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Recording the terrain before and during its exploration by archaeologists

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WHEN ARCHAEOLOGISTS DISCOVER and then remove historical artefacts from the ground, the terrain in which they have lain for centuries or maybe millennia is changed forever, and irreversibly. For once an artefact is removed and/or the site is excavated to reveal its original features, no amount of effort can restore the site to what it was before it was investigated by archaeologists.

Given the permanent changes resulting from the activities of archaeologists, it is important that the appearance of the site is recorded before, during, and after the archaeological dig. To do this, photography is very useful.

Yesterday, 7 January 2025, we viewed an exhibition, “Archeo Logical Camera”. It is being held in a gallery at the Kara Hotel, a luxurious and beautifully designed establishment located on the Maidan (Parade Ground) at Fort Kochi. The exhibits consists of several artefacts dug up by archaeologists as well as photographs taken by Mohamed A, who graduated in Fine Arts at Trivandrum, Kerala.

The photographs, each of which is a work of art, are those he took while documenting archaeological digs in various parts of India. The pictures show, archaeologists at work, the sites where they worked before and during the digs, and artefacts both in their original locations and after excavation.

Not only were the photographs beautifully executed and interesting, but also the exhibition was superbly displayed. The show is a project by Aazhi Archives, and the artistic director is Riyas Komu.

This wonderful exhibition is NOT part of the 2025/26 Kochi Muziris art biennale. However, after having now seen many of the festival’s artistic offerings, I think that the quality and originality of “Archeo Logical Camera”, exceeds most of what is to be seen at the Kochi Muziris Biennale.

Gulam Mohammed Sheikh in Ernakulam (Kerala) and the Kochi Muziris Biennale  2025/26

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SOME PEOPLE SAY “save the best till last”. This is what we did accidentally while spending several days exploring the 2025/26 Kochi Muziris art biennale. Much of what we saw at this biennale was far inferior to what we had seen when visiting the four previous biennales. Most of this biennale’s offerings were rich in messaging but insubstantial artistically. The exception to this sad situation is an exhibition held at the Durbar Hall, which is across the sea from Fort Kochi in the city of Ernakulam.

 

The exhibition at Ernakulam is a large collection of (mostly) paintings by Gulam Mohammed Sheikh,  who was born in 1937 in what is now Gujarat.  His artistic training took place first at the MS University in Vadodara,  then at London’s Royal College of Art.

 

A Mappa Mundi by Sheikh

The exhibition includes works from the various stages of his career from the 1960s until today. Sheikh’s work provides  imaginative,  creative, original, beautifully executed, refreshing views and interpretations of the world and its inhabitants.

 

Amongst the many superb creations on display, there is a series of Mappa Mundi paintings, in which, to quote Wikipedia, Sheikh:

“… defines new horizons and ponders over to locate himself in. Sheikh construes these personal universes enthused from the miniature shrines where he urges the audience to exercise the freedom to build up their Mappa Mundi.”

These wonderful artworks that were inspired by mediaeval maps of the world provide the viewer with exciting expressions of Sheikh’s interpretations of the world, past and present,  real and imagined. In one room at Durbar Hall, there is a wonderful film that, in a way, brings Sheikh’s Mappa Mundi to life.

 

Each of Sheikh’s artworks tells a story. However that story is open to each viewer’s own interpretation. The artist’s works are not only vehicles for a story or stories, but they are also aesthetically sophisticated: art at its best.

 

It was a great pleasure to see Sheikh’s art. Unlike much of the other exhibits in the Biennale,  his work does not rely on gimmickry, sound effects, lighting effects, film clips, ‘objets  trouvés’, and explanatory notes. Sheikh’s works are the products of a technically competent painter who is able to express his imaginative ideas in ways that are both aesthetically pleasing and highly original.

 

Seeing the exhibition of Sheikh’s works has revived my enthusiasm for art, which had begun to flag while visiting a seemingly never ending series of mediocre artefacts being displayed at the various sites of the 2025/26 Kochi Muziris Biennale.

The oldest existing European building in India was built by the Portuguese

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VASCO DA GAMA and his Portuguese crew set foot on Indian soil near Calicut in Kerala in 1498. The Portuguese were not the first Europeans to arrive in India: Romans had traded with India long before the fifteenth century,  but there are no known remains of any structures they might have built. Despite the lack of any structures known to have been built by the Ancient Romans, many Roman coins have been found in India.

 

In 1503, five years after Vasco arrived, some Portuguese sailors erected a wooden fortress at Pallipuram, about 18 miles north of the present Fort Kochi and 100 miles south of Calicut. Two years later  this fort was replaced by a hexagonal stone structure. This two-storey edifice is believed to be India’s oldest existing building built by  Europeans.

 

The upper storey of the fort, on which would have been placed canons, no longer exists. Each of the fort’s six walls are about 6 feet thick, 32 feet wide, and 34 feet tall. They contain 18 former embrasures for cannon.

 

A staircase leads from the ground to the ground floor of the fort. Next to this, there is a circular plaque with the words: “Pallipuram Fort. The most ancient European building in India.  About 1503. Conserved as a historic relic by the Government of Travancore. AD 1909”.

 

The fort remained in Portuguese hands until 1661, when it was captured by the Dutch. Then the Dutch sold it to the Kingdom of Travancore in 1789. It remained under the control of Travancore until India became independent in 1947.

 

Today, although little remains to be seen apart from the hexagonal walls, it is fascinatingly evocative to visit a place with such an interesting history. Located within its peaceful grounds there is a square pond (tank) filled with water. I have no idea how long that water feature has been in existence. 

 

Standing looking it in the hot humid heat on a January afternoon, I wondered how the sixteenth century Portuguese managed to bear the uncomfortable climate and survive in this fort that was once surrounded by steamy jungle.

Two languages in the tea gardens of Kerala

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LYING IN THE WESTERN Ghats at 5200 feet above sea level, Munnar, surrounded by tea gardens (plantations), is in the Indian state of Kerala, whose official language is Malayalam. The town’s name is derived from both the Malayalam and the Tamil words meaning ‘three rivers’. Indeed, three rivers meet in the heart of the town.

 

Top: Malayalam,  bottom: Tamil

Munnar is close to Kerala’s border with its neighbouring state Tamil Nadu. Since tea begun to be grown around Munnar in the 1880s, Tamils came to the district to work on the then British owned plantations. However, even before that there was a substantial number of Tamils living in the area that became Munnar in the early nineteenth century.

 

So, it is not surprising that there are plenty of Tamil speakers in the Munnar area. 44% of the population were Tamil speakers 2011; the rest were Malayalam speakers. During our first few hours after our arrival in Munnar, I noticed a large number of election posters. Many of these were either only in Tamil or, less frequently,  bilingual: Tamil a day Malayalam.

 

The man who drove us from Fort Kochi to Munnar, where he resides, told us that he is Tamil, not a Malayali. Also, he mentioned that in the flat coastal parts of Kerala, there are many Christians,  whereas in Munnar, people are mainly Hindu. This might well be the case, but in addition to a large mandir, I have seen several large churches and a large masjid in the town.

 

Within the state of Kerala,  Tamil speakers account for less than two percent of the population. Most of them live either around Munnar or around Palakkad.

 

As to whether the Tamils and Malayalis get on with one another in Munnar, I have no idea.

It was barely worth visiting the main venue of the 2025/26 Kochi Muziris Biennale

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THERE HAVE BEEN six Kochi Muziris art biennales to date. And we have attended five of them. This year, as is usual, the biennale runs from December to the end of March. Today, we visited the Aspinwall site, the main venue of the 2025/26 biennale and of the previous ones.

For a start, the area dedicated to the Biennale has been halved: an ugly concrete wall separates the area used to display art from a large derelict space that used to be part of the Biennale precinct. This means that not only
has the open space surrounded by galleries been reduced but also some of the lovely buildings that used to house artworks now stand empty and are looking dejected.

I like this work

As for the artwork on display at the main venue, the less said the better. Of the several hundred exhibits, only two appealed to me. Most of the other ‘artworks’ seemed to be assemblages of diverse objects. Many of these were less artistically arranged than what can be found in many shop window displays.

Naturally, given the way people often think these days, each exhibit was accompanied by an essay that tried to explain the ‘relevance’ of the creation and its relationship to problems that concern ‘woke’-minded people today. I felt that in most cases, the artists’ and curators’ ‘messages’ (written on information panels) were more important than the works’ artistic/aesthetic qualities.

In brief, I was disappointed by the main venue of the Biennale. In previous years, this part of the show contained at least a few outstanding works that appealed aesthetically and did not require reading a contrived explanation to appreciate them.

To end on a positive note, I liked the temporary structure that covers the seating area next to a refreshment stall. The shelter was designed by an artist from Pakistan.

[Over the next few days, we will visit some of the other Biennale sites and the many collateral exhibitions, and I hope that I will be able to be more positive about them than what I saw at the Aspinwall venue.]

The first exhibition we visited at the Kochi Muziris biennale in Kerala

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OUR FIRST EXHIBITION IN FORT KOCHI (KERALA) 2026

WE HAVE COME to Fort Kochi (Fort Cochin) in the south of India to view art in the town’s Kochi Muziris Biennale. This art show is housed in a wide variety of places in Fort Kochi and its environs. There is a main exhibition area and numerous peripheral venues. The first show we visited in housed in Burgher Street, almost opposite the popular Kashi Art café. At this location, Gallerie Splash from New Delhi was hosting images created by Naina Dalal, who was born at Vadodara, Gujarat, in 1935.

Ms Dalal studied art first at MS University in Vadodara, then at London’s Regent Street Polytechnic, and later at Pratt Graphic Center in New York City. She was one of the first Indian women artists to explore the nude artistically.

The exhibition in Fort Kochi, “An Empathetic Eye”, includes watercolours, oil paintings, and various types of print including collographs. According to Wikipedia:
“Collagraphy (sometimes spelled collography) is a printmaking process in which materials are glued or sealed to a rigid substrate (such as paperboard or wood) to create a plate. Once inked, the plate becomes a tool for imprinting the design onto paper or another medium. The resulting print is termed a collagraph.“

The works on display in the exhibition were attractive and visually intriguing. Dalal provides fine examples of Indian Modernism that demonstrate her independence from the previously powerful influence of Western European artistic styles on Indian modern art.

Seeing this exhibition made a great start to our exploration of what is on offer during the Biennale that runs until the end of March 2026.

Getting into a giant boot in Bombay

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THE HANGING GARDENS, located on the top of Bombay’s Malabar Hill, is a pleasant park in which to pass time in a relaxing way. We spent an enjoyable hour and a half sitting on a bench in the shade one Sunday morning.

After leaving our seat, my wife wanted to see if something that she remembered from her childhood in the 1950s still existed. After leaving the Gardens and crossing a road, we entered another park, the Kamala Nehru Park, which contains a children’s play area. And it was here that we found the thing my wife recalled: a giant boot. Children can enter the boot through a door in it, and then climb up an internal staircase to reach a viewing platform at the top of the boot. The boot reminds one of the story of the old woman who lived in a shoe.

My wife used to be taken to play in the shoe by her grandmother who lived nearby in Walkeshwar Road. My wife remembered the boot as having been painted pink, but since then it has been repainted and is no longer that colour.

A neglected painting by MF Husain in a building in Bombay

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ONE OF INDIA’S greatest modern painters was Maqbool Fida Husain (1915-2011), who was born in what is now Maharahtra. He studied art at the Sir JJ School of Art in Bombay.

 

While visiting Bombay’s branch of the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) on 2 January 2026, we saw two of Husain’s drawings and two of his paintings.  They had been hinges next to a portrait of the artist by Anil Naik  (born 1959), a graduate of Sir JJ School School of Art.

 

Husain’s painting at LIC

From the NGMA,  we made our way to the huge Bombay headquarters of the LIC insurance company.  My wife had read that this place is home to a painting by MF Husain. Nobody in the building knew about it despite the fact that the painting occupies most of one wall of the foyer of one wing of the building.

 

Husain’s painting at LIC is in need of some conservation work. The lower part of it is hidden from view because an x-ray machine used to check bags etc has been placed against it. It was painted in 1963 and depicts Indian life and culture.

 

It is to be hoped that thus fine mural will neither be allowe to fade away nor destroyed.

Paintings from Russia with love … and oil

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ROSNEFT IS A Russian company that supplies oil to India. The company has sponsored an exhibition, “Dream Vision”, that we visited in Bombay’s branch of India’s National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA). The show will continue until 15 January 2026.

The works on display are by a People’s Artist of the Russian Federation, Nikas Safronov (born in the USSR in 1956). So far, he has painted portraits of at least 300 notable people, including one of President Donald Trump.

By Nikas Safronov

The portraits are not on display at the NGMA. Instead, there are about 40 of his well-executed paintings. Each of them is painted in a classical style that cannot be described as adventurous. However, most of the paintings contain whimsical or Surrealist elements. Some of the works contain Indian subject matter. The paintings are displayed in a large room onto whose walls and ceilings video images are projected.

Although this is by no means one of the best exhibitions I have seen, it is interesting to see what is being produced, and approved of, in Russia, which has become culturally isolated from much of the world beyond its borders. In fact, this exhibition is part of what the Hindustan Times (30 December 2025) described as part:
“… of a broader Indo-Russian cultural initiative, Dream Vision positions art as a form of cultural diplomacy…”

Today, 2 January 2026, we were discussing this exhibition with a friend, who knew of the initiative, and had recently attended an event that had been part if it: a ballet performed by dancers who had come to India from St Petersburg.

Although I have reservations about the profundity of the artworks we saw at the NGMA, I was pleased to have seen the show and to have viewed what kind of work is being produced by an artist who is currently highly regarded in Russia.

Created by an arrow: Bombay’s longest occupied settlement

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LEGEND HAS IT that when Rama was searching for Sita, who had been kidnapped,  he stopped at a spot in what is now Walkeshwar in Bombay. Thirsty, Rama asked his brother, Lakshmana, to get hom water. Thereupon, Lakshmana shot an arrow (‘baan’) into the ground, and where it landed, a stream began to flow. Although1000 miles away from the Ganges, it was considered to be a tributary of the holy river. This stream has been named the Bānganga, and its water is stored in a large rectangular stepped tank.

 

Bānganga Tank

The tank, the Bānganga Tank, was constructed in 1127 AD by by Lakshman Prabhu, a minister in the court of Silhara kings of Thane. It was restored in 1715. The area in which the tank is located, Bānganga,  is Bombay’s oldest inhabited district.

 

We have visited Bāngang often and it is always a treat. Located close to the Arabian Sea, the area around the tank is a complete contrast to the rest of Bombay. The tank is surrounded by small houses and, being a sacred spot, plenty of Hindu temples. The place is more like a quaint village than part of one of the world’s biggest cities.

 

Between the tank and the rocky sea shore, there is a large colony of ramshackle structures mostly made with sheets of corrugated iron. The inhabitants of this slum have an enviable view of the sea. One day, I  suppose, some developer will clear away these poor people’s dwellings, and replace them with swanky apartments or hotels. But developers should be wary because, so we were told, during the monsoon seasons, large areas of the slopes between the tank and the sea become inundated.

 

We made our most recent visit to Bāngang on the first day of 2026, and found it to be as delightful as ever. However,  we noticed that in addition to the pigeons and abundant waterfowl in the tank and on its steps, there was no lack of rubbish.

 

Since our last visit to Bānganga about two years ago,  the RPG Foundation has put up signs that identify various temples and provide some history of each place.  Despite these, there seemed ti be few tourists around the tank.