Looking back

 

There’s much that is fascinating about Kerala. What I find — or should I say used to find — especially captivating though is how many of the state’s traditional retail spaces were designed.

Visiting Kerala in the 1970s and early 80s, and living in Trivandrum from the mid-1980s, it was refreshing to see these unfussy, classic buildings. With their tiled roofs and verandahs that offered protection from the sun and the rain, and often a place to pass the unrelenting hour, these buildings brought a certain character to their neighbourhood.

 

Not all were old, tiled buildings — there were more recent, art deco-ish structures that sprouted among the more traditional-looking ones. But they all radiated a certain charm, despite the odd monstrosity.

Especially alluring were the doors that some of these buildings had: Numbered planks of wood that were — at closing time — slotted into a groove and pushed along till they clicked into place and formed a wall of timber. All held together by an iron rod or bar, secured with a padlock.

 

But change is almost inevitable; arguably the only constant in life. And by the late 1990s, there was much more concrete and mirrored glass across Kerala’s retail landscape.

 

Today, many familiar names remain, but in new clothes and sometimes in new locations. And here and there some holdouts linger, with their tiled roofs, jigsaw-puzzle doors and glass jars, enveloped in the faint aroma of time.

Inside the novel factory

A version of this was in Outlook

For over half a century, the ‘Gulf’ has been Eldorado for the people of South Asia, particularly Kerala. As the narrator in Al Arabian Novel Factory reflects, “God blesses some small Arab country with petrol dollars. And then a tiny sliver of land far away gets to enjoy some of those blessings… There was a long and lonely road between the two lands, and it could tell many stories of sacrifice.

It is these stories of sacrifice, toil, humiliation, deprivation, loneliness, despair and alienation of the ‘Gulf Malayali’, and the wider immigrant community, that Benny Daniel — who writes as Benyamin — chronicles in much of his writing.

Over the years, especially in Malayalam, there have been books and films on the Gulf immigrant experience. But few of these capture the granular details of immigrant life in the region with authenticity. And it’s these granular details that Benyamin writes about with authority, perhaps because he was, himself, a Gulf Malayali for over two decades.

With almost a score of books across genres to his name, Benyamin explores a world that is familiar to Kerala, but also alien, especially the darker side of that world. He received widespread recognition with his award-winning 2008 Malayalam novel Aadujeevitham, translated into English as Goat Days, and soon to be a Malayalam film. Since then, he’s returned regularly to his known turf  — facets of immigrant life in the Gulf and the complicated relationships that entwine the locals and the ‘guest’ workers who keep Arab nations ticking.

At first glance, Al Arabian Novel Factory seems to have a simple narrative. Pratap, an Indian-Canadian journalist, travels to a West Asian country known only as the ‘City’, ruled by an authoritarian regime. He’s ostensibly there to helm a research project. But his real objective is to reconnect with Jasmine, his onetime lover, who lives in the City and is an elusive but constant presence through the book. In the City, his life tangles with the lives of his team members and also with the tortuous journey of A Spring Without Fragrance, a mysterious manuscript written by Sameera Parvin, a radio jockey who once lived there.

But appearances can be deceptive: Though a standalone novel, Al Arabian Novel Factory is also a companion volume to Benyamin’s Jasmine Days (Mullappoo Niramulla Pakalukal in Malayalam). Positioned as Jasmine Days’ sequel, it could just as easily be a ‘prequel-sequel’ hybrid. So intensely interwoven are the narrative strands and devices that connect the books that it does get a little convoluted at times.

Both novels though, are set against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, with this one focusing on the period immediately after. It captures the immigrant experience, but the immigrant here is mostly the comfortably off one. The sort who sings praise songs for the City’s despotic ruler while hosting a workshop on ‘socialism-driven freedom in Kerala’; the immigrant who is a ‘socialist’ at heart, but lives a capitalist life. 

Translated from the Malayalam by Shahnaz Habib, the book also tackles other themes including freedom of speech, thought and action; minority rights; and women’s rights. And looming over everything that happens is the all-seeing City, a character in itself. Habib’s translation is always competent and occasionally exquisite, capturing the nuances and cadences of the original; I must confess that I could occasionally visualise the original Malayalam line as I read the English version.

Sometimes, in factories, things can go out of kilter and so do things in this novel factory — not seriously awry, though. The narrative tends to meander occasionally. Also puzzling are some sections, particularly those in which Pratap behaves somewhat naively despite his journalistic experience. You could attribute it to the pangs of love, but one method he explores to trace Jasmine is far-fetched, stupid even, if not downright dangerous. Perhaps it was intended as a narrative device, but it seemed rather off. 

What is disconcerting is the depiction of some female characters. They’re portrayed as unaware of and uninterested in little beyond their immediate surroundings and passions. Knowing the many informed, opinionated and worldly-wise women around us, even among the demographics presented in the novel, this characterisation seems baffling. This, even as several male characters, at times, appear misogynistic.

Perhaps, it is all a pointer towards one of the book’s takeaways — that we are all flawed beings. Or that glittering facades often hide messy secrets and disguise dreary, grasping lives where self-interest reigns supreme. As Pratap says: “I have always been curious about the City, how it rose out of dust like an enchanted land in a fairy tale.” More than anything else, Al Arabian Novel Factory reminds us that there are no fairy tales.

Celebrating Tree Walk

An early memory is of scrambling halfway up the guava tree in the backyard of our house in Bangalore. And of the joy and sense of accomplishment that came from making it that far up. I didn’t realise it then, but I was fortunate to belong to a generation of urban Indian children who had unfettered access to trees, yards and the outdoors.

Trees are especially on my mind because Tree Walk Thiruvananthapuram celebrated its eighth birthday last week. It was on 12 May 2012 that the first tree walk was held along the city’s Vanchiyoor ‘green corridor’.

Exploring the city's Museum complex

While it’s often described as an “environmental collective,” I’ve always seen Tree Walk as a group of people who are interested in and care about trees. A group that comes together to observe, understand, protect and document Thiruvananthapuram’s tree cover. 

Membership of Tree Walk is largely informal, and sometimes transient, but at its core is a committed group helmed by Anitha Sharma and her sister Santhi. Set up in memory of botanist and tree-lover Dr C. Thankam, who was also Anitha’s and Santhi’s mother, Tree Walk traces its roots to Harithakootayama, a group that was formed in 2008 to discover how people in the city viewed trees and the equation between trees and road development. For in the early 2000s, Thiruvananthapuram — like many cities across the country — embarked on a ‘development’ journey focused on bolstering built infrastructure; a journey that often hinged on cutting down trees.

Early on, Tree Walk was largely about walks to understand and explore trees in different parts of Thiruvananthapuram. Most of these walks — over a hundred till now — were on Sunday mornings in the city’s public green spaces such as parks and along roads, but also in semi-private areas, including school and college campuses.

Preserving the city’s green pockets has always been a part of Tree Walk’s raison d’etre. But this aspect took on a special urgency in 2013 when the city authorities decided to take over a large part of the Attakulangara Central High School campus in the heart of Thiruvananthapuram to construct a bus terminal and shops. A project that would require scores of trees to be axed.

Handout from a walk in the East Fort Heritage Zone

This action saw Tree Walk evolving into a pressure group that worked with other civil society groups on a spirited campaign to save the school — established in the late 1880s — and its green campus. Across several months, the group organised various activities, including several walks and a tree survey to create awareness about how the planned bus terminal would obliterate a significant slice of the city’s irreplaceable natural heritage.

Ultimately, sense prevailed within the State Government. The bus station project was redesigned and the decision to use the school’s land was scrapped.

Alongside, Tree Walk also embarked on several other projects — a butterfly garden on the premises of the State Central Library or Public Library, special walks for school students, collaborating with nature clubs in the city’s schools to document the biodiversity on school campuses and, just a few months ago, an intervention to ‘heal’ a badly mutilated jasmine tree that stands outside the Saphalyam Complex on the city’s arterial MG Road.

Early this year, during the Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters, Tree Walk held a series of walks designed to introduce the lit-fest’s authors and speakers to some of the city’s special trees. A friend I’d recommended the walks to declared, “It was a fabulous experience.”

Thiruvananthapuram's natural and built heritage harmonise in East Fort

And that’s a sentiment I can relate to. As I wrote in National Geographic Traveller some years ago, I’ve found these freewheeling walks to be a great way to discover facets of the city that would otherwise pass right by us.

As Tree Walk embarks on its ninth year, it is a period of uncertainty; a time when humanity is facing an existential crisis of the sort that no living person has experienced. Even in the midst of this gloom, I can’t help but hope that this crisis we face will give us all at least a sliver of understanding about how vital the natural world’s health is to our own health and wellbeing.

And since I haven’t been on a tree walk for many months now, I look forward to a Sunday — any day for that matter — when we can embark on one. For Tree Walk is quite simply one of my city’s gems; not always in the public eye, but a gem nonetheless.

Memory: Wayanad

Getting to Wayanad can be an experience in itself. The first hour or so of the journey from Kozhikode is relatively unremarkable. Just the endless games of chicken, that are the new normal on roads in Kerala, by an assortment of vehicles. And to spice things up, the odd carcass or two of vehicles that have lost a game of chicken.   

Where things start to get really interesting is at the base of the Thamarassery churam, or Thamarassery mountain pass, through the Western Ghats. Here, the narrow road to Wayanad starts snaking up, often doubling back on itself. The traffic can be pretty crazy here too, but then there’s always the view to focus on, which is mostly appealing and often breathtaking.

You will, like me, probably be a little short of breath when you scramble up to the entrance to the Edakkal caves, about 1,200 feet above sea level. At a moderate pace, it takes about 40 minutes to walk from the base of the hill to the caves. They’re not quite what comes to mind when you think of a cave, but the engravings on the inner walls of these stone structures take you back across the centuries — all the way back to the Stone Age. And if you go very early in the morning, just when the caves open for the day and there aren’t too many other visitors around, you can, for a fleeting second or two, feel a tenuous connection to the early humans who sought shelter there.

There are more reminders of the inhabitants — early, but also more recent  — of the region in the Wayanad Heritage Museum in Ambalavayal. It’s a useful introduction to the area’s history and culture, including that of its large tribal population.

There is, of course, much more to experience in Wayanad. But for me, the caves and the museum were a tasting menu, just about enough to take in on my first visit. More fetching was the prospect of heading back to the wonderful Pepper Trail — cocooned in a coffee and spice plantation — with its 140-year-old bungalow and soothing views, all cloaked in solitude embellished by birdsong. 

And that’s just what I did; luxuriate in silence serenaded by the call of a hornbill.

Quintessential Kerala

Just saw A Reading Room With a View, Stark Communications’ recent ad film for Kerala Tourism. And I’m captivated. 

Arguably Kerala Tourism’s best film since Your Moment is Waiting was made seven years ago, A Reading Room With a View is a quiet film; there’s no in-your-face drama, but it deftly grows on you. It captures all that Kerala is — the vividness, harmony, quirkiness, medley, ordinariness, eclecticism, contradictions and enchantment.     

The Kovalam blues

The sky is slate-grey and there’s a thunderstorm brewing in the distant Western Ghats. And I’m thinking of clear blue skies, the aquamarine blue of the sea off Trivandrum and the warmth of the sun. With clear skies in short supply, this clip of the blue Arabian Sea and Kovalam’s Hawah and Lighthouse beaches will have to do. I took it from the deck of the Kovalam/Vizhinjam lighthouse early on a morning in March this year when I was working on this story for National Geographic Traveller India.

dIVERSIONS: Vocabulary of art

I discovered online magazine Antiserious about a year ago, soon after it was launched. 
And since then, I’ve been a regular; drawn by its brand of ‘Laughter in Slow Motion’ — a powerfully eclectic blend of writing and anti-writing!

So when I created dIVERSIONS — an experiment inspired by the vocabulary that shrouds contemporary art — I knew that it would feel at home in Antiserious. And the folks at Antiserious agreed.

dIVERSIONS is about words. About what words are made to do, and not do, especially when they accompany works of art. 
The full piece is here.    

On a Sunday in Trivandrum

The Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple

Did a version of this story for the July issue of National Geographic Traveller India.

Rise early on a Sunday and join one of several free walking tours conducted in Thiruvananthapuram (also known as Trivandrum). While Tree Walk explores the city’s tree wealth, Heritage Walk delves into its social, cultural, and architectural history. I’ve found these freewheeling walks to be a great way to discover facets and stories of the city that would otherwise pass right by us. Both tours usually start at 7 a.m. on Sunday mornings and, over a couple of hours, cover one of the city’s neighbourhoods. Though both walks typically happen at least once a month, they tend to be more frequent from December to April. (Details on future walks on Facebook pages: Tree Walk www.facebook.com/groups/115646138581706; Heritage Walk www.facebook.com/groups/heritagewalktvm)

No visit to Thiruvananthapuram is complete without admiring the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple, possibly the world’s wealthiest religious institution, and exploring the busy Fort neighbourhood around it. (Only Hindus allowed in the temple, which also has a dress code: men go bare chested wearing dhotis while women wear saris or dhotis wrapped over salwars. Dhotis are available on rent; footwear, cameras, mobile phones, bags, etc. not allowed inside the temple; )

A few hundred metres from the temple’s main entrance is the Kuthira Malika Palace, also called the Puthen Malika, which houses a museum of artefacts belonging to Travancore’s former royals. (No footwear allowed inside)

A Tree Walk at the Model School

For a further dose of history, art, and greenery, head to the tree-filled government museum complex that contains a couple of museums, a zoo, and an art gallery. At the very least, visit the eye-catching Napier Museum with its mélange of architectural styles and collection of archaeological and historical artefacts. (Open 10 a.m.-4.45 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursday-Sunday; 1-4.45 p.m. on Wednesdays; closed Mondays; entry adults Rs 10; children Rs 5; no cameras allowed.)

Next, stop at the nearby Sree Chitra Art Gallery to see paintings by Raja Ravi Varma and Nicholas and Svetoslav Roerich. (Open 10 a.m.-4.45 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursday-Sunday; 1-4.45 p.m. on Wednesdays; closed Mondays; entry adults Rs 20; children Rs 10; no cameras allowed.)

For a booster shot of history, head to the Keralam Museum of History and Heritage located opposite the main museum complex. The museum, which opened a few years ago, traces the region’s history and global connections across the ages. Its collection includes Neolithic stone axes, a jar and bowl used in Iron Age burials, Roman coins, and sculptures of bronze, wood, and stone. (Open 10 a.m.-5.30 p.m.; closed Mondays. and public holidays; entry adults Rs 20; children Rs 10; foreigners Rs 200.)

Round off a heritage-filled day with a mesmerising Kathakali or Koodiyattom performance at Margi, a cultural organisation that promotes Kerala’s classical performing art forms. Margi conducts regular Kathakali and Koodiyattom performances through the year, but when planning a visit, it’s best to give them a call to find out what’s on. (Tel: 0471-2478806/2473349/98470-99941.

Kovalam calls

Hawah and Lighthouse beaches from the deck of the lighthouse

Did a version of this story for the June issue of National Geographic Traveller India. 

Some of my earliest memories of family vacations in Thiruvananthapuram involve Kovalam. The seemingly never-ending drive zigzagging along twisty roads, the gradual descent between palm groves, the tanginess in the air and the sudden expanse of the beach, with the sea stretching off into the yonder.  

Back then, Kovalam was little more than a fishing village, with few visitors and fewer buildings on its three main beaches—the Ashok or Grove beach, Hawah or Eve’s beach, and the southernmost Lighthouse beach. Today, it’s a small town, the beaches lined by rows of shops, restaurants, and hotels. 

Kovalam’s beaches and its warm, shallow waters ideal for swimming are its biggest draw, which is why it can get pretty crowded with visitors on weekends and holidays. But there are also other ways to explore this laid-back town. 

Deck with a view  

The best place to get a fix on Kovalam’s topography is the observation deck of the candy-striped lighthouse that commands the southern end of the eponymous Lighthouse beach. It’s an approximately 157-step barefoot climb (footwear is not allowed inside the lighthouse), including a final stretch up an almost vertical metal ladder, to the deck. You’ll probably arrive breathless, but the climb is worth it for the view. And if you go up as soon as the lighthouse opens for the day, there’s a good chance you’ll have the deck to yourself for a few minutes (daily 10 a.m.-12.30 p.m. and 2-5 p.m.; tickets Rs 3 to Rs 25; camera passes Rs 20 and Rs 25). 

Surf for a cause 

Kovalam has a small, but growing surfing scene thanks to the Kovalam Surf Club, which opened here in 2005. The club offers surfing lessons to people with varying levels of expertise. The only requirement is that learners have some basic swimming skills, says Mani Sreekumar, the club’s director. It runs classes through the year, except during the monsoon months from June to August. The club also has a shop that sells and rents out surfing gear. And the club’s profits go to Sebastian Indian Social Projects, a non-profit that supports women’s empowerment and education programmes for school dropouts in the area (kovalamsurfclub.com; classes Rs 1,000 for 1.5 hours). 

On the water 

For the mildly adventurous, there are snorkelling expeditions on a catamaran and speedboat rides (prices start at Rs 3,000 for 2.5 hours and Rs 300/person respectively). The speedboats usually head a few kilometers out to sea and zip along the coast, giving those on board a view of Kovalam and its adjoining beaches. Kovalam’s best snorkelling spots are off the rocky headlands that separate its main beaches, but the sea can get rough during the monsoon. So the best time to go snorkelling here is from December to March, when the sea is relatively calm. The region’s marine life includes mussels, plants and a dazzling array of fishes including bat fish, parrot fish, angel fish, groupers, moray eels and so on.  And in May 2015, the Kerala Adventure Tourism Promotion Society launched scuba diving in Kovalam (Rs 3,000/person for 30 minutes and Rs 1,500/person for 15 minutes).  

The sessions, which include 30 minutes of familiarisation in a swimming pool, are best booked ahead. (For more call  +471-2320777/+91-94460-74020 or email: adventuretourismkerala.gov@gmail.com)

Sundowner  

The best way to recover from all this activity is to end the day the Kovalam way — with a sundowner (now mostly non-alcoholic thanks to Kerala’s new liquor laws) and a meal at one of the restaurants that line the Hawah and Lighthouse beaches. 

While the best bet on Hawah beach is the multi-cuisine restaurant at the Sea Face hotel, Lighthouse beach has many options, ranging from Lonely Planet (known for its vegetarian-only menu) to Beatles and Malabar Café. My personal favourite, though, is the German Bakery on Lighthouse beach with its terrace with a view, relaxed ambience and eclectic menu. 

Kovalam also offers upper-end beachside dining options at the Vivanta by Taj-Kovalam and The Leela Kovalam. Dinner at either hotel comes with distinctive views of Thiruvananthapuram’s coastline and fishing vessels twinkling like a thousand fireflies on the sea.

Art matters

A Guesswho creation in Fort Kochi

The Kochi-Muziris Biennale is an interesting idea. Not merely because it is an event that has been started by artists, but because it has got people in the region, particularly those in Kerala, thinking about art.

Of course, what art is, is another matter altogether. What for me is art could be pretentious junk for someone else and vice-versa. 

Visiting Kochi a few weeks ago, the biennale popped up in almost every conversation I had. Not all the people I spoke to will actually visit the biennale — which ends on 29 March — but they were aware of it and interested in it.
And at the biennale itself, what was really exciting was to see that a large number of visitors were from Kochi and other parts of Kerala. Equally interesting were the expressions — or lack of them — on the faces of many visitors. In some instances, visitors’ expressions were actually more fascinating than the art on display. 

A Guesswho creation in Fort Kochi

Artists whose work struck me and linger in my mind include Benitha Perciyal, Lavanya Mani, Anish Kapoor, K. M. Vasudevan Namboodiri, Dayanita Singh, Gigi Scaria, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Martin Creed, Nikhil Chopra and Daniel Boyd.
For me though, the most striking intellectual souvenir of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2014 has to be Guesswho’s art on the streets, even though it isn’t part of the event’s official programming. At first glance, the artist’s arresting marriage of local and global themes and icons evokes laughter. But then, you realise how layered they are. I was especially struck by the one next to the ticket booth at the Fort Kochi ferry station; the one featuring yesteryears Malayalam film star Prem Nazir as James Bond and the eclectic ecosystem of posters that had sprouted around it several weeks ago — public speaking classes, yoga, labour unions, a religious convention and the man with the gun. That’s a heady mix.  

By the lake

A version of this story is in the February issue of National Geographic Traveller India

As we drive through the gates of Anantya, my mobile phone buzzes indicating that it has no signal. And it stays signal-less for most of our three days at the resort. I wasn’t complaining though, for the holiday at Anantya was about getting some real downtime. 

The resort, which opened in 2013, is only a 90-minute drive from Thiruvananthapuram, but feels like it’s a world away. Situated in the midst of hundreds of acres of rubber plantations, Anantya is built on a patch of land that juts into the lake created by the Chittar dam, at the foothills of the Western Ghats. Once part of the erstwhile princely state of Travancore, the region is now in Tamil Nadu’s Kanyakumari district. It’s a charming amalgam of Tamil and Kerala influences, some of which are reflected in the resort’s mud-plastered walls, tiled roofs and woodwork.

Anantya’s heart is its open-plan restaurant and the adjoining infinity pool, both with spectacular views of the lake and the hills. Mealtimes were, in fact, one of the high points of our stay thanks to the very welcoming restaurant team and an eclectic menu that featured dishes like the sinfully rich, fiery Chicken Ghee Roast.

Patchy mobile phone signals and a few other quirks notwithstanding, the resort has many of the essentials of modern living; Wi-Fi and satellite television, for instance. And its spa has a range of ayurvedic therapies.

Activities on offer at the resort include a visit to a rubber plantation; bicycles to explore the resort’s winding pathways; facilities to play a bunch of sports; and a ‘games veranda’ with a view, an assortment of board games and a small library. The resort is also a good base for treks to the nearby hills and for day trips to the Padmanabhapuram Palace, Thirparappu waterfalls, Kanyakumari, the temples at Suchindram and Thiruvattar and the Chitharal Jain monuments.

We however, chose the easy life.  Our days were spent in our villa’s gazebo soaking up the view — the lake framed by the green of the rubber plantations and the hills beyond, a breeze ruffling the lake’s placid waters, darters fishing, dragonflies skittering across lily ponds, butterflies weaving through the lush vegetation. And luxuriating in the silence that we could almost touch, amplified by the thwack of an axe tearing through wood, the mewling of a prowling Brahminy kite and the distant drone of a vehicle engine. We just didn’t realise that time was passing by.

The Vitals

Anantya Travancore is in Kaliyal village, about 50km southeast of Thiruvananthapuram, in Tamil Nadu’s Kanyakumari district. The nearest airport is the Thiruvananthapuram International Airport (60km) and the nearest railway station is Marthandam (30km).

The resort has 21 villas across four categories — Chakra, Siddhi, Veda and Sadhana — varying in price from Rs 7,000 to Rs 15,000 (excluding taxes) from October to March. While all villas have views of the lake, the Siddhi villas, with an outdoor shower and gazebo (especially villas 6,7 and 8), and the Sadhana villas, with private plunge pools, have stunning views of the lake and the mountains beyond.

The old Gods haven't fled

A sliver of Thiruvananthapuram's skyline on an overcast evening

This was posted on Kafila a few days ago.

On a morning not long ago, chaya cup in hand, I was getting my regular Kafila fix, when I paused mid-click. What caught my eye was a headline with ‘Gods, Own and Country’ in it. Now that combination of words could only mean one thing — a piece on Kerala. It helped though that right below the headline was a picture of a Kathakali artist in sthree vesham or female makeup.
So I dived right into the essay on Thiruvananthapuram by Professor Mohan Rao. The first couple of lines had me grinning with delight for he wrote of his “four wonderful days” in the city, one that’s been my home for much of the past three decades. 
I was so pleased by this that I skimmed the next few lines. Only to be stopped in my tracks, almost spilling some scalding chaya on myself in the process, by the Professor’s declaration that “… Ganesha is not a deity widely worshipped in Kerala.” 
Now I’m no expert in Hinduism, but I do know that my extended, and very Malayali, family used to perform a ‘Ganapathy homam’ on a number of specific occasions; before moving into a new house, for instance. And this has been going on for decades. I also remember that both my grandmothers had an image of Ganapathy in their personal pooja spaces. Just to make sure that I hadn’t got my wires crossed, I checked with a couple of Malayali Hindu friends who confirmed that Ganapathy and Ganapathy homams were an integral part of their families’ religious landscape too. 
In fact, virtually every temple I’ve been to across Kerala has invariably had a Ganapathy shrine within. Why, the Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple — arguably Thiruvananthapuram’s most well known place of worship — is home to the ‘Agrashala Ganapathy’. And around the corner from the Padmanabhaswamy temple is the ‘Pazhavangadi Maha Ganapathy Temple’. I believe it has been around for a couple of hundred years; since 1795 at the least. And for as long as I can remember, it is to Pazhavangadi Ganapathy that many Hindu denizens of the city, and from elsewhere, have turned to to smooth over obstacles or entreat a shot or two of good fortune.   

So why, I wondered, did the Professor believe that Ganesha is not “widely worshipped” in Kerala. And then it struck me — perhaps I had been misled all these years into believing that ‘Ganapathy’ is one of Ganesha’s several names!

At this point I decided that nourishment was required to fortify me to read the rest of the essay. Before I placed my order though, I took a few moments to toast the Professor for one of his inferences. He was on to something when he wrote: “Along the roads are posters of Ganesha, surrounded by saffron flags... Thus is the Shiva Sena announcing its presence in Kerala.”

In Thiruvananthapuram, over the past decade or so, Ganesha Chaturthi has evolved from a relatively low-key festival into a big, public celebration, with large Ganesha idols in temporary, road-side shrines and a procession to immerse the idols in the sea after 10 days of festivities. And yes, the Shiv Sena is possibly a major backer of this transformation. But is this cause for concern? I suspect not. For the Ganesha you encounter in Thiruvananthapuram is still a benevolent, lovable avatar. 

As I munched on some nibbles from Hotel Kavitha, my neighbourhood eatery, I learnt that the Professor had been struck by “the large number of vegetarian restaurants” in Thiruvananthapuram. So much so that he actually concluded: “While the local restaurants serving beef curry and appams also exist, they are clearly in a minority.” So astounding was this assessment about the sorry state of non-vegetarian cuisine in the city that I almost choked on my chicken kotthu parotta.

Yes, there are lots of vegetarian restaurants in the city. And yes, we enjoy the dosas and iddlis, puttu and kadala, chappathi and gobi 'manjoori' they dish out. But we love biryani, beef roast, fish curry, chilly chicken, chicken fry, shwarma and all those other delicious dishes that involve animals that were once alive, just as much.

Once again, I found myself wondering why! Why hadn’t the Professor spotted the scores of restaurants in Thiruvananthapuram, at various price points, that cater to our need for meat. In fact, if he’d ventured on to the city’s streets after sundown, he would have found it tough to dodge the ‘thattukadas’ that own the night with some of the best non-vegetarian cuisine in the city.

And for all the ‘arya’ named veggie restaurants that the Professor spotted, he appears to have missed the ones with ‘arul’, ‘saravana’ or ‘udupi’ worked into their names. This isn’t the “North Indian-Hinduisation of India” he believes it to be. It’s just clever restaurateurs trying to leverage the power of strong restaurant brands like Tamil Nadu’s Saravana Bhavan and Thiruvananthapuram’s own Ariya Nivas, which has been around for decades.

By now I found myself wondering whether the Professor had actually visited the city I live in. I know that residents often tend to overlook the familiar and that it is the visitor or outsider who notices things we take for granted. Yet, what was illuminating about the Professor’s essay was that he seemed to zero-in on some things, but was oblivious of other things that are equally, if not more, visible.

Let’s say I, like the Professor, had returned to Thiruvananthapuram after 30 years. What I’d probably notice is that so many men, let’s say ‘84 per cent’, seem to have eschewed mundus for trousers and jeans. But not the Professor, who was more struck that “The proportion of Mallu men without moustaches seems to have reached an unprecedented two per cent.”

Similarly, I’d notice the diversity of the clothes that women in the city now wear — more salwars, churidars, skirts and jeans. The Professor, though, declares: “Strikingly almost all Hindu women now wear bindis — hardly anyone did earlier — and a shockingly high proportion wear sindoors …” I don’t know about sindoor, but I did wonder how the Professor concluded that “all Hindu women” in the city wear bindis. I, for one, know many who don’t, just as I know many Christian women who do.

I empathise with the Professor’s discomfort at having to remove his footwear to enter the Sree Chitra Art Gallery and the Kuthira Malika Palace Museum (which he mistakenly calls the “museum of the Sri Chitra Thirunal Palace”). I couldn’t share his distress at this practice though, since I believe the ban on footwear in both institutions is about protecting their rather fragile, old floors. And we should try to take care of our heritage, shouldn’t we?  

As I worked my way towards the end of the Professor’s essay, I remembered the paragraph I’d skimmed over at the beginning. So I returned to the lead to read about the “thick lush greenness everywhere” that the Professor saw from his seventh-floor hotel room. Something I won’t quibble with — Thiruvananthapuram is certainly greener than many other Indian cities, with fewer high rises marking its skyline.

But then, the good Professor gave me another jolt, declaring there are “Hardly any high rises, an occasional mosque, temple or church rising above the green.” This is a bit of a stretch. From my seventh floor apartment it’s not “an occasional mosque, temple or church rising above the green” I see, but regular lines of apartment towers and commercial buildings sprouting out of the green to the north, south and west. And yes, the eastern reaches of the city are relatively greener, but even there I spot more concrete fingers breaking through the green every few months.  

The Professor’s next observation, though, was a sucker-punch. “But not that many apartment blocks,” he wrote, “Unlike Bangalore, the ones that have come up are not named Malibu Towers or Sacramento, but Revi Apartments.” While he is right that Thiruvananthapuram has fewer apartment complexes than Bangalore, not all of them are named like the ‘Revi Apartments’ he encountered. On one stretch of road I know rather well are a ‘Melody’, ‘Symphony’, ‘Alpine Heights’ and ‘Marigold’. And elsewhere in the city you’ll find a ‘Wimbledon’, ‘Carlton’, ‘Tivoli’, ‘Swiss Town’, ‘Kingswood’ and ‘Mayfair’. The Professor is spot-on about one thing though — there’s no Malibu Towers or Sacramento in Thiruvananthapuram. Yet.

And no, the old Gods haven’t fled. They’ve just retreated to the shadows to allow the new demi-Gods their time to Trend or be Liked.