Ten years after the Boxing Day tsunami

There have been many events in memory of the tsunami of 2010 which spent the last of its force on the coast of India. We are reminded of its power whenever we visit the Western coast, where although we can't envisage the shape of the coast before the wave ripped its way through, we can see the lack of structure on the beaches and the uniform size of the small palm trees which have been planted to replace those which were washed away.

The ugly barrier of concrete and stone which stretches down the highway to the South seems a flimsy protection against such a destructive force, but many warning systems have been put into place and everyone along the coast now understands what to do if the sea behaves strangely. A great deal of post-tsunami work has been done and zoning laws, frequently ignored, restrict new building close to the beach. The Hindustan News describes some of it.

"Thatched huts have given way to housing clusters named Tsunami Colony or Tsunami Village, fishing markets have been built further inland and sea walls have turned the once-bustling beaches dreary and barren," 

Most of the 170 people who lost their lives on this coast were fishermen and while the slow process of rebuilding has gone on, they have resumed their lives in the flimsy beachside huts which made them so vulnerable in the first place. Much of the money allocated to the sea wall and rebuilding the infrastructure has vanished elsewhere, according to the local panchayats.

http://www.thehansindia.com/posts/index/2014-12-27/Sea-walls-in-Kerala-still-a-dream-post-tsunami-123114

A less obvious problem has been the amount of land which was washed away. The tsunami in the 14th Century, which resulted in the disappearance of Muziris and the opening up of the inlet to present day Cochin, shows what the power of the sea is capable of. Less dramatic geological changes came about after the 2004 tsunami, but its effect on the farmers whose land vanished has been immense, and they too are waiting for compensation.

The effects on the 8,000 people who were displaced and housed in relief camps in Alleppey alone are long-lasting, and complete recovery will be a long time coming for people and businesses afftected by this huge disaster.

The Muziris Biennale is happening!

In spite of my cynicism and doomy outlook, I am delighted that the Kochi Muziris Biennale is happening, and even more delighted because I shall have a chance to visit in February. I am especially interested in the collection of old maps, but the chance to look inside the Aspinwall's warehouse and see the artworks which are the result of so much energy against all the odds.
As expected, things have not gone 100% to plan. The money promised by the government has not arrived, possibly because of the change of party after the last election. Many of the artists are seriously out of pocket and have underwritten the show.

Given the title of "Whorled Expectations" the theme is based on a period of great expansion in trade and travel, the 14th to 19th centuries, when Kerala was undergoing a huge period of development in mathematics and philosophy. The curatorial note at
http://kochimuzirisbiennale.org/curatorial-note/

is a bit high-flown for me, but I love the usual obscure art speak. Is it art speak, or the Indian English obscurity which makes it hard for me to read anything originating in the higher reaches of Indian thought?

This time, the biennale has attracted some international names known even to me. Anish Kapoor is one, but there are others which ring bells. TAlking of bells, I am looking forward to seeing Gita Scaria's large silver bell onthe front at Kochi looks conceptually amazingly like the exhibit at Folkestone's last Triennale in 2011 by A. K. Dolven,
http://www.folkestonetriennial.org.uk/artist/a-k-dolven/

His bell still stands on the front at Folkestone like a very mournful piece of jetsam. The bell in Fort Kochi is larger, silver and altogether more jolly.

See some of the artists and their work here.
http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/ZHoR9TriwRPuhE9Mt4L7YN/KochiMuziris-Biennale-Seven-artists-you-must-see-at-Kochi.html

The last biennale was a success, attracting an estimated 400,000 people to the city. Optimism is high that this year's will do the same.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a6cb253c-797c-11e4-9567-00144feabdc0.html

Object No. 6: Pallippuram Fort

Tucked away in a sandy enclosure about twenty miles North of Ernakulam is a relic of the first European incursion into Kerala.
I have chosen it as one of my objects because to me it represents how much of the history of the country is hidden from view.

Vasco Da Gama arrived on the beach near Calicut in 1498. The arrival of the Portuguese is celebrated now with a memorial, a plain pillar of black stone with a plaque in English tucked away behind a crumbling concrete paling on a littered and scruffy stretch of beach. The changes the invaders brought were enormous, the Vyanagar and Travancore kingdoms would never be the same again; religion, the balance of power and trading wealth shifting with their arrival.

The Portuguese built forts to protect their assets and the fort at Pallippuram is thought to be the oldest European building in India. Built by the Portuguese in 1503, it was surrendered to the Dutch in 1663 and bought by the Travancore Raja in 1789. The river frontage would have been ideal for preventing rival countries’ boats from landing anywhere nearby. The Travancore Government conserved the fort in 1909, presumably by coating the lot in mortar, but it is difficult to see where there may be any original materials showing through the coat. There is a well inside the keep, a tiny door which could well lead to a dungeon, and that is all. The thick walls, with their embrasures in each of the hexagonal sides could have withstood an attack, from the inlet at the north end of Vypeen Island.. The husk of the fort stands like a broken molar, quiet and neglected, preserved by uncelebrated.

Here is an important building in national terms, not only for the history of Kerala, but competing demands and lack of money leave it marooned on a hard-to-find site in a little known village. As, in the West, we know little of the history of South India, which does not have its majestic Moghul courts or important centres of the Raj, the history of Kerala is becoming forgotten by its descendants. Political imperatives take over initiatives to promote some aspects of the past, Nationalists not wanting to remember the colonial pasts, Hindu Nationalists being uncomfortable with the Arab cultures introduced by centuries of traders. Pallippuram still sits there and seems to wait for its day of recognition.

I left after our visit feeling that there it stood and we had seen it, and I suspected that we were in a small minority of recent Europeans to view the “oldest extant European monument in India.”

Object No 5: Edakkal Caves

The approach to the caves

The Paleolithic origin of India was not recognised until relatively recently, possibly because no-one had looked for it. Stone tools had been found in Tamil Nadu, but megalithic stones and the rock shelters such as Edekkal had been ignored by researchers. A gradual appreciation of the ancient history of the area has led to a re-examination of many sites, Edakkal itself being excavated in 2010, many finds pointing to its occupation seven thousand years ago. The ancient is often wrapped up in the sacred in India, and legend tells that the caves were made when Lava and Kusha, the sons of Sri
Rama, their tale told in the Ramayana, fired arrows in a battle, and Lord Rama killed Ravana’s sister Surpnakha in the narrow cleft in the rock to the south of the cave. This pinpoints Edakkal as an important place in the distant past, one which is not past but contiguous with the present to many Hindus.

The cave itself is more a rock shelter, a split in the cliff face, approached by a steep climb and a passage through other clefts in the rock. There is a view of many miles into the distance. I had seen
many pictures and videos of the engravings but the size and scale of the caves  breath taking. Deep, meandering grooves cover the left-hand wall, incised into the sandstone. Patterns and squiggles, random lines, wheels, suns and possible animals and figures stretch along one wall, out of the sun and presumably out of the rain. According to our guide when we visited the caves Neolithic people lived here and scratched on the walls to amuse themselves and for decoration. I wasn’t buying it. He  showed us a peacock, a man with hair which stood straight up on end, an elephant and a sun symbol but I found it as convincing as seeing faces in clouds. I asked him about the maze, circular and
very clear, and right in front of us, explaining that it closely resembled drawings found on monuments of a similar age, something commented on by Captain Fawcett when he had come across the caves over a century before.
 “A sun,” he explained, and I let him be, not wanting him to have to lose face by telling us that no-one had the faintest idea what the engravings were all about. In David Lewis Williams’s book, “The Mind in the Cave,” he explores the way in which modern archaeologists and philosophers go about interpreting the mind set of ancient people, arguing that we cannot know what drove them, or what the origins of the first art might have been. In an examination of consciousness and unconscious states he describes the many types of patterns which are experienced and are directly associated with the neurological construction of the brain. These include the jagged castellation seen by migraine sufferers. In laboratory experiments subjects asked to make marks go through stages of  consciousness, demonstrated by inscribing simple patters and more complex drawings, always culturally based.

The complex drawings are related to entering a region by way of a passage often described as a tunnel or vortex. This is an experience common to modern shamans who believe this to be the entrance to the spirit world. The images which come from the earlier states of altered consciousness
are found all over the world in the art of the early period, from the caves of France to the rock paintings of the Sahara, to Australia and the Americas. A common humanity links these symbols and here they all were on the walls at Edakkal, along with the maze, a universal focus, hidden behind a boulder.
The ancient remains of prehistoric India ae gradually revealing themselves and promise a richer history than has yet been dreamed of.