On the canals of Kerala

The state of Kerala on India’s southwest Malabar coast is justifiably one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations. It’s got everything—palm-lined beaches, backwaters lush with tropical greenery, national parks with elephants and tigers, cool hill stations.

From the Western Ghats, the line of hills that forms the border with Tamil Nadu, the road to the lowlands twists and turns through tea, coffee and spice plantations that divide the hillsides into intricate geometric designs and shapes. After four hours, our Semester at Sea group arrived at the town of Kottayam where we boarded a boat for a three-hour trip along the backwaters to Allepey on the west coast.

Most of this area is below sea level and crisscrossed by waterways used to irrigate the rice paddies. Small houses on narrow levees fringed with coconut palms line the banks. Children were swimming and fishing, and women hanging out clothing to dry; in the middle of the waterway, men were digging sand and loading it into a boat. The rice harvest was under way. Men and women gathered rice stalks and carried them in huge sheaves to the canal bank, where machines separated and husked the rice. It was packed into sacks and loaded onto narrow boats for transportation to the nearest road junction; at one place, we saw men unloading a boat, using ropes and a pulley to move rice sacks to a truck.

Nearer the coast, we started seeing large houseboats. If you can afford it (even in 2003, it was $200 to $400 a day), you can rent a houseboat with a bedroom, covered dining area and other conveniences, and a two-person crew to pilot and cook. Most were occupied by couples, lazing in the late afternoon sun sipping cocktails.

On the bank of the waterway, a red flag fluttered high on a flagpole. In my years of travel in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia it was something I had never seen—the distinctive red flag of the Soviet Union with the hammer and sickle. Earlier in the day, I had seen a hammer and sickle painted on a wall. Later, as we traveled north by bus from Allepey to Kochi (Cochin), the road was temporarily blocked by protestors, again waving red flags.

Since India’s states were created in the late 1950s, largely along linguistic lines, Kerala has been alternately ruled by the Congress Party (the original party of Gandhi and Nehru) and by the Communists. The state has India’s best public health care system and highest literacy rate (over 90 per cent), with newspapers publishing in nine languages, mainly English and Malayalam. Because of Kerala’s tradition of matrilineal inheritance, where the mother is the head of the household, women have a higher standing in society and more legal rights than in other states. Kerala also a broad religious mix, with the largest number of Christians of any Indian state (about 20 per cent of the population). However, unemployment is high, reportedly because businesses fear red tape, state interference and labor stoppages. Indeed, the next day, most of the shops in Kochi were closed because the Communist Party (currently out of power) had called a general strike to protest the police killing of a demonstrator in a protest by indigenous peoples.

Cantilevered Chinese fishing nets have been in use in Kochi for centuries

Kochi was an important spice trading center from the 14th century onward and maintained a trade network with Arab merchants from the pre-Islamic era. It was captured by the Portuguese in the early 16th century, and the explorer Vasco da Gama died there in 1524. The Dutch captured Kochi in the late 17th century, only to be booted out by the British just over a century later. The city is a fascinating cultural mix: the oldest European-built church in India, which switched from Catholic to Calvinist to Anglican as the colonial rulers changed; a 16th century palace built for the local maharajah by the Portuguese in return for trading privileges.

The Jewish quarter, settled by descendants of people who fled Palestine 2,000 years ago, is now reduced (largely by migration to Israel) to a community of less than 20 with a street of shops and a 16th century synagogue. 

On the rails through Tamil Nadu

What did the British leave behind when India and Pakistan gained independence in 1947? For almost 200 years of colonial rule, the British systematically exploited and exported the wealth and the people of the sub-continent. The decision to partition India into majority Hindu and Muslim states led to what historian Yasmin Khan describes as “ethnic cleansing on a gigantic scale,” with more than 12 million people fleeing their homes, and hundreds of thousands killed. More than half a century later, communal violence continues.

On the other side of the scale, historians point out that British rule stopped wars between  princely empires and states, modernized the industrial economy, and created the civil service and an educated middle class. And then there were the railways, stretching the length and breadth of the country, expanding commerce and the movement of people. Among the most visually impressive legacies of colonial rule are the city railway stations, built in grand Gothic style with imposing domes and grand arched corridors.

Chennai Egmore, built in 1906-08 as the terminus of the South Indian Railway Company, is one of four intercity railway terminals in Chennai (Madras) and one of the city’s most prominent landmarks. It is the gateway to southern Tamil Nadu, a connecting point for passengers on north-, west- and east-bound trains. In 2003, when my wife Stephanie and I took a round-the-world voyage on the Semester at Sea program, we joined other faculty and adult passengers for a four-day trip through southern India. Our starting point was the night train from Chennai Egmore to Madurai, an eight-hour (350-mile) trip to the south.

In most Indian cities, the station is the center of activity, crowded with passengers, freight and mail, the platforms lined with small restaurants (vegetarian and non-vegetarian), stalls selling soda and water (no alcohol is allowed on Indian trains), cashews, and chips made from bananas and tapioca. The railway system seems to reflect India’s complex society: there are waiting rooms for each travel class, porters with red cloth headbands carrying luggage on their heads, beggars and businessmen, and a labyrinthine bureaucracy for buying tickets and making reservations. With 1.7 million workers, Indian Railways is the largest single employer in the country. Our first-class sleepers were a bit cramped, but at least the air-conditioning worked, and some of us snatched a few hours’ sleep. 

At 6:00 a.m., the station at Madurai was busy as we dragged our overnight bags to the bus. Madurai is one of the seven sacred cities of India, and we spent the morning touring the huge Hindu temple of Sri Meenakshi with its 12 towers of brightly colored statues, hall of 1,000 pillars and central pool. Temples in India are—as much as mosques and perhaps more than churches—social centers, so the place was crowded with people, some of them worshipping, others begging, some just hanging out.

It is also a commercial center with stalls selling tourist trinkets—beads, wooden elephants, key rings and the like—along with religious objects. Almost every temple has a resident elephant, the physical embodiment of the god, Ganesh. The one at Sri Meenakshi will bless you and give you a nice wet back rub with its trunk for 20 rupees (about 40 cents). 

After lunch, we set off towards the Western Ghats, the mountain chain that straddles the states of Tamil Nadu in the southeast and Kerala in the southwest. The road ran through villages with coconut trees and rice paddies, giving us our first glimpses of rural south India. The road was narrow, but crowded with buses, cars, trucks, people walking and cycling, and carts pulled by oxen. Some oxen sported brightly colored horns (blue, green or a rather stylish red, black and white tricolor design). Apparently, they’d been dressed up for a recent harvest festival. Our guide told us that politicians, appealing to illiterate voters, sometimes pay farmers to paint the horns in the party colors—political communication in its most basic form.

Climbing through the jungle on narrow, twisting roads, we reached the resort town of Thekkady. It is about 4,000 feet above sea level, cool and pleasant—a welcome change from the sweltering heat of the lowlands. Next morning, we took a two-hour boat ride on Lake Periyar, an artificial lake formed by a dam. Today, it’s a wildlife sanctuary, with a landscape rather like the Everglades; we passed dead trees still standing 20 years after being submerged.

We saw gray herons, bright green kingfishers, snake birds, cormorants, egrets, otters, wild boar, bison and elephants; the most exciting scene was when a mother elephant and her baby swam across the lake about 50 yards in front of the boat. We did not see tigers, which still live in this area of the highlands. The guide told us that one had been seen in late January near a lodge in the preserve, but tigers are reclusive. They usually don’t usually show up for the tourists.