Thrissur/Irinjalakuda/Kuzhur

As the train drew in to the station at Thissur Kavitha and Rajesh were on the platform to greet us! Jumped into the car and dropped our bags off at the homestay and after a huge Indian breakfast in the hotel opposite we sped off to the Government College of Fine Art to hang our exhibition.


Back to the college the next day to meet the students and talk about our work and then we headed off to Irinjalakuda to Kavithas parents home. Kavitha was brought up here and we had fun seeing her childhood home, school and college, and the school where her father Balakrishnan taught.

The following morning Kavitha and Balakrishnan took us to the local foundry, where huge brass temple ornaments are made. I've never seen anything like like this in my life! We walked through the sparkly showroom to the dark dusty workshops at the back where every stage of the lost wax casting was in progress. Each item is first moulded in wax with absolutely perfect precision, then coated in mud ready to go in the furness where the wax melts away and the molten brass is poured from a crucible into the mould.
No health and safely regs here, the guys are barefoot, and lifting the moulds and crucibles out of the fire with huge tongs.

Then comes the cleaning and polishing to finish the object. The owner of the foundry is a former student of Balakrishnan's or Masrrar ... 'master' ( in recognition of his former career) as everyone calls him, as were many of the shop owners and other people we bumped into in the town.

In the afternoon we went for a drive in the countryside to find a local village Hindu temple festival, where Kali is worshipped. We were made to feel so welcome, partly because Balakrishnan is so affable and chats to everyone! The drummers played with such incredible intensity for over an hour and several men worked themselves up into a frenetic trance to become the human embodiment of the God and bless the women carrying offerings. At the same time we watched two men making a temple painting on the floor with coloured rice powder, shaking the colours through a sieve made from half a coconut with incredible accuracy. Later over dinner we talked with Kavitha ( who is a professor of art history) about the nature of perfection that we had witnessed that day in the foundry and in the temple painting. Or maybe the nature of human imperfection?

Our poet friend Wilson had invited us back to Kuzhur to meet his friends and neighbours who have essentially lost everything in the devastating floods of last year. His village was one of the worst effected in the the region, and as we drove towards his house there were still ruined houses along the lanes. The government has given very little help, but these are resourceful folk who are rebuilding their lives in the best way they can. We arrived late, and everyone was there, but we hadn't expected a local TV crew! 

A long hug with Wilson, and then we sat in his semi built house and talked about how we had all met, through Charlie's poet project maybe five years ago, and tried to show our empathy with the experience of our own village flooding two years ago, although in Kuzhur the water level was over 2 meters high! Wilson lost practically everything, but he has kept what he could salvage from his mother's house in a wooden box. Now he has started a plant nursery outside his house. 

A delicious lunch was put together by neighbours and rice came from a local hotel and we ate off banana leaves on a makeshift table made out of a bed and a plastic rug. 

Beef, tapioca, beetroot, different pickles and chutneys...a real feast which we managed to eat with our fingers in the traditional way!

Next day we went on a trip to Thumboormuzhi river gardens and Athirappily waterfalls, following the river Chalakudy upstream through  wild forests and date palm and cashew plantations, the hills shrouded in mist. On one bridge was a warning not to swim in the river because of crocodiles! The waterfalls are stunning, though YouTube footage at the time of the flooding is terrifying.

On our last day Charlie is interviewed by St Thomas College,, while I try to upload this blog! Sadly Google seems to have forgotten about blogger which won't work on an iPad and I lose it all ... very frustrating!

We called in for a cuppa at Kavitha's parents house in Thrissur, with such a warm welcome, sitting around the table chatting to her mum and son Adi, who is so like Basti. 

We popped into a huge supermarket, bustling with customers on Saturday afternoon and sales assistants on every aisle ready to help you ... unlike back home! Outside on the main dual carriageway there's an elephant leading a Republic Day procession, followed by roller-skate teams from all the local schools, brought up in the rear with scout cadets marching their boots off ... traffic completely gridlocked ... where else but in India!
A week full of such diverse and rich experiences, talking about art, politics, marriage, caste, food, comparing our different cultures.   

Overnight to Goa

I had been thinking about the overnight train to Goa with apprehension for months, ever since after 17 failed attempts I had actually managed to book the ticket, but actually it turned out to be easier than I imagined. Charlie managed to find a buggy that took us right down the platform and over the line and back to our AC sleeper compartment. Indian trains are LONG! 

 

We were heading up to Goa to stay with our writer/artist friend Savia Viegas and her husband Anoop, who moved back from a life in Bombay to renovate her father's family Quinta, in the village in Carmona where Savia grew up.

Here she has set up a pre-school in part of their rambling house, and the children in each class sang to welcome us. 

After a lovely Indian breakfast of apam and coconut chutney we were driven to her son's ongoing residential project 4 kilometres away in Varca, where our home for the week was a four storey town house looking onto a stunning landscaped garden and pool surrounded by coconut groves.

It's been fascinating to talk to Savia about growing up in Goa in the sixties and seventies, her memories are the inspiration for many of her books, but she twists her narratives to show a darker side of Goan life. 

So many of the old colonial Quintas are now locked up and abandoned by their owners, who can't afford to repair them, but the government will not allow them to sell the land until they totally fall down. http://www.saviaviegas.in/

Savia is also the custodian of her childhood home.
Work is underway to restore this crumbling Quinta too, and in June her school will re-open there with room for additional primary classes. Her vision to use the heritage of the past for a public social purpose will be realised!
We also visited the Goa Chitra museum where we met the owner Victor Hugo Gomes, who has built up an incredible collection of ethnographic artefacts.
He has invited Charlie to produce a series of digital collages using his collection, and also to come back in the future to do workshops with the international students he welcomes each year. 

We had a day trip to Panjim, such an elegant capital, with wide tree lined avenues and many beautiful old Portuguese buildings from the colonial era. We enjoyed all the art at MOG and Sunaparanta Art Centre, but the highlight was the best fish thali we have ever tasted, joined by our printmaking friend Hanuman Kambli.

Goan scene by Francis Souza

Chillies by Subhod Kerkah

After a lazy Sunday lunch on the beach it's now it's time for another night on the train back to Kerala!

New Year in Kerala

We arrived in Kochi via a glittering Dubai, so spectacular from the air at night, and it was still sparkling here with Christmas stars hanging in all the trees in the town and all the streets festooned with the remnants of New Year celebrations.

 

Such a warm welcome everywhere we go...the fourth time we have stayed at Vintage Inn so from the moment we arrived the familiarity made us feel at home, but we were surprised that waiters in 

restaurants greeted us like long lost friends and rickshaw drivers honked their horns as they whizzed past. 

Charlie was disappointed that the breakfast shack at the roundabout looked derelict, but then we discovered Thomas has set up shop at the front of his house just round the corner...giving us both a huge Malayali  breakfast for 50 rupees. 

We’ve been caught up in visiting all the Biennale sites in the first few days with evenings spent in Cabral Yard where there are artists talks, films and music in the pop up pavillion, with the whackiest food canteen I've ever come across serving excellent local cuisine if you can figure out the token system and don't need a knife and fork!

Some nights we have wandered down to the sea front at dusk to cool off. A favourite place for families to walk along the promenade.

I sat on a bench talking about the five elements and religion with a lovely lady who practiced acupuncture and had come to soak up the rays of the setting sun...when a huge wave crashed against the rocks and we were drenched...we laughed with such joy! 

Carnival of Poetry...a crazy jaunt from beach to backwaters

Our beach break was at Mararikulum at the most wonderful homestay we have ever stayed at. Halfway down a sandy track, impossible to get to even in a rickshaw! 

Jeejo welcomed us with fresh pineapple juice and afternoon tea and snacks were served at 4pm each day. Each night there was a candlelit dinner on the lawn with fish fry, tuna curry and an incredible selection of Kerala style veg. Breakfast was also an artwork! 

We went on a country bus to Arthunkal, where the basilica is one of the most important pilgrimage sites in Kerala. It is considered as a holy land by hundreds of thousands of devotees, of Christian as well as other faiths. 

A procession, carrying the graceful statue of St. Sebastian, from the church to the beach and back, is the most important event of the feast. Interestingly, an eagle is seen roaming the skies, every year during the time of the procession. 

This eagle too has become part of the grandmothers' stories, about the presence of St. Sebastian as a guardian saint for the village. We missed the main procession but still the pilgrims were queuing in a long line to enter the church led by a drummer under decorative umbrellas. The streets were lined with stalls, more like a fairground, with an old fashioned hula hoop game attracting hopeful crowds! 

Everywhere you sense the spiritual link to the sea. Each little lane runs down from the church to a white cross on the beach. 

At the last minute we cancelled our last night as we were invited to the carnival of poetry 5 hours drive north. Our friend Wilson picked us up at 6am and by lunchtime Charlie was reading a poem in English for another Keralan poet in a forest clearing! 

We rapidly mounted a show of our work and sat most of the afternoon talking to students. They were bubbling with enthusiasm, the girls all colourfully dressed in flowing salwar kameez. 

One girl, speaking perfect English poignantly talked about how could she ever leave the confines of her orthodox Muslim family, flunking her first year of Zoology to gain another year before marriage. Kavitha, our artist friend, herself a professor at a university, encouraged her to complete her studies, find a good job etc but we both knew inside she was trapped. 

Afterwards Kavitha and I talked about the contemporary situation in many religious groups in India, changing aspects of caste, and how Christian girls trained as nurses to work abroad to make their escapes. 

The evening ended back in the forest clearing where Wilson and a flautist prepared to perform. Then the heavens opened! 

We eventually presented Jigsaw Artists Collective with speeches in a lecture theatre, and Wilson read Poetree to the flute accompaniment...a beautiful end to the day.

Wilson stayed up all night with his poet friends so the college paid for a taxi back to our backwater homestay. The ancestral home of our host Kosygin, whose father was a leading agriculturist. 

This is set right on the waterfront, an idyllic location in the middle of nowhere, so peaceful, just the sound of birds, the odd canoe going up and down. 

We walked through the tiny villages watching the pattern of everyday life, collecting water from a tap, washing clothes in the river, smiling people hiding the hardships they all suffer, a broken bridge meaning no vehicular access and despite constant requests to government to sign of repairs in sight.

We took a government ferry across  Vembanad lake, the longest lake in India and the largest lake in Kerala! 

Charlie fished in a tiny lake near our home stay, apparently he caught a tiddler but he threw it back to grow! 

I dined on the famous Karimeen Pollichathu, Pearl Spot fish cooked in a banana leaf, but so spicy I could hardly taste the fish so next day I had one fried...delicious!