We have been traveling south by train along the south-west Malabar coast of India, first through Karnataka, then into Kerala State, ending the day in a delightfully secluded, palm- circled guesthouse on a hilltop overlooking a small crescent of equally secluded beach. The owner is of Greek-Indian heritage, a Greek Orthodox Christian. Greek traders, along with the Portuguese, Dutch, Jewish Arabs, Muslim Arabs and others have long carried out an ancient sea-based trade – spices, precious jewels, perfumes and silks from the far east – following the Arabian Sea trade winds, bringing great wealth to themselves and traders along the Malabar coast. The ancient Romans traded here as well, and likely the ancient Chinese.
(Malabar. Malacca. The Moluccas. Evocative, fantasy-laden words for me from long ago. Were there stories or poems read to me in early childhood that referred to these places – or later seemed to refer there? The child hears the quiet rains, smells the cinnamon winds, hears the far-off ships in the soft Indian Ocean night, safe in his mother’s arms. Malabar. One of those deep old personal places of the exotic, smelling of nutmeg and cloves, where handsome naked brown-skinned women and men lived, where I would one day build and live in a tree house, where familiar but mostly unfamiliar wondrous beasts roamed the earth and rose from the sea … one of those many-branched Orinocos of memory that one day I might explore more deeply and which I find, now as I think about it, has been one of those guiding stars in my reading for many years, taking me circling through histories of the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, of early maps of the region, paintings, travelers’ reports and tales, the sloshing to and fro of so many peoples, the times of slaving, revolt, prison building … into our own times.)
To the west the Arabian Sea, seen now, today, across palm-covered estuaries. To the east, at a distance, rise the western ghats, hills running down the spine of the Indian peninsula. On both sides, the further south we move, the many greens of rice paddies , coconut palms (a source of oil and coir rope), and market gardens. This is a green world and a water world too; some 50 or so river flow off the western ghats into the sea. The sea itself flows back into the coastal flatlands, creating serpentine “backwaters,” the roads and paths of villagers and townspeople. Today, many pole canoes along the shorelines, fishing, transporting produce, visiting family.
After the north, it is surprising to see so many freshly painted and newly-built houses. People talk of the money coming in from Keralites who have worked in the Gulf. There are many such stories, but also other reports of abusive labour recruiters, disillusion. We talk with four men in their twenties, tradesmen from a village far in the north east of India, several days train ride away. They have signed three-year contracts to work in Dubai. This is their first time from home. One was married several weeks ago, another last year. Like us they are wide-eyed at the passing Malabar landscape, so lush, wet and green, the strange Malayalam script, the soaring coconut palms. Two are homesick already, all are apprehensive about flying, all are looking forward to the new experience. In faltering English, one speaks so optimistically of the “opportunity” ahead.
People are always shuffling around on the trains, facing one another, exchanging food; there are many opportunities for conversation compared to the buses. Today in a crowded ‘unreserved coach’ we meet Gopi, a “clerk” in “the service.” We share an interest in the theyyem shaman-dancers in this area. As it happens, he has read William Dalrymple’s chapter on theyyem in “Nine Lives,” given to him by a friend, and is eager for me to read it. I have – although I am not certain I have communicated this to him. Gopi is a gentle man and a gentleman – and is also able to be of practical help to us. We have mistakenly got onboard a train that will eventually turn east across the peninsula to the far eastern coast, and we want to continue south. It is Gopi who guides us through the transfer, which he is also making, and which luckily allows us to pick up our conversation down the line.
Sitting near Gopi is a chef, returned early from a Middle East contract because of even better paying work here. Across the carriage, a family – with three young girls – describes travelling from Assam state, a gruelling four-day train journey, to visit a brother and have a holiday. Remarkably, they are in good spirits. They are also watching their rupees. The man, a Christian, a rarity where he lives, has started his own small private and secular primary school: “I could have gone into government service. But that would be just for me. I want to give something to others, like I was given by my own schooling. Here in Kerala almost all are literate. Where I come from almost no one is literate. What chance do we have? My girls know English. I want children in our village to understand the world. It is important to me – sharing what I know with others.”
Farther south through Kerala, we move by boat along the “backwaters,” inland channels, rivers and lakes between the rainforest hills still to the east (Western Ghats) and the Arabian Sea to the west. This is a flat, expansive green, gold and watery world. Gold palm fringes, multi-hued ripe green rice paddies, mud wet paddies being prepared for planting.
Here pathways and roadways are waterways; the boat is bus and auto rickshaw. Our own bus-boat carries children to and from school, workers to rice paddies and market gardens, others home from market. Men in wide-brimmed straw hats (the direct sun scorches) pole passengers back and forth across the wider waters in dugout canoes. Along the canal proper there are walkway draw bridges, raised by men on watch as we honk our approach. Onboard are slung sacks of rice, bales of banana leaves, bamboo poles, garden produce. Dugout canoes pass by laden with small timbers, cattle feed, building mud, even one piled high with tins and plastic bottles headed for recycling. We motor past dense flocks of paddling ducks that are being raised for meat and eggs, sometimes bearing down into their midst, their tenders smacking the water with poles, herding the creatures to safety on shore.
Farther south through Kerala, we move by boat along the backwaters, inland channels, rivers and lakes between the rainforest hills (Western Ghats) to the east and the Arabian Sea to the west. This is a flat, expansive green, gold and watery world. Gold palm fringes, multi-hued ripe green rice paddies, mud wet paddies being prepared for planting.
The main channel waters – in which people who live along their edge bathe and brush their teeth, and tourists, Indian and foreign both, pay considerable sums to ride converted “rice boats,’ often with all the very latest urban-techno amenities – are a sluggish grey-green, awash in garbage, mainly plastics, which floats and tosses about amidst small islands of choking water weeds in which more garbage is entangled. We pass people heaving garbage bags and other waste into the water. Many householders and villagers clearly use the backwaters, their back or front yard, as a garbage dump. Short ramps lead from shore to small outhouses, half-enclosed in plastic or vinyl sheeting, standing on poles over the waterway. Hundreds of rice boats are tied to shore, marooned by the glut of such boats, by over-pricing and fewer moneyed tourists, and perhaps by reports of the wretched state of the backwaters themselves.
As we move south, just hidden from the ocean behind dykes and sandbars, larger ocean-going fishing boats – many, as along the Malayan coast, with glaring eyes painted on the prow, the tips wrapped in colourful fabric – are harboured in the inland channels. Groups of men unload crates of fish, repair and hang nets, manoeuvre vans and pickups to take the catch to market, take baths in the putrid waters. Other fishermen paddle or pole dugout canoes, fish from shore, or use the cantilevered spider-legged ‘Chinese’ fishing nets we first saw up the coast in Cochin. Fish, rice, coconut and water and more water … yet another India.
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