KERALA

INDIA ANCIENT AND MODERN

Outside our hotel was a siddha, selling brilliant crimson medicine in old vaccine phials. He sat under a vast rain tree, and, every now and then, the house crows would wander over to monitor his takings. Most of his customers were rickshaw drivers, although no one was sure exactly what his medicine did.

         Such sights would be familiar to old India hands. But to me, it’s all still beautifully baffling. Within an hour of arriving, I’d spotted a ‘Ladies Frisking Booth’, an advertisement for a surrogate mother, some porters with ‘NO TIPS’ embroidered into their shirts, and a supermodel digging a trench in her sari. With all its robes and elephants and public works, I’ve always imagined that India is what Ancient Rome would’ve been like if it hadn’t been so … well, ancient, I suppose.

But then, just as I’m beginning to enjoy this neo-classical reverie –WHAM! – I find myself falling down the great rabbit hole of time, and ending up in the Wonderland that’s modern India. There’s nothing remotely classical about this; rockets bound for space, computer-mania, BMW factories, hip hotels, a middle class of 260 million (equivalent to the entire population of the USA) and some new operators - like Jet Airways - whose names may be Toytown but whose service is confidently slick. And where better to enjoy this straddling of the centuries? Why, here in Kerala, of course, where it all began.

Of all India’s attractions, Kerala is probably the oldest and most enduring. Beauty, greenery and a balmy climate have been just part of the appeal. Early traders simply couldn’t get enough of it, and it’s still timelessly exotic, everything pungent with spices and age. I shall remember its old capital, Fort Cochin, for its shady banyan trees, its dugout canoes, merchants in their dhotis, and a pair of exquisite brass scales I bought for about 80p. Amongst the first to take it seriously were the courtiers of the Kublai Khan, who’d left behind their great creaking fishing machines (‘The Chinese Nets’). ‘Come Up!’ said one of the skippers, and before I knew it, we were tottering around in the superstructure, high above the water.

‘It feels like an elephant trap,’ I told the skipper.

He laughed. ‘All this, just to catch some tiddlers!’

Naturally, Kerala was soon attracting India’s first Europeans. Pliny described it as the place for teak and peacocks, and Columbus had been heading here when he’d bumped into the Americas. In fact, I soon began to realise that this had been the Eastern Terminus of the Old World.

The past was everywhere, especially in the detail. All the great powers had left odds and ends behind. We found a Portuguese fort, a Dutch Palace, a sixteenth-century Jewish synagogue (and one last Jew, in a pinstripe suit), a whole street of old British Godowns and mock-Tudor clubs, and an Anglican church with a Poor Box and rattan pews. My wife, Jayne, even spotted Vasco da Gama’s grave, into which he’d been gratefully inserted on Christmas Day 1524. He was never the best ambassador for Europe. He once made a curry out of Keralite hands and noses, and, when the Zamorin sent him an envoy, he sent him back with his ears cut off and those of a dog sewn on.

Amongst Keralites this ever-present past is easily forgiven. In many ways, they’ve reverted to what they were pre-Vasco, spiritual and sensuous; there are shrines to snakes, and the men go to beauty parlours, and the gardens turn to jungle. We even went to watch some Kathakali, an eye-popping, sinew-snapping dance unchanged for several thousand years. But in every other way, the Keralites are gluttons for innovation. They enjoy a literacy rate of 90% and - in India - they were the first Christians, the first Jews, and the first communists. They are also the most prosperous, and the irresistible urge to work has now thrown their invasions into reverse. These days, there are 3 million Keralites working abroad, mostly in the Gulf. In a land the size of Belgium, that leaves 24 million Hindus and Muslims, about 8 million Christians, 14 Jews and 71 tigers.

         So, with history all around, most Keralites were now bounding along with the new tiger economy. Not everyone keeps up, and there were still the medicine men and the purveyors of magical beads. But, around town, many returning workers had built themselves spanking new little Abu Dhabis, and there was now a curious appetite for football. Judging from the small ads, even the local prostitutes had undergone a little re-branding; these days, the only attributes they ever advanced were ‘HYGIENIC’ or ‘ENGLISH SPOKEN’.

Modernity, it seems, was now galloping ahead at such a pace that often hotels were forced to re-invent the past. Ours, The Brunton Boat Yard, was a case in point. It had started out as industrial premises in 1840, but shipbuilding was never like this. We had four-poster beds, planters’ chairs, punkah fans (once hand-drawn) and spice chests each the size of a family saloon. It was all so tastefully antiqued and boutiqued, that it felt like wandering around in a sepia print. Only our dinner re-ignited a sense of the present: prawns deliciously perfumed with spices, and served with chilled Chardonnay (Indian, of course). In a country where ‘colonial’ used to mean ‘the plumbing doesn’t work’, (and ‘historic’ meant ‘Nothing works at all’), here was pleasure indeed.

 

         We then had a trip down memory lane, or rather up into the Western Ghats. The higher our little car climbed, the more time seemed to fall away. First, the city broke up into little factories (like ‘The Infant Jesus Radiator Works’), and then we were in the plantations. Our driver said that forest people still wash their houses out with cow dung (an early germicide, they say) and consider it a sin to kill a squirrel. They’d even believed in their Robin Hood for a while (although when the police finally chased him to earth, he was no more than a mountain rustler called Veerappan). These were simple, public lives - baths taken in the river, sheets dried on the grass. Up here, the buses had names like ‘St Anthony’, and the only time we stopped was to let a snake cross the road.

         Eventually, we ended up in the 1920s, at 6,000 feet, near Munnar. The creators of the Talayar Tea Estate had obviously designed their house to survive India and look like England. Being made of granite the first bit was easy, but - despite some solid English furniture - it had proved hard to disguise it all as home. This, I realised, was partly because of the tea; we were in the middle of the tea-planters’ equivalent of The Prairies - except vertical and green. The other reason was that India simply wouldn’t be ignored. Panthers often came up here, said the cook, and every now and then wild elephants appeared and grubbed up all his carrots.

         Once again there was a sense of time dislocated. But, whether this century or the last, whether England or India, it was exorbitantly beautiful. All around us the valley walls rose, in a privet-green tapestry of tea. I’ve never seen mountains looking so tame, as if they’d been clipped like specimens of topiary. Way below, we could even make out waterfalls, vast rock gardens and a cluster of matching, lilac cottages. These were the workers’ lines, explained our host, Vinoo Roberts. He said that, every seventeen days, this little army of mountain gardeners would harvest the entire valley. Later, we went down there, and I noticed that most of the workers were communists around their homes. Up in the hills however, they built shrines and were generally more godly.

         ‘Keralites,’ said Vinoo shrewdly, ‘aren’t black and white about these things.’

         Vinoo was an engaging host, and a powerful advocate for tea. One morning, he took us tea-picking with the workers. After an hour, we’d picked 6kg, which was worth a wage of 30p. Then Vinoo took our tea to the factory, where it was wilted, crushed, torn, curled, fermented, dried, and graded. The next day, our offering (now a shrivelled kilo) was in its own packet, labelled ‘GIMLETTE’S 2006 GARDEN FRESH TEA’.

         Another day, Vinoo took us to see a half-lost tribe, who’d never seen the point in tea. The Muthuvas lived in mud huts two-hours walk up Snake Mountain, and spent their lives gathering wild honey and worshipping the spirits of the forest. Jayne and I had always anticipated an encounter like this, and so we’d come with a rucksack filled with our toddler’s old clothes. As a gesture, it was a flop. The women had all fled, and the tribesmen stood around looking heroically unimpressed by this sudden surge of pink. Worse, there didn’t seem to be any children. So perhaps they thought it was all a horrible joke?

‘No,’ said Vinoo, ‘The children are all out, playing in the forest.’

         ‘When are they back?’

The tribesmen shrugged. ‘Probably, next week.’

 

Time then lurched forward several thousand years, as we came down from the ghats, and landed in a hip hotel. ‘The Serenity’ was originally built as a rubber planter’s house in 1901, and was now a little haven of boutique art and boutique mango curries. It was aptly named. Although it was nice to think of all those trees busily at work, producing the next generation of tennis balls and tyres, the prospect of serenity seemed better. I spent the afternoon bobbing around on a cool green pool, and reading a book about the medicine of Kerala. Daisies were good for stiff necks, I learnt, cloves for ‘foul gases’, and borage for hysteria.

         Apart from the staff, looking cool and flitting about in black, we only had one visitor. Lakshmi was thirty, and turned up at breakfast and ate forty-five bananas. She then put Jayne on her head, and set off round the garden. Did I mention that she was an elephant? Actually, there was something rather human about Lakshmi; she had freckles, and sighed whenever she was told what to do. It took ages to coax Jayne down off her head, and even Lakshmi seemed to have enjoyed the encounter. She was last seen padding off to work, wagging her tail like a dog.

 

Our last few days, ancient and modern were, once again, artfully intermingled. We spent them on the great undecided lake of Vembanad. The difficulty it’s always had is in deciding whether it’s like the High Seas or the Norfolk Broads. For much of the year it’s the latter: calm, fresh, abundant, and fed by hundreds of miles of channels (known here as The Backwaters). Then, between March and May, the saltwater returns, reasserting the more ascetic regime of the sea. It’s a harsh life for those that live here, snatching a rice harvest before the salt, and with water always up to their knees. To the first outsiders, this was Kuttanad: The Land of Short Legs.

         That first morning, we boarded a giant, snake-shaped canoe called a vallam, and puttered over the lake. It was like exploring the surface of an enormous mirror, only a thin brocade of palms defining the beginning of water and the end of sky. In the middle of this magnificent silvery void, a strange life existed. We came across fishermen catching ‘pearl spot’ in their hands, cement-makers digging for mussel shells with long poles, and a man doing his laundry. Like theirs, our canoe had once been a working boat, and had hauled rice from one end of the channels to the other (Five days, according to the captain, punted along by pole). Unlike theirs, we now had a gigantic basket attached to our hull, containing a bedroom, a bathroom, a drawing room, and a team of Keralite cooks. Backwater life may not always have been so enjoyable but then re-invention’s a wonderful thing.

         After two days of chugging though the watery highways of Kuttanad, we ended up at the watery village of Aymanam. It was a pretty place, set amongst mango trees and pepper, and on rafts of water hyacinths. Most of the villagers made their living building canoes, or swimming through the channels after catfish. But, although these amphibious people had never known cars or roads, they were curiously attuned to the world. One of them begged me for news of Princess Diana, and another flew jets for the Indian Air Force. The village had even enjoyed a moment of adulation, when one of the locals, Arundhati Roy, had turned it into a story, known the world over as The God of Small Things.

         At the end of the village was a metal door leading to the present, or at least Coconut Lagoon. Seldom have the centuries that sub-divide India been so pleasingly straddled. We were now in an eco-resort of islands and channels, infinity pools, palmeries, ancient teak mansions rescued from the forest, tiny ornamental cows, four-storey cocktails and designer curries. But, in spite of all these refinements, it was still indisputably India. One minute, one might be basking in butterflies, and the next a huge formation of cormorants would clatter overhead, followed by a tropical downpour.

         During one of these outbursts, we took shelter in a doorway, with a maid called Vivitha. She was a girl of luminous beauty and Keralan ambition. In the few minutes that it took the storm to pass, we had her life story, beginning in a mud hut and ending – in the not-too-distant future – with a string of luxury hotels. ‘Life is one time only,’ she said earnestly, and then shot off through the puddles.

         Each day ended with returning canoes, and an orchestral twilight of frogs. It was hard to drag oneself away from this carnival of colour. But at least we had our own mansion to go to - with teak floors and a private pool – and, every night, there was another note pushed under the door. One (I suspect from Vivitha) wished us an ‘experiental’ time in Kerala. Was she thinking of experience or experiment? Who knows. But it was a good word for Kerala, occupying that thrilling territory between something ancient and something unknown.