A new spring in God’s own country

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Recently I met a man from Poland who was headed for Kerala, in the post-communist era in the world a distinct surprise. Kerala was not now the “Yennan of India” (after the place in China where the Long March ended and the communists regrouped), and Warsaw not a satellite of old Moscow, long since extinguished.
The young Pole, sitting next to me on a flight to Kochi, was informal and curious. I couldn’t enlighten him much except for the geography, and spotty history. He said he occasionally wrote for a well-known magazine devoted to fashion, new trends and culture. Then he might have chosen his destination well, I murmured. Kerala’s culture was famous. He surprised me again. He said he was being met by his suppliers in the spice trade. Writing wouldn’t be his business on the trip.
I knew instantly that I was out of date. If a native of Poland was venturing into a land hugging the Arabian Sea to get a whiff of its spice gardens up in tropical hill country, then things had changed.
I was last in “God’s own country” about twenty years ago, except that it wasn’t called that then. The tourism and travel economy has made that slogan sell, but in my fellow-passenger’s current scheme of things a pleasure-yielding survey of exotic sites would be a chance item on the menu. A native of cold Central Europe, where bland meat is the gourmet’s delight, he was foraying afar for Kerala spice — a businessman, not a tourist.
Now, that was news. It gave another meaning to the place for which I had some affection (on account of family associations) but also doubts, notwithstanding the cent per cent literacy, Kerala’s forward-ho army of nurses that has raided hospitals this side of Suez, the God of Small Things, and EMS Namboodiripad.
In the Kerala I knew, you couldn’t wheel or carry your own luggage at a train or bus terminus. The porters’ union would have none of it. Also, Malayalee males, particularly Nair men — in an outsider’s view — were prone to pungency when making a point, often took offence when none was meant, and were sometimes needlessly proud. Ergo, Kerala’s men folk weren’t there to please anybody, not even their union bosses. There was an amusing side to this, but you had to be a sport. In my personal pop sociology, traditionally in matrilineal Kerala (of the influential Nairs), women owned the property and called the shots, so the men compensated with attitude.
I trundled out of Kochi airport (which is not in Kochi, travellers beware). I was to wait for my wife and friends, with my bags beside me as on a railway platform, in the lobby of a wayside hotel on the Thrissur road some 15 km away where they would collect me many hours later. No, I was not to take a room. It was a terrible idea. Wouldn’t I be freeloading? It wasn’t going to be a mere dhaba bench on a dusty highway, after all.
At the reception desk I explained my purpose with some hesitation. They (all Kerala men) smiled and were charming. Repast arrived. Newspapers were proffered. No signing of bills. The lobby was air-conditioned, well-appointed, and comfortable; the waiters liveried, throwing smiles about. When the long-awaited party arrived, we had a sumptuous dinner in the hotel restaurant with a delicious, eclectic, menu and attentive service. I had a similar, friendly, experience during my stay at two Thrissur hotels.
“What is happening in good old shirty Kerala?” I asked my old friend Ram in Kochi a few days afterward. “Everybody is out to welcome you. I am being repeatedly proved wrong. The men are especially unrecognisable.”
A man of the world, Ram — a true, blue Nair male to boot —smiled. “Tourism and trade,” he said. A brief explanation followed. Tourism has exploded in the state (since I last visited). The trading horizon is active (think of my Polish interlocutor). “If you want money to come your way, you have to be welcoming.”
Earlier, the people of Kerala went out into the world, usually to work. Now, they are also welcoming the world into their lush-green, sea-kissed home, where any drive in any direction is a balm for the eyes. Economic activity of a particular type is altering behaviour patterns.
Mores are changing, one can see. Young girls and women — may be, not old ladies — are wearing the North Indian salwar-kameez in a big way, instead of the sari or their traditional clothes. This is visible in buses and inter-city trains and other public places. In the street, many more than before are able to manage functional English, making life easier for the visitor, although the newspaper they invariably clutch in their hand is still universally Malayalam, Kerala’s language steeped in Sanskrit.
There are several facets of modernity on display, as in the fact that public servants, and ordinary people, are helpful, and appear well-informed. There is also modernity gone overboard, however. In the bar of a comfortable, modern, Alleppey hotel, where we were dining, two couples — clearly good friends, and probably of business background who from their talk did not appear too well educated — walked in with their small children, hardly five or six years old. To our horror, they ordered beers even for the kids, who went on imbibing along with their parents.
In terms of food and drink, there is a down-side that is difficult to miss. The lovely, and simple, Kerala “meen curry” (fish-curry) is now hard to come by in restaurants, big or small. An attempt to offer the local version of North Indian fare is a temptation eateries can’t resist. And in a state that grows both tea and coffee, the best you get is insipid tea bags and instant coffee.
Theatre sensibility is a matter where Kerala scores over other states. The Thrissur International Theatre Festival organised by the state’s Lalit Kala Akademi brought together theatre companies from India as well as Chile, Cuba, Britain, Germany, Japan and a clutch of other countries. Ordinary city audiences thronged every venue, in the daytime and at night. On one occasion I would have bet there were nearly a thousand people in the audience, just as at cinemas.
Two or three foreign plays showed frontal nudity, but the Thrissur crowd took it in its stride. This is unlikely to have been the case even in metros such as Delhi or Mumbai. Each play was followed by a lively discussion with the director the following morning in which members of the audience took part, examining even technical issues closely. Perhaps no other theatre fest in the country has opened such vistas. As the festival director, Abhilash Pillay, who teaches at New Delhi’s National School of Drama, succeeded in re-creating an atmosphere of art and life that others may wish to replicate.
If there is a beach in Kerala you can’t afford to miss, it has to be Varkala, about 50 km north of Thiruvananthapuram. Cliffs interspersed with fine white and black sand, and utter quiet but for the sound of the waves and the whoosh of the palm when the wind enters it, lend the place extraordinary ambience.
You get people here of every nationality, although not so many Indians. The food around is local and international, and the personnel multi-lingual. The cook in my hotel was from Darjeeling, commanding several languages from the places he had worked in around the country; the room boy from Assam had become fluent in Hindi, Malayalam and English within two years of his arrival here, and the Malayalee lady at the reception spoke Hindi with ease.