Tag Archives: kerala

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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.

An interesting discovery in a café in Udaipur (India)

Posted on by
Reply

A MAJOR ATTRACTION in Udaipur (Rajasthan,  India) is its Lake Pichola. There are plenty of hotels and eateries close to the water. One of these is Jheels Ginger café.  This small establishment is next to the waterside and has great views of the lake. Also it has a small bookshelf. On it, my wife found a book that aroused my interest.

 

An entry in the Canadian dictionary

The book, which was falling to pieces, was “Compact Dictionary of Canadian English” edited by Thomas Paikeday, and published 1976 in Toronto. It was the first Dictionary of English as used and spoken in Canada.

 

Thomas Paikeday was born in Thiruvananthapuram, India in 1926. He completed his studies at Madras Christian College (1958) and the University of Madras (1960). Then, he became a lecturer of English at the University of Delhi. In 1964, after studying in the USA at Boston College and the University of Michigan, he became a lexicographer.

 

Paikeday was a pioneer in the use of computers for collecting and analysing data for compiling dictionaries. He  became highly respected amongst lexicographers, linguists, and other scholars. He died in 2019 at Oakville, Ontario, Canada.

 

It was strange discovering a dictionary of Canadian English lying discarded in a café in Udaipur. But given that it was in India that its editor was born, it seemed quite both appropriate and really amazing.

Get a taste of my latest book about travelling in India

Posted on by
Reply

Recently, I published a book, “THE HITLER LOCK & OTHER TALES OF INDIA”, which is about some of my experiences of frequent visits to India over a period of thirty years. It consists of an introductory prologue and 101 short pieces of prose. To get some idea about what the book contains, here is one of them.

“IMPROPERLY DRESSED

In August 2008, we spent a few days at a beachside hotel just north of the city of Calicut (Kozhikode) in Kerala. Our accommodation was in the village of Kappad, where it is said that the Portuguese Vasco da Gama might have first set foot on Indian soil in 1498. Whether he did or did not, we had a good holiday in the area despite the occasional monsoon downpours.

One afternoon, while we were being driven through the countryside near Calicut, we spotted an isolated Hindu temple in the middle of a wooded area. It was surrounded by a fence and looked interesting from the car. We stopped, and found an open gate through which we entered the temple compound. The place was deserted – there was not a soul to be seen. Out of respect for Hindu traditions, we removed our footwear before wandering around. I took photographs of what was clearly quite an old temple.

We were on the point of leaving this holy place when we spotted a pandit entering. He walked towards us, not looking too pleased to see us. Speaking in Hindi or English – I cannot remember which – he said that I was not properly dressed to be in his temple. We apologised, and then he asked me to remove my shirt. I did as he requested, hoping that this would improve his mood. After I had taken off my shirt, he asked me to remove my trousers. To be charitable to him, I guess he would rather have had me wearing a lunghi or a dhoti instead of trousers. When he asked me to take off my trousers, we decided to leave the temple compound speedily.

Had I done as he had asked and put on traditional clothing of Kerala, the priest might have felt obliged to make us feel welcome in his temple. But it is likely that he knew full well that a westerner like me was unlikely to do what he wanted, and instead would leave his compound. His actions were a subtle way of getting us to leave without needing to sound impolite or unwelcoming.”

And here is another excerpt:

“DIPLOMATIC AMNESIA

Almost immediately after I first arrived in India (in late December 1993), and a few days before our Hindu wedding ceremony, my father-in-law recommended that I visit his tailor – Mr Krishnan – to get measured up for some new suits. One of these was to be a white ‘Prince Suit’, and the other two were western style formal suits in greyish materials. The Prince Suit, a traditional Indian design with a high neck collar, was to be worn at our wedding reception after the marriage ceremony. The other garments would be useful for the many formal occasions, which my father-in-law anticipated both in India and England. He loved such occasions.

When he worked in an upmarket tailoring shop in Bangalore’s Brigade Road, Mr Krishnan had made suits for my father-in-law. When I met him, he was semi-retired and worked from his home in a small, old-fashioned house on a short lane in a hollow several feet beneath the nearby busy Queen’s Road. He was a short, elderly gentleman – always very dignified and polite. He measured me up for the suits in his front room, which served as part of his workshop. After a couple of visits to try the suits whilst they were still being worked on, I picked up the finished garments. Each of the suits fitted perfectly – ‘precision-fit’ you could say quite truthfully. Despite being so accurately made, they were not in the least bit uncomfortable. Everybody admired them. I could understand why I had been sent to Mr Krishnan.

Our next trip to India was made 20 months later when our recently born daughter had had sufficient vaccinations to allow her to travel safely. During the interval between these two holidays, my dimensions had changed significantly because of my good appetite and happy marriage. Notably, my girth had increased greatly. Sadly, the suits that Mr Krishnan had so carefully crafted no longer fitted me. We returned to see Mr Krishnan, who told us that in anticipation of my dimensions changing, he had left extra cloth within the garments for adjusting them. Without comment, he took my new measurements, and noted them down in a book. My wife, who had accompanied me, said to the tailor, mischievously:

“Just out of curiosity, Mr Krishnan, would you be able to look up Adam’s previous measurements to see how much he has changed.”

He put down his pencil, sighed, and said:

“I am very sorry, Madame, but I have unfortunately lost them.”

Mr Krishnan was not only a wonderful tailor, but also a perfect diplomat.”

If you enjoyed these, and want to read more, then please obtain a copy of my book, which is available in paperback and Kindle from Amazon sites such as

[For those who live in India, the paperback can be ordered here:

https://store.pothi.com/book/adam-yamey-hitler-lock-and-other-tales-india/]

The importance of being methodical

Posted on by
Reply

I HAVE NUMEROUS albums full of photographs that I have taken in India and many places in Europe over the years since about 1993. Before that date, for about 10 years, I used to take pictures on slide film, and have them processed into slides for projecting. I still have most of these, and each one is labelled. For some mysterious reason, when I began putting my photographic prints in albums, I hardly ever labelled them. Consequently, I have a vast collection of – dare I say it – interesting photographic prints taken at locations I can either not remember or can only vaguely recall.

Yesterday (5th August 2023), I chose to look at one of my albums randomly chosen from a box containing several of them. As I flicked through the pictures, I came across one showing an advertisement for an institution called Einstein College, somewhere in India. The location was easy to identify because the college’s address was in the city of Trivandrum (Thiruvananthapuram) in Kerala. Having looked on the Internet, I see that the college still exists.

Two other prints were stored close to the college photograph in the album. So, I guessed they might also have been taken in Trivandrum. One of them shows a building with geometrically decorated walls and numerous small roofs. At first, I thought it might be a temple, but then I wondered whether it was the palace-like museum in Trivandrum, which houses a fine collection of paintings by the Keralan artist Ravi Varma. I checked on the Internet, and discovered my picture shows apart of the museum’s exterior. The third print shows what looks like an enormous terracotta coloured ‘multi-storey’ pigeon coop. It is a cylindrical structure with some helical decorative features. The edifice bears a sign that reads “India Coffee House”. Using that clue, I found that is one of the three branches of the India Coffee House chain in Trivandrum.

Had I labelled these photographs, I would not have needed to do any detective work to identify them and their locations. Sadly, many of my unlabelled prints do not have obvious clues that can help me identify them, and most likely they will remain a mystery. The moral of this story is that it pays to be methodical and systematic occasionally.

Come with me in my Ferrari

Posted on by
Reply

Fort Kochi (Fort Cochin) is the picturesque, historic part of Kochi – a port on the coast of Kerala in southwest India. Occupied at various different times by the Portuguese, Dutch, and British, this small urban area at the northern tip of an island contains many buildings that recall the town’s former foreign occupiers.

Essentially, the historic town centre consists of a few short streets and some open spaces. Fort Kochi is built on flat terrain, and is a paradise for walkers even in the hot, humid weather that prevails most of the year. As a consequence, the large number of autorickshaw (‘auto’) drivers often seems to outstrip customer demand.

From dawn to after dusk, auto drivers cruise around the town in their empty vehicles, looking for customers. We usually spend at least a week in Fort Kochi every year, especially when the excellent Kochi-Muziris international art biennale is in progress. So, individual auto drivers get to know us as we stroll around. They stop and ask us if we need a ride. We tell them that we are walking. So, when they next see us, optimistically they invite us to take a ride. When we turn them down, they say to us in an understanding way:

“Walking, walking! – always walking.”

Other auto drivers, who either do not recognise us or are trying to tempt other tourists into their cabs, say:

“See my Ferrari. Come and take a ride in my Ferrari.”

This always amuses me because to describe an auto as a Ferrari is rather like describing a pigeon as an eagle.

On the subject of Ferraris, there are some in India. One of them, an eye-catchingly bright yellow, belongs to, or is driven by, a young man who is the late teenaged son of a wealthy family in Bangalore. Because this is not a type of vehicle that could be safely parked in most parts of the city, he can only use it to drive to and from the exclusive Bangalore Club, where he can park it in an area well policed by security guards. At his home, he parks it in the safe compound containing his residence. Given the density of traffic and the daring driving in Bangalore, it is amazing that he feels safe enough to flaunt his precious car on the roads between his home and the Club.

Seeing red

Posted on by
Reply

KAYAL ISLAND RETREAT is a small but tastefully luxurious resort on the east coast of the long thin Kakkathuruthu Island in the backwaters of Kerala, not far from Alappuzha (Aleppey). Our friend who owns it kindly invited us to spend an afternoon there. During our stay, we were taken on a delightful boat trip through the peaceful backwaters. After that, the resort’s manager took us on a walk through the rustic tropical landscape from the resort to a nearby small ferry landing stage on the west side of the island. We followed him along a winding path that threaded its way between small farmhouses, fields, fish farms, ponds, and reed beds.

All along the path, there was a series of concrete poles that supported overhead electricity cables. On almost every one of them there was red painted graffiti. Many of the poles were daubed with the initials ‘DYFI’, which stands for the Democratic Youth Federation of India, which is affiliated to the CPI(M) – the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Some of the poles also had depictions of the head of Che Guevara and five-pointed red stars or the letters ‘CPIM’. One pole had “Viva Revolution” on it and some others were daubed with the names of countries including Mexico and Bolivia, At least one house along our route had a large hammer and sickle painted on it. With the exception of the country names, all of these manifestations of Communism are frequently seen all over Kerala, which at times has been ruled by Communist governments,

At the small ferry landing stage, we watched some women and schoolchildren disembark from the ferry – a small boat with an outboard motor. Overlooking the simple wooden landing stage, there was a tall metal pole with the letters BJP on top of it. The pole supported two cords from which BJP flags were fluttering. The BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) is currently in power as the Government of India.

I asked our guide how the locals tended to vote on the island. He believed that most of them would probably vote for the Communists or some other Socialist party, rather than for the BJP. As we walked along in the hot humid air, I mused upon the contrast between the wealthy holiday makers enjoying our friend’s resort and the relatively poor inhabitants of the island with leftward leaning political sympathies, who might, in theory at least, be antipathetic to the idea of outsiders relaxing luxuriously on their island whilst they slog away in the hot sun. Whatever they believe, the resort does bring additional employment opportunities close to their homes – almost all the staff are from the island.