path leading to the caves was probably mud and stones a few years ago. But it has been paved with concrete now. It's still steep, but at least it's walkable. Aluminium staircases have been built on the upper slopes, where the climb gets even steeper.

Shops are being constructed on either side of the walkway. They're eating into the jungle space. Man-animal conflict already exists - an entire troupe of monkeys lives on the trees surrounding the shops, and they seem to specialize in stealing the food the shops are selling - slices of raw mango and pineapple  and water melon, popcorn, ice cream, spicy buttermilk.

I suppose I'm a hypocrite, to be wanting the caves to remain as they are now that I've seen them. But I can't help it. The caves seem to have a soul of their own, something distilled from the emotions and thoughts of the people who lived there thousands of years ago. I want to protect them, hide them again inside that green forest blanket. Idiotic, of course.

The caves are located somewhere in the patch of greenery just to the left of the central rock.