Summer’s end

Summer’s over; at least in Kerala. The South West Monsoon officially arrived in Kerala today, holding out the promise of several months of slushy roads; damp clothes, mouldy leather shoes and life-giving rain.

Though it has been raining in this part of the world for the past week or so, it’s only this morning that India’s Met Office declared the onset of the monsoon over Kerala. Three criteria need to be met for the Met Office to agree that the monsoon has arrived in Kerala — its first port of call on the Indian mainland.

I won’t try explaining those criteria here — I’ll leave that to the weathermen. Quite simply, the Met Office declares the monsoon has set in over Kerala if there has been widespread rainfall of at least 2.5 mm across Kerala for a couple of days and if winds — the Westerlies — start blowing up to heights of around 4 kilometres and at specific strengths.

And that’s what was confirmed today. Which is why the Indian Met Office says:

“Southwest monsoon has further advanced into most parts of south Arabian Sea, entire Kerala, south Tamilnadu and some more parts of southwest Bay of Bengal today the 31st May 2010…


Conditions are favourable for further advance monsoon into some parts of central Arabian Sea, coastal & south interior Karnataka and Goa during next 48 hours. Further advance of monsoon will depend upon the intensity and direction of movement of the low pressure area currently lying over central Arabian Sea at 0830 hours IST of today.”

If the weathermen are to be believed, this will be a ‘normal’ monsoon year with bountiful rains. However, that is something that only time can confirm. For the moment, India will be watching the monsoon’s progress with unbridled hope.

Vision in white

It’s rather hard to miss the St Joseph’s Metropolitan Cathedral when you pass through the Palayam neighbourhood in Thiruvananthapuram. The church’s bell tower, which looms benignly over the area, can be seen from some distance away.

For many years, the Cathedral was clad in red livery — a distinctive, red-brick-like finish. And the statue of Jesus, at the very top of the tower, was enveloped in robes of silver.

Popularly known as the Palayam palli or church, the 137-year-old St Joseph’s Metropolitan Cathedral was on Pope John Paul II’s itinerary when he visited the city in 1986.

Earlier this month, the Cathedral reopened its doors to worshippers after extensive restoration. Painted a dazzling white, with the statue of Jesus clad in robes of gold, the church is a beacon of light, especially at night.

Though the church’s new livery is striking, it does feel a little strange not to see the familiar brick-red finish when you pass through Palayam. But, it seems, that the original colour of the church was white and the brick-like finish was apparently painted on in the late 1920s, say these stories in The Hindu and the New Indian Express.

Whatever its colour though, the Cathedral along with its neighbouring places of worship — the Palayam Juma Masjid and the Palayam Ganesha temple add to the area’s spiritual energy.

Vampire tales

A Raktharakshas poster

A few weeks ago I attended my first Malayalam theatre performance in a really long time. It was a modernised version of Kalanilayam Drama Vision’s popular production Raktharakshas.

Roughly translated as vampire, Raktharakshas exemplifies popular Malayalam theatre from a couple of decades ago — over emoting actors, pancake-like make up and slapstick dialogues that ooze sexual innuendo. And while the play appears to have been souped-up and shortened to suit the tastes of present-day audiences, it doesn’t seem to have lost any of its original qualities; the dialogues, for example, are still laden with lots of nudge-nudge, wink-wink.

Early this April, the play — directed by Krishnan Nair, the founder of Kalanilayam Drama Vision and written by Jagathy N. K. Achary — returned to Trivandrum after a couple of decades. It, perhaps, has pole position in the company’s repertoire, which includes popular production such as Kadamattathu Kathanar, Kayamkulam Kochunni, Sri Guruvayurappan and Naradan Keralathil.

Waiting for the curtain to go up

As a story, Raktharakshas is ho-hum at best. Where it really stands out though is for its stagecraft, which must have been pretty revolutionary back when it was first performed. Devices like a revolving stage — that made it possible to use real cars as props and also eliminate the time lag between scenes — or a ‘trolley shot’ for extra effect were arguably trailblazers in Malayalam theatre.

In its new run, Raktharakshas retains these touches, but also features a re-worked soundtrack and “dynamic visual effects” as this piece in The Hindu says. And though some visual effects seem a trifle rudimentary, I suspect that even today Raktharakshas is pretty innovative in its use of technology, at least in the Malayalam theatre world.

While it may no longer give people sleepless nights with its brand of horror, Raktharakshas still seems to be able to draw them in. On a weekday night in late-April, the show I attended was about 80 per cent full and there were long queues waiting to enter the makeshift theatre for the second show. And weekend shows were pretty much a sell out I gather. I guess, more than anything else, what Raktharakshas’ apparently good run in Trivandrum shows is that there’s still a place for old-fashioned theatre in the rich spread of entertainment options that exist today.

Waltzing with the unions

Moving house can be fun. It can also be stress-filled and exhausting and can chew up large chunks of time without you even realising it. And, as a bonus, it can even help you shed a few kilos. I’m sure my friend Sumi over at Musings, who moved house a couple of months ago, will agree.

I imagine that in most parts of the world, when you are set to move, you get a couple of relocation companies to give you some quotes and then zero in on one where the price-value equation makes sense. The movers roll in, pack all your stuff, cart it off to your new home and, perhaps, even unpack your belongings and set it all up. At least that’s the way it happens if you can afford the prices that movers charge. And if you can’t afford movers, I guess you cart all your stuff to your new home with some help from friends and family.

In Kerala though, moving house is a bit like being part of a velichapad or temple oracle’s performance ritual. Just as you are never quite sure of what the velichapad will say or do when possessed by the deity, so too are you never sure of just how Kerala’s unique headload workers’ unions will behave.

In most parts of India, if you bring something in a truck to your house or shop or office, you can pay people to unload the stuff for you. In Kerala, such work is the exclusive preserve of members of the headload workers’ unions; and each locality in the State has its own complement of headload workers’ unions.

What that means is that you — personally — can unload your belongings from a truck, but cannot employ just anyone to do it for you. Instead, you have to employ members of the various unions to do it for you. No complications so far. Where this practice really gets interesting is that the charges for unloading your stuff are usually decided by the unions.

Things get even more interesting when you have to load or unload very heavy objects or things that require the skills of specially trained workers. In such cases, the union members do not do the work; instead they watch the work being done and are paid ‘nokku kooli’ or a wage for the privilege of viewing the work. Nokku kooli, even the unions officially agree, is illegal, but it happens.

There are, of course, ‘officially fixed’ rates for unloading various things; a price list of sorts. Most often though, what you pay for unloading your stuff depends on your negotiation skills and, more important, on the whims and fancies of the union reps in your locality. So if you get them during the ‘happy hours’ you may be socked with a whopper of a bill and then again, you may not. It’s all very unpredictable.

Which is why unloading stuff from a truck and, some times, loading it on to one, in Kerala is very similar in spirit to the velichapad’s whirls, swirls and mumbles when he is in the deity’s thrall. A dance with a blend of choreographed and spontaneous moves.

Hartal

Food and fuel prices are disobedient things. Otherwise why would they not have dropped after a nationwide hartal against their proclivity to rise?

Entire states in India screeched to a halt a few of days ago to very firmly tell food and fuel prices to fall. In Kerala and West Bengal, offices, shops, theatres, schools, colleges and factories were shut and public transport virtually disappeared on April 27 — to drive home to food prices that it was time for them to come down from the commanding heights they'd achieved.

Hartals, of course, come in various sizes. There are the teeny-weeny ones that envelop a specific locality or neighbourhood in their vice-like embrace. And then there are the district- or city-level hartals. And last, but by no means the least, are the state-wide hartals like the one on April 27.

According to the Anti Hartal Front, this recent hartal is the 17th that has been called in Kerala this year. Last year, there were 54 hartals of all hues in Kerala, it adds.

So far though, India’s food and fuel prices have remained unmoved by the stern message that was tweeted to them through the hartal. ‘What does a hartal have to do with us and how is it going to make us climb down,’ they appear to wonder.

And since no one’s explained to those darned prices just how a hartal is expected to bring them down, they’re still high and seem disinclined to come down from their cosy perches up above. They seem comfortable where they are and would, perhaps, even like to climb further.

What next then to teach those disrespectful prices a lesson; one they’ll never forget?

A Tweet-a-thon? A FaceBook status campaign? A dawn-to-dusk mass fast? Another hartal, perhaps?

Snapshot: The model’s last pose

Some time last week, I was driving past The College of Fine Arts-Kerala in Trivandrum when I saw a konna or Golden Shower tree in full bloom. I stopped to take the picture above; a version of which I used in my piece on Vishu.

In the foreground of the picture is the statue of a man — bare-chested, arms locked behind his back, mundu drawn up and tucked around his waist. There’s something very arresting about the sculpture. Perhaps it’s the expression on the statue’s face — faintly proprietorial and confident, yet simultaneously melancholic and stoic.

The sculpture is of Chellappan. One of the many works — sculptures, paintings and clay models — he’s featured in. For Chellappan is, or rather was, a model for students of The College of Fine Arts.

But Chellappan will model no more for he committed suicide on Sunday, as this piece in The New Indian Express says.

Chellappan was, as the Express piece puts it: “…the most sought-after model by the students of the Fine Arts College… There was literally no one who had not made a sculpture, a portrait or a clay model on him.”

A few years ago Francois Daireaux, a French artist who was holidaying in Kerala, stumbled across one of the many statues of Chellappan sprinkled around The College of Fine Arts. And as this piece in The Hindu Metro Plus points out: “He (Daireaux) stopped to take a picture and behold! – into the frame walked the living sculpture himself, the man, the model.” One thing led to another and several months later Daireaux did a Chellappan-focused exhibition at the Centre d’art Abbaye de Maubuisson in France.

What it was that drew art students — and Daireaux — to feature Chellappan in their work is not very clear. Perhaps, it was his craggy face and the droop of his belly. Or perhaps it was because he was easy to work with.
I’ve seen Chellappan in the flesh a couple of times and what always struck me was that he was a caricature waiting to be captured. So much so that if I could draw or sculpt even a bit, I’d have grabbed the opportunity to capture him; that was how striking he was. And perhaps it was this hard-to-pin-down presence that Chellappan exuded that made him a popular model.
Not everyone, however, is impressed by Chellappan. As a senior lecturer at The College of Fine Arts told me this morning, a wry smile on his face, “There are lots of models here, but he (Chellappan) has become a metaphor.” The lecturer believes that Chellappan is more a creation of the media. And with another smile plastered on his face, but in words that oozed a sense of pique, he added: “Lots of big and important exhibitions are held here, but the media hardly mentions them. But him…”

I wonder what Chellappan would have had to say to that. More important, did all the attention, from the media and others, make a qualitative difference to Chellappan’s life. I suppose we’ll never know now.