17-09-09
Fort kochi, the smaller, more touristy, less industrial island of cochin is a sea-facing, laid-back sort of place. after finally making it out of the inital pee-smelling hotel, we headed to the closest coast.
happy to smell the sea we allowed the salty scent to guide us under a thick canopy of rain to what turned out to be a heavily polluted, black and slimy water. a few metres ahead was the central part of kochi, where we were immediately fished out of the crowd by a drum-selling boy of about our age. it was about 12 and we ended up spending an interesting 3 hours with him - very few of which actually negotiating drum prices.
we spent the first hour at the art cafe' sipping real coffee and eating pumpkin soup whilst looking up at a parade of african-like paintings which turned out to be typical keralan art! the hour spent here was mind-opening. we learnt so much about Imran and his life, his reality and that of so many drummer families like his.
Imran is about 20, though he isnt quite sure for no one in his family is literate so they don't read or write their sons' and daughters' birth dates. he is the youngest of 3 brothers and also has 4 sisters. they are originally from a town near Jaipur, but each year they spend the tourist season in kerala because apparently there is better business.
although young, Imran is already married - against his family's will. his wife's family was also against this love-union (even though they are both from drummer backgrounds). in fact, his wedding was carried out in secret!! imran's wife is also about his age and is due to give birth anytime soon. although married, she lives in Mumbai with her family and the two have not seen each other in over 3 months because she is too big to travel and he has no money. Imran said this with sad eyes and spoke of her with great adoration. he swore to us that she means the world to him and all his thoughts are directed to her. he says all the money he earns is given in part to his father to sustain his family (for his sisters and mother do not work) and the rest on phone calls to his wife.
he told us that as soon as he made some money (note: the drum he sold to us was the first in three weeks) he would hide it from his authoritative father - though dangerous - and would use it to visit his wife and pay for the doctor. of course, after buying new clothes to visit the mosque at Eid. of course...
the henna tattoo on Imran's hand have the letters EA painted quite largely; his and his wife's intials... he explained that he forgot how to write the letter 'i' so wrote an 'e' instead.
though receiving no financial or moral support from his jealous sisters and demanding father, Imran does not feel alone in his plight for independence. his older brother also has a tough life. married off to some drummer girl in Delhi through the respectable tradition of arranged marriages, he lives a complicated secret. after a year of an unhappy marriage, he met another drummer girl whom he actually fell in love with. however, though explaining his desire to marry this girl to his father, he was refused permission and told never to see this girl again. leaving a first wife for another woman is looked down upon but more importantly, it entails a huge amount of money. a man must pay compensation to the first wife, a fine to the community (in this case the drummer peoples) and a high bride price to the father of the second wife - for she is not receiving the honours of being a first wife.
so, imran's brother is labelled as an adulterer and must sneak around with his lover behind everyone's back. however, i wonder, is it really adultery when you never loved your wife? when you forced to marry her? when marrying her would exclude any possibility of finding real, chosen love?
after a long hour of such talk we followed imran to his toilet side refuge where he stores his drums for 20 rupees a day.
i could not resist and invested in again another musical instrument.
our afternoon was characterised by an equally fascinating experience; a kathakali performance.
kathakali is an ancient style of performing art typical of the region. traditionally (and such tradition is still very much alive in kerala) it is a play which lasts between 6 to 9 hours...of which we saw only one scene that lasted 1hour.
it was a surprising mixture of melodrama, greek tragi-comedy, mime and sign language as well as dance drama!
after an hour long costume and make up session (open to the public) the musical players (mainly drummers) and the narrator introduced the scene and the acting began. it is no regular kind of acting though, for no wordsa re spoken (only the occasional grunt) and all conversation is expressed through facial expression and body language and the intricate use of face paint and costume.
all players are men, dressed in women's costumes when necessary. all gestures and movements are pre-set. kathakali in fact is a very specifc type of performing and it takes 6 years to train in its sign language and facial expression. there are a number of different ways to depict the 9 'moods' of kathakali (such as love, pride, hatred, anger etc.) the importance of these gestures is highlighted in the different portrayals of the same thing. in other words, there are for example three ways of saying 'come here' - the polite invitation, the hurried advice and the demanding request - all of which cannot be expressed through language! because of the lack of spoken word, the beat of the drum is crucial for the effective conveyal of emotions and intetions.
the pace was very slow - which was in part good, in that it allowed us to understand the goingons and in part tedious (for the same thing was done over and over again). every so often the singer narrator would give a brief description of the happenings, but of course, being in malayalam, was as puzzling as the sign language for the fish faced tourist like us. instead, we took our bearings from the short synopsis we'd been given at the start.
south india is a separate world to north india. not only is the religion and culture quite different - in that in kerala there is a strong christian imprint and a high colonial impact both in cuisine and architecture, but there is also a completely different language!! according to imran, hindi and malayalam sound entirely different and people cannot understand each other at all. hence, the even bigger cultural breach. imran referred to rajasthan as his country and as kerala as a different country.
18 - 09 - 09
today was a tiring day. i slept very little because of the heat and so started off with a grumpy undisposed sort of mood. poor ron.
we visited the closeby mattanchery with its jew town and synagogue - both of which were a disneylandish and innacurate reconstruction of what was once a euro-jewish quarter. there was little else to the faux-antique shops (some real) and spice emporiums.
the synagogue was quite funny. first of all, although rosh hashanah (jewish new year), it was closed! moreover, as ron said, the blue washed walls and crumbling watch tower evoked a half-expectant air of zorro and his black horse!
after a somewhat disappointing morning and a chocolate cake (which ron liked but my shitty mood forbade me from trying) we headed back to fort kochi where at last an apple crumbe (the nicest ever) settled my grumpiness. after a few rounds of SHITFACE (the card game) which ron lost time and time again and thus became THE shitface (snigger), we met up with imran for a session of drumming. after some photos and some more chatting he gave me (in secret from his prying brother) two camel skins to fix my drum in case it broke on the way home. we were very grateful to him and enjoyed his company but turned down his invitation to take him and his brothers out to dinner in his area (bit scary!) and went instead to watch another spectacular performance, this time of keralan martial arts.
again, a fusion of cultures and of fighting techniques. the impressive but also terrifiying factor is that in all the performance (or rather, fighting!!) there was not one staged part and even the knives and zigzagged swords were perfectly sharpened! eeeek!
on top of this, the entire time, the presenter, who explained the various moves, not once failed to mention the lethal and dangerous consequences of a simple mistake.
what we thought would be a relaxing hour turned out to be a very intense experience. (especially for me - seeing as i spent most of it squeezing ron's hands off). the fighting was pretty violent and every few minutes we'd flinch at the sight of someone's arm being bent, throat grabbed and pressure point squeezed. the truly scary moments were those in which the fighting tools sped out of the performers' hands (accidentally!!) and almost hit us - this happened twice. NOTE TO SELF: never ever again sit in the front row at a martial arts show!!!
the agility of these young boys - the oldest must have been about 30 and the youngest 12 - was impressive and their concentration impressive - and vital!! at the end of the show we discovered that all four boys were from the same family of fishermen, muslim for that matter and thus respecting ramadan - yet still training and performing on an empty stomach!
an interesting and peculiar thing we've noticed is that all the muslim indians we've met in our stay (quite a few actually - imran, ahmed, the rickshaw driver in jaipur amongst others) have very little knowledge about their religion, its teachings, the significance of its rites and the purpose of many cultural manifestations and even prayers. many simply follow the teachings of their local imams without understanding the reasons or historical background to the rules and behaviour codes which in reality make up their entire daily routines. regardless of the fact that they don't speak read or understanding arabic, they also dont know much about islamic culture. it's an interesting aspect of local life here and one which i think is not unimportant.
in the evening, we bumped into a painter. or rather a painter in his workshop who saw us peering in and invited us in. a bob marley kind of fellow, who spoke so slow that the air around him seemed to stop moving,. his favourite words: 'yeeess, i aaam the haaapiiieeest maaan in the uuuniveerse, i thiiink, yeeeeesss'. this made us giggle quite a bit afterwords and its definitely entered the inside jokes section. regardless. his paintings were pretty cool! he explained to us how they are the expression of his thoughts and emotions, how the finished image is in his mind before he even starts and how he feels like a child when he sits in front of an empty canvas. a friendly guy, harmless and with the tiniest waistline we've ever seen. he was just adding the last finishing touches to his nature on a black moon canvas as we left. a happy stoner, completely off the hook.
all in all, a happy and uber interesting stay!
