Spy games

Entire authorial careers (and reputations) have been built on the Cold War. But surprisingly, not many writers have tapped into the rich vein that is the often fraught relationship between India and Pakistan.

Over the past several months though, there have been half-a-dozen or so books, written mostly by Indians, that have focused on South Asia and the India-Pakistan equation. Of these, Shatrujeet Nath’s The Karachi Deception has an intriguing plot, with a nice, punchy twist at the very end. The book itself is, however, a frustratingly uneven read. More in this piece I did for last month’s The Hindu Literary Review.   

This way please

My last visit to Padmanabhapuram Palace was several months ago, while writing this story for National Geographic Traveller India. Wandering through the complex, these very unique signboards caught my eye.

They’re quaint, but also revealing of the extreme casualness with which we in India approach our cultural heritage. We talk about our ‘heritage’ ad-infinitum and throw a fit if we even suspect that someone has  ‘insulted’ it, but beyond that our commitment to our heritage falters. 

It was sad to see these ad-hoc signboards in one of the most important cultural sites in this part of the country. How hard is it to make the investments needed to ensure that the palace complex has the infrastructure it deserves, including proper, meaningful and well-maintained signboards?

Perhaps new signage has been put up in the palace since my last visit, but the signboards with a difference popped up in my mind when I saw this report about efforts to get Padmanabhapuram onto UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites list. 

If Padmanabhapuram does make it to the list, there will be much celebration. But what will that recognition mean on the ground? And, more important, will we celebrate and cherish Padmanabhapuram even it doesn’t make it to any heritage list?

 

The palace affair

(A version of this was in National Geographic Traveller India’s May issue. The story’s not on the Nat Geo website, so there’s no link.) 

One afternoon soon after I turned 21, I found a stack of black and white photographs on the desk in my neighbour’s study. Noticing my very obvious interest in the pictures, my neighbour gave me the whole bunch. Riffling through, I found an image that made my heart race — an alluring, mysterious black pool, its surface alive with oddly-shaped patterns of light. I was smitten.

Later, Sushil Pillai, my neighbour and a retired army officer with a diverse portfolio of interests, explained that the mysterious black pool was actually the glistening black floor of the ‘hall of the princesses’ in the royal ladies’ wing of the Padmanabhapuram palace. And the patterns that so enthralled me were created by sunlight falling through the carved wooden screens that run along one wall of the room. This matter-of-fact explanation, however, did nothing to douse my interest in Padmanabhapuram, which from around 1550 to 1790 was the capital of the erstwhile kingdom of Travancore.

And so, I set out to dig up as much as I could about the palace, which when I look back, wasn’t very much. Using the ‘Automobile Association Map of South India’ I figured out that it was located about 55 kilometres south of Thiruvananthapuram in a village called Kalkulam in Tamil Nadu’s Kanyakumari district, close to the town of Thuckalay. Another discovery was that though geographically in Tamil Nadu, Padmanabhapuram palace is an archaeological museum maintained jointly by the governments of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, but run by Kerala’s archaeology department.

Historians, as they often are, are divided about when the palace was built. Some say 1335,others 1550. Either way, by the middle of the 14^th century a mud fort and a palace of some sort existed in Kalkulam. The palace, called Darpakulangara, was probably little more than a large house built in the traditional Kerala nalukettu style, with four wings around a central courtyard.

It was only in the 18^th century that substantial changes took place. Marthanda Varma, one of Travancore’s greatest rulers, rebuilt the Darpakulangara palace and the fort that guarded it. In 1744, he renamed the fort and the palace Padmanabhapuram in honour of Sri Padmanabhaswamy, the tutelary deity of Travancore’s royal family.

Fascinated as I was by the palace and its story, I actually got around to visiting Padmanabhapuram only a few years later. But that first visit and the several that followed over the years were, strangely, whistle-stop affairs which I remember little of. 

Then almost a decade later, I stumbled upon a story in my wife’s family: R. Vasudeva Poduval, my wife’s great-grandfather, who was director of the Travancore State Archaeology Department was supposed to have been involved with efforts made in the late 1930s to restore the Padmanabhapuram palace. A stone plaque in the palace’s forecourt apparently recorded his association with the restoration.

That’s when I knew I really had to return to Padmanabhapuram — to spend some quality time exploring the palace and to hunt for the plaque. So early one weekday morning last December, I set off on the two-hour drive south from Thiruvananthapuram.

As my car makes its way through Kalkulam’s narrow streets, there is little to show that the palace is around the corner except for some remnants of the fort’s walls. A turn or two later I am at the palace gate.

I enter the palace’s forecourt. And what immediately catches my eye are the Veli Hills, as the Western Ghats are called here, that loom over and guard the palace’s eastern flank.

I spot a few plaques cemented into the walls of the antiquities museum nearby, but none of them say anything about Vasudeva Poduval. It’s still pretty early in the day, there’s no one in the palace’s administrative offices. So I decide to defer my quest for the plaque. Instead, I buy a ticket, stow my shoes in a rack and head off barefoot to rediscover Padmanabhapuram palace.

One of two cavernous oottupuras 

 or dining halls in the palace.

Like every visitor, I climb several steps and enter the palace through the poomukham or entrance hall with its carved pillars and wooden ceiling. This is where the king met and, perhaps, entertained guests. A granite cot and an ornate throne-like chair, adorn the poomukham, but it is upwards that my eyes go. For the poomukham’s real treasure are the lotuses carved into its ceiling — 90 of them, each carved in a different design establishing the craftsman’s mastery over wood.

From the poomukham I scramble up a narrow staircase, through a trapdoor, to the mantrasala or council chamber. Easily one of my favourite rooms in the palace, this airy hall with its red- and ochre–stained mica windows was where the king met his ministers and special visitors. A broad wooden seat with a receptacle beneath it runs along one side of the room and wooden louvers set in the seat let air in, helping to keep it cool. On hot summer days, this receptacle was filled with aromatic herbs and sandalwood sprinkled with water, filling the chamber with a fragrant breeze.

Next door is the oottupura or dining hall. The two cavernous halls, one on the first floor and another on the ground floor, were designed to feed 2,000 people at a time. As I walk through, I can almost see rows of hungry diners feasting on mounds of steaming rice, vegetables and curry, all washed down with buttermilk and water drawn from one of several large stone troughs positioned across the halls.

Across from the oottupura is the thaikottaram or mother palace, the oldest part of the palace. At its south-western end is a pillar that has been carved from a single jackfruit tree. A deep coffee brown, it is believed to be the first pillar to have been erected when the palace was being constructed.

Like many buildings of the time, Padmanabhapuram was built mostly of local material — chiefly wood, laterite bricks and stone. Its gleaming black floors I first fell in love with, are built on a base of brick or laterite stone, plastered with a mixture of lime, egg white, tender coconut water, burnt coconut shells, sand and the juices of several herbs.

What I find striking — and appealing — about the Padmanabhapuram palace is that it almost never overpowers. There seems little desire to dominate or demand attention. Instead it exudes a quiet confidence, possibly born from the subordination of the kingdom to a higher, divine force — Sri Padmanabhaswamy.

Once these stone troughs in the oottupura held 

water and buttermilk. A tradition that seems to 

continue, in part at least, today!

If there is one part of Padmanabhapuram that proclaims ‘palace’, it probably is the four-storey upparika malika, which was the king’s turf. From his bedroom on the first floor, the king could look to the courtyard below and watch men being selected for Travancore’s army. In the courtyard, mounted on a pillar, is a round stone that supposedly weighs 38 kilograms. Young men aspiring to join the army had to be able to raise the stone one hundred times to even be considered for selection.

Elegant austerity is the leitmotif of the king’s bedroom that is dominated by a four-poster cot supposed to be made of 67 different medicinal woods. A flight of stairs leads up through a trapdoor to the second floor bedroom, which the king used when he was fasting or performing other austerities. Further up, on the third floor, is the prayer room, its walls decorated with murals and a cot for Sri Padmanabhaswamy. It is believed that the Lord still uses the room, and lamps are lit and prayers offered in the room every day. Entry to the upper two floors though is now restricted.

From the first floor of the upparika malika, a corridor leads off to the vepumootu kottaram or the palace of the neem roots where the royal women lived. Airy and spacious, with wooden swings and large Belgian mirrors, this ‘hall of the princesses’ has floors that still glint like a pool of black water.

By this time, I’m feeling very hot and thirsty with all the walking and climbing. I’ve forgotten to bring a bottle of water and ask one of the palace’s staff if there’s any way I can quickly slip out to get a drink. However, she says I need to finish the tour if I want to leave. So I press on and quickly head to the navarathri mandapam.

Arguably the most beautiful part of the palace, the pillared navarathri mandapam came alive with dance and music during the festival of the nine nights or navarathri. And though the glistening floor of the mandapam or hall has been scarred by the ravages of time and human effort, it still retains some of its original allure.

I’m tempted to linger, but lose the battle to thirst and head out. Once I’ve had a couple of tender coconuts I head back to the administrative offices and meet R. Jayashree, the museum assistant. I explain my mission — the hunt for the plaque — and she’s as helpful as can be. She takes me into an adjacent office where there’s a plaque hidden behind a stack of boards; but it has no mention of Vasudeva Poduval. Sensing my disappointment, Jayashree reassures me that she has seen his name in the palace’s files and departmental correspondence. My quest for the plaque ends right there, but I decide to stay a while longer, anyway.

Back out in the forecourt, I watch the crowds of visitors, the symphony of the palace’s roofs and the ever-present Veli hills in the near distance. It strikes me that the master builders who designed and built the Padmanabhapuram palace have achieved a deft balance between material, space and light to create a very sophisticated yet self-effacing building. 

As Sushil Pillai tells me later, Padmanabhapuram palace represents a very unique Kerala sensibility; an innate sense of proportion and elegance and the subordination of the individual architect. What, I ask, is it about Padmanabhapuram that draws him. He pauses for a second or two and says: “It’s a bit like falling in love.” I can’t but agree. 

Belle et rebelle

(Did a slightly shorter version of this for The Hindu)

Facing me is a white wooden door with graffiti sprayed across it. As I pass through it and walk down a flight of cemented stairs, the light fades and the temperature drops sharply. My phone beeps that it has no signal.

I am several meters underground in a bunker that was a German air raid shelter during World War II. And for a moment, the world I know seems very distant.

Then lights flicker on, lighting up the concrete- and metal-lined corridors of the Musée Rochelais de la Dernière Guerre or the La Rochelle Museum of the Last War. Almost simultaneously, Jean-Luc Labour’s vibrant voice fills the space, as he starts talking about how he acquired the bunker in the early 1980s and turned it into a museum that tells the story of La Rochelle and France during World War II.

A beautiful town of 80,000 on France’s Atlantic coast, about 450 kilometres South West of Paris, La Rochelle was one of five German submarine bases in occupied-France during the Second World War. During the War, the Germans constructed several air raid shelters in the town, including one for the commander of the submarine base. And it is this underground bunker, on a quiet street off La Rochelle’s main market, that houses the museum. What makes the privately-owned museum special is that it has been painstakingly put together by Labour, a history buff and former tourism director of the town.

A good part of the museum’s motley collection of guns, uniforms, clothes, photographs, flags, maps, documents and other memorabilia has been acquired either in or from around La Rochelle. Opening a rather battered suitcase, Labour shows how its false bottom concealed a wireless transmitter and weapons. The case belonged to a British secret agent smuggled into France to help the French resistance movement, he says.   

Labour is such a smashing storyteller that for a little over an hour I am transported to wartime France. I guess it also helps that he allows me to handle several vintage guns including a Luger pistol and a Schmeisser MP-41 sub-machine gun.

Equally adept time machines are the three towers that stand watch over the entry to La Rochelle’s old port. Perhaps the most recognised and photographed features of the town, the Saint Nicholas, ‘Chaine’ and ‘Lanterne’ towers once regulated entry into the town’s port and also served as watch towers, military barracks, prisons and navigational aids. Today, they are tourist magnets that offer visitors glimpses of La Rochelle’s past and also its celebrated ‘rebel spirit’.

For being different is, it seems, a part of La Rochelle’s DNA. By the middle of the 12^th Century, the town was granted a ‘Charter of commune’ by the Duke of Aquitaine, who ruled the area. The charter allowed the town a degree of political and economic freedom available to few of its contemporaries. It was, for instance, allowed several tax and customs privileges including exemption from some taxes levied by the Crown. And in 1199, La Rochelle firmly signalled its autonomy by electing its first mayor, perhaps the first French town to do so.

Over the next few centuries it flourished as an important port on the Atlantic, especially for the trade in salt and wine. In keeping with its penchant for being different, the town embraced the values of the Reformation — the movement for reform that split Christianity in Western Europe into the Catholic and Protestant churches. And by the middle of the 16^th Century La Rochelle was a Protestant stronghold in Catholic France. 

However, the town’s privileged existence came to a rather sorry end in the 17^th Century after the Great Siege of 1627-28. France, under Louis XIII and his Chief Minister Cardinal Richelieu, brought La Rochelle firmly under royal control. The ‘rebel town’ was forced to surrender and was stripped of the economic and political privileges it enjoyed.

By the end of the 17^th Century though, La Rochelle bounced back, becoming the nucleus of trade between France, Africa and the West Indies and Canada in the ‘new world’. Much of La Rochelle’s past lives on in some of its museums including the Orbigny Bernon Museum, the Museum of the New World and the Museum of Protestant History.

However, La Rochelle is not only about the past, but also has its eyes firmly set on the present and the future. Not very surprising for a town that celebrates its difference with the slogan ‘La Rochelle, belle et rebelle’ translated as ‘La Rochelle, beautiful and rebellious’.  As Christophe Marchais, Director, Office of Tourism, La Rochelle tells me: “La Rochelle is not just a historic city, but also a very contemporary city.”

Among the more important of La Rochelle’s relatively contemporary attractions is its International Film Festival. Though not as well known as the one in Cannes, La Rochelle’s International Film Festival is France’s second largest film event and is celebrating its 40^th edition this year, says Marchais. Other interesting events on the town’s cultural calendar include the annual Francofolies music festival and two smaller jazz festivals, besides theatre, documentary and dance festivals.

As a town whose fortunes have been shaped by the sea, La Rochelle is big on water sports. Its marina, located in the Minimes neighbourhood is so packed with yachts and boats that at times it seems I’m trapped in a forest of masts. The marina is currently being expanded and will soon be able to accommodate 4,500-plus pleasure craft, making it the biggest in Europe, Marchais declares.

The best part of the La Rochelle experience though, especially on a fine evening, is to do what many of its residents do — head to the old port. As I stroll along the waterfront and then linger over a drink at one of the many cafes that flank the old port, it’s hard to escape the incessant clanking of halyards whipping against yacht masts in the wind. An aural reminder, perhaps, that La Rochelle is still a bit of a rebel. 

(The pic used here is a low-res version of one that appears with the piece in The Hindu)

Museums on my mind

The entrance to La Rochelle's Natural History Museum

I’ve had museums on my mind these past few days.

What got me thinking, again, about museums is the number there are in La Rochelle, France. Now La Rochelle is not a very large city. It has about 80,000 residents, whose numbers are buoyed by the several million tourists who visit every year.

Yet for a city of its size, La Rochelle has about 10 museums. There could be more, but I’ve been able to count 10 so far. Some are public museums and others are private ones; a couple are large and others are tiny. The museums are on all domains under the sun – natural history, modern art, the ‘new’ world, maritime history, World War II, scale models. And all of them seem to draw in a good number of visitors – at least in spring and summer. And all of them add a zing to the city.

All of which had me thinking about Trivandrum, the city I consider my home town. It is larger than La Rochelle both in area and population. And yet, it has only four museums that I can think of. One privately-run and three run by the government. And yes, it may soon have a fifth one.

For a city with a million or so residents, and one that draws several million tourists every year four, and indeed five, museums is just not enough. We need simply need more of them for the many worlds they open up.

The most obvious candidate for a new museum is the treasure that has been unearthedfrom the city’s Padmanabhaswamy temple. There simply must be a museum that showcases some, if not all, that has been discovered from the temple’s vaults. Such a museum is needed to tell the story of Trivandrum and southern Kerala.

Equally possible are several other smaller museums underpinned by private collections. There are people in Trivandrum with interesting collections of objects ranging from antiques and art to coins and LP records. Why can’t these collections be turned into museums? For nowhere is it said that a museum has to be a huge building with a vast collection. These private collections could even be temporary exhibitions in an existing museum.

The possibilities are many and should be explored. Of course, even as we open new museums we need to ensure that they are interesting, accessible and well maintained – all crucial challenges in India as I wrote a few months ago. 

What we need, perhaps, in Trivandrum – and elsewhere in India – is some sort of a partnership between the public and private spheres to ensure that museums of all sorts are part of our vision of development, part of the social infrastructure we are building.

I know that for India museums may not be a priority. But they are an investment in our past and our future. For in various ways they tell our story, just as the many museums of La Rochelle tell the story of this beautiful city and of France.

And when all else is gone, it’s the stories that remain.

The battle

The snake gods keep watch from a roadside shrine as the procession with the Velakali dancers makes its way towards the Padmanabhaswamy temple.

Thiruvananthapuram’s Padmanabhaswamy temple was not just one of the anchors of spiritual life in the erstwhile kingdom of Travancore. It was also a patron of a number of arangams or art forms, some performed inside the temple and others outside.

Gouri Lakshmi Bayi of the erstwhile royal family of Travancore writes in Sree Padmanabha Swamy Temple that 99 arangams are believed to have enjoyed the temple’s patronage, though details are now available of only around 55 of them. 

The cameras start clicking as the performers go through their opening moves.

Among the arangams associated with the temple is Velakali, a martial dance traditionally performed by a sub-group of the Nair community. The dance was generally performed during the temple’s annual Painkuni utsavam, one of its two major festivals. Staged on the eastern approach to the temple, the dance is believed to recreate the Kurukshetra war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas.

Only a handful of the Velakali performers are men; 

the rest are boys.

Now, much about the Padmanabhaswamy temple changed over one suspense-filled week last June. For that’s when a committee appointed by India’s Supreme Court to inspect the temple’s vaults reportedly discovered tonnes of gold, silver, precious stones and jewellery in the vaults. And in the blink of an eye, the Padmanabhaswamy temple went from being one of India’s important Vishnu temples to, arguably, the world’s wealthiest religious institution.

In the weeks since then, change has swept across the temple precincts: new security measures have been introduced, shops around the temple have been relocated, long term plans for managing the vaults are being drawn up and the contents of the vaults are quietly and methodically being inventoried.

The young warriors are all set for battle.

Meanwhile, the temple’s spiritual routines, including its festivals, continue pretty much as they have for decades if not centuries. As I wrote a couple of years ago, in March/April every year imposing figures of the five Pandavas are erected in front of the temple’s eastern entrance for the duration of the 10-day Painkuni utsavam or festival. Once made of wood, the fibreglass figures are an integral part of Painkuni utsavam.

Boredom writ across his face, a young performer waits for the final segment of the Velakali to start.

Gouri Lakshmi Bayi writes in Sree Padmanabha Swamy Temple that the figures of the Pandavas are erected to ward off rain during the festival. The belief, she adds, is that the figure of Arjuna, supposed to be the son of the rain god Indra, is especially useful to keep rain away. Which is why the Painkuni utsavam is also called the pancha Pandava utsavam or the festival of the five Pandavas.

Every performer wears a breastplate of golden beads 
and carries a tiny wooden shield and cane.

Back in the early 1970s, the Velakali performance during the Painkuni utsavam was scrapped, possibly due to financial challenges. Over the years, there were some attempts to revive the Velakali tradition, but none of them worked.

During the final stages of the performance, the dancers are at the foot of the steps that lead to the temple’s eastern entrance.

Last year though, people who live around the temple chipped-in to raise the money required to revive the Velakali during the Painkuni utsavam. So last April, after 40-odd years, the Kauravas once again got to fight the Pandavas in Thiruvananthapuram.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see that battle. So when the date for this year’s Velakali was announced, I was determined to be there. As were a couple of thousand other people and a small army of photographers and television cameras.

Residents of one of the temple’s outbuildings keep an eye on things, as does a security camera.

One hundred dancers took part in the Velakali performance at the Padmanabhaswamy temple. Armed with small wooden shields and canes, the dancers are believed to represent the hundred Kaurava brothers. The performance, accompanied by music, ends with the defeat of the dancers who pretend to flee in disorder.

And as the Kauravas lost yet again and dusk crept in, a new cohort of armed guards quietly slipped into place to keep watch over the Lord’s treasure. 

One of the armed police patrols that guard the temple.