Adam Yamey's Blog: YAMEY, page 97

Unlocking a secret

WHEN SOMETHING GOES WRONG with a product in the UK, it is usually simpler and cheaper to discard it and buy a new one. In my experience of visiting India many times since 1994, I have discovered that there is often someone, who can mend what would normally be thrown away in the UK. Only recently, I spotted a poorly dressed man sitting by the side of MG Road (in Bangalore). He was painstakingly repairing what looked like totally decrepit umbrellas.

We use combination locks (‘number locks’ in Indian English) to secure our baggage whilst travelling. In December 2022 when we were in Panjim (Goa), we found one of ours, which would not open, even when using the correct combination. It looked as if it had become corroded.

Because we have great faith in the ingenuity of Indian craftsmen, we took it to a locksmith in Panjim. He was unwilling to work on our lock, and another lock seller advised us to throw it away. Undeterred, we carried the defective item to Bangalore.

In the Commercial Street district of Bangalore we approached a couple of locksmiths, who were unwilling to spend time on our lock. A third one accepted it, and said he would have a go. We told him the combination, and left him whilst he fiddled with the lock as if it were as enjoyable as a Rubik Cube. On the 2nd of January 2023, we set off on a long trip, returning to Bangalore on the 15th of February 2023.

A few days later, we visited the locksmith, who remembered us and fetched our lock from a glass-fronted cupboard. He had managed to open the lock, but could not remember which combination allowed him to unlock it. He said:
“You take it home and try a few numbers.”
He refused to accept any payment for his efforts.

Back at our accommodation, I tried what I remembered had been the lock’s combination, and discovered that the locksmith had rendered the once useless lock fully functional. As the tourist board slogan (Incredible!ndia) suggests, the country is truly incredible.

PS These locks are cheap to buy new in India. It was not to save money that we visited so many locksmiths, but it was for the enjoyment of the challenge to find someone to do the job that we spent the time going from one to another. Some people enjoy passing time playing games on their phones. We choose to have our timepass (Indian English) in other ways

Winston Churchill and a newspaper reading stand

THERE IS A LOVELY old wooden newspaper reading stand is located in the formerly men only bar in the Bangalore Club. It bears the insignia “US” at one end, the S being back to front. Before about 1947, the club was the United Services Club.

Winston Churchill, who was never too fond of India, was briefly a member of the Club (in the late 1890s) , and incurred a small, but never paid debt there. I wonder whether the reading stand is old enough to have been used by Churchill.

A Marian mix-up and Mother Teresa

IN THE MID 1970s, I attended a series of evening lectures given by the art historian Ernst Gombrich. They were held in the Mary Ward Centre in London’s Bloomsbury.

Sign post at Loreto House School

In January 2023, we visited Sister Marilla, who works for Loreto House School and College in Middleton Row in the heart of Kolkata. My wife attended the school for several years in the 1960s. The two educational establishments are part of a larger organisation, the Loreto branch of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (‘IBVM’). When Sister Marilla told us that the IBVM was founded by Mary Ward (1585-1645), I immediately thought of the Mary Ward Centre in London, and was a bit surprised because I had always assumed that the Centre was named after a 19th century woman.

My assumption was correct. The Centre is named after the novelist Mary Augusta Ward (1851 – 1920), not the Mary Ward, founder of the IBVM.

The earlier Mary Ward (b 1585) was born in Yorkshire – Roman Catholic during the time that Roman Catholicism was outlawed in England. She felt the need to take up holy orders and instead of becoming yet another Catholic martyr, she wanted to do something worthwhile and practical. She went to Flanders where she joined the Poor Clares in St Omer.

To cut a long story short, she became, to oversimplify a lot, a female version of a Jesuit, but not a member of the Jesuit Order. After leaving St Omer, she founded the Poor Clare House for English women at Gravelines. There, and later elsewhere, she taught women about the Roman Catholic faith. In about 1609, she returned to England, where she gathered women to teach girls about the banned faith. Mary Ward suffered many hardships, including imprisonment in Germany, before succumbing to ill health in England

Leaping ahead in time, this group founded by Mary Ward, which had to surmount much criticism from the Jesuits and members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, was the seed that germinated to become the officially recognised IBVM in 1877.

Followers of the group she had founded in 1609, established the Bar Convent in York in 1686. It was from here in 1821 that the IBVM Loreto branch was founded in Dublin by Teresa Frances Ball.

On the 12th of October 1928, 18 year old Albanian Agnes Gonxha from Skopje (now in North Macedonia) joined the IBVM at their Loreto Abbey at Rathfarnham in Ireland. She left Ireland on the 1st of December 1928, and landed at Kolkata on the 6th of January 1929. From there she travelled to Darjeeling, where on the 24th of May 1931, as a novice, she made her First Profession in Darjeeling’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. In this church she made her Final Profession on the 24th of May 1937.

Next, Agnes was sent to the Loreto Convent at Entally in Kolkata. At first, she taught catechism and geography at Loreto St Mary’s Bengali School, which was on the campus of the convent. Eventually, she became the school’s headmistress.

On the 10th of September 1946, whilst travelling to a retreat in Darjeeling, she decided that her true calling was to work with the poor in the slums of Kolkata. By that time, she was known not as Agnes Gonxha but as the now much more familiar Mother Teresa. The order she founded, The Missionaries of Charity, maintained a warm relationship between it and the IBVM. Internationally famous, she died in 1997.

Had it not been for our visit to Sister Marilla and the informative booklets she gave us, it might have been a long time before I discovered the two Mary Wards and the connection that one of them had with both my wife’s school and Mother Teresa.

His struggle available in India

INDIA IS FILLED with excellently stocked bookshops, many of which would put some highly acclaimed British bookshops to shame. Everywhere I have visited in India, with the exception of most parts of Gujarat, has shops selling a wide range of books in English, written both by Indian and non-Indian authors.

At Kochi Airport

One of the foreign authors, famous for only having written one book, is that monster Adolf Hitler, who was born in the year that the Eiffel Tower was completed and during which my preparatory school in London’s Swiss Cottage was established – 1889. He not only brought most of Europe to its knees but was also responsible for murdering many millions of innocent civilians. Fortunately, he killed himself in 1945.

Adolf’s book “Mein Kampf” (my struggle), which I have neither read nor plan to even peruse, is available in its English translation in almost every bookshop I have visited in India. Several different Indian publishers have produced paperback (usually) editions of the published thoughts of Herr Hitler. This and the wide prevalence of the work in bookshops suggests to me that there is still a demand for the book. This is surprising because as Vaibhav Purandare points out in his book “Hitler and India”, Hitler held India and the Indians to be beneath contempt. I wonder how many bookshop browsers in India know this.

I am not sure why some Indians have some admiration for Hitler. Some might consider him to have been a tower of strength, rather like Hercules, without knowing what an evil person he was. There is even a Hitler lock company. Presumably, the name was chosen because it suggests that their locks are extremely strong. There might be other reasons for Indian interest in Hitler, but I am not yet sure what they are.

Maybe the book is available because there is a market for books by or about noteworthy persons. Whatever the reason for its frequent appearance on the shelves of bookstores, seeing the book might cause some European eyebrows to be raised in surprise.

My latest sighting of “Mein Kampf “ was in one of the two handsomely stocked bookshops in Terminal 1 of Kochi International Airport. If you desperately want to read about ‘his struggle’, it will not be much of a struggle to find a brand new copy anywhere in India.

A classic Indian car

Older than the rest

Sturdier than the others

An Ambassador

Unintended tranquillity

THE COCHIN CLUB’S main, long, single-storey building is a lovely example of British colonial architecture. The club, located near the sea in a large well-maintained garden was officially recorded as having been established in 1914, but might have been in existence before that.

Originally established as “The English Club”, its members were mainly the British elite of Kochi and European tea planters. Some individuals, high level Indians, might have also been welcome. The Club’s Presidents all had British surnames until at least 1969. However, there was one exception – Honourable Justice P Govindan Nair who was President 1963-64. After 1969, the Presidents had Indian surnames.

Today, the Club is a tranquil spot. Usually, there are more crows and egrets than humans in its compound. The Club has five spacious, bedrooms, which can be hired. Their occupants are almost the only people using the Club. There are plenty of staff members, but few people for them to serve.

The Club has a splendid bar with windows overlooking the sea in one direction and the garden in the other. But it is a bar with a difference. Instead of shelves being lined with bottles of booze, they are used to display cups and other prize trophies. And this might be a clue as to why the Club is so often so empty.

The Club does not have a liquor licence. Therefore, it cannot sell alcoholic drinks. The cost of buying an annual licence is so prohibitively high in Kerala that the Club might not be able to break even. The availability of alcohol is one of the factors that brings life to the exclusive clubs of India.

On special occasions such as Diwali and Christmas and Onam, the Club buys a costly 24 hour licence. The rest of the time, the Club is ‘dry’. However, food and soft drinks are available in the bar. The South Indian filter coffee served there is the best we have found in Fort Kochi (Fort Cochin).

Largely because liquor is not available and because there are few members (about 500), this charming Club has acquired a certain unintended (undesired?) tranquillity.

Art and documentaries at the Kochi Muziris Art Biennale 2022

ASPINWALL HOUSE IN Fort Kochi is the epicentre and largest exhibition space of the Kochi Muziris Art Biennale. We have attended this event four times to date – 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2022. Outside the main entrance to Aspinwall House, there is a list of those companies, organisations, and individuals, who have donated money to the Biennale. The current (2022/23) list has the following heading “Principle supporters”. Is this wording an undetected typographical error, or is it intentional, or is it a Freudian slip? I ask this question because the sentiments expressed in many of the exhibits question the consequences of the activities of some of the donors.

Far too many of the exhibits in Aspinwall House are more like well-made documentaries than what has until recently been regarded as art. The documentary exhibits are mostly well put together with superb still photography and cinematography, and quite a few of them are highly informative – akin to, for example, National Geographic productions.

The majority of the documentary-like exhibits have elements of political protest, often leftward leaning. Now, I have no objection to political protest in art, but I wonder whether some of these exhibits have strayed too far from what used to be considered art, and have become more documentary than artistic. In the past, to mention but a few, artists such as Picasso, George Grosz, Otto Dix, Joan Miró, Subhi Tagore, Diego Riviera, and currently William Kentridge, have made artworks with political content. These artists and some of their contemporaries produced artworks which are not purely political or polemic, but can also be enjoyed as purely visual experiences; knowing the message is not important to the impact the works make on the viewer, but can add to that. Much of what is on display at Aspinwall House during the current Biennale simply thrusts political messages at the viewer. There is little else to appreciate but often depressing messages and images.

As for the abundance of photography it is mostly superb. Since the invention of photography, it has been used highly creatively by some photographers. Examples of these include Julia Margaret Cameron, Charles Dodgson, László Moholy-Nagy, Ansel Adams, and Alfred Stieglitz. Artists like these were competent photographers who exploited the camera to create original images that would have been difficult if not impossible to produce with other artistic materials. In contrast, many of the beautiful photographic works in the current Biennale seem to be aiming at documentary or archival accuracy rather than creative images – works of ‘pure’ art.

Having blasted at what I did not like about the Biennale, I must point out that there are many artworks that satisfied me purely visually. Some of them are in Aspinwall House, but many of them are elsewhere, notably in the Durbar Hall in Ernakulam. The works that impacted me positively because of their purely aesthetic 7characteristics might also be conveying political sentiments, but the nature of these did not impede my immediate, visceral rather than cerebral enjoyment of them.

Returning to the predominantly documentary exhibits, those that made most impact on me were housed in the TKM warehouse complex in Mattancherry. Some of the works there are not only political or polemical, but also highly creative and artistic (in the old sense of the word).

As for the odd use of “principle” on the list of donors mentioned above, I found this not only careless but ironic. Many of the artworks in the current Biennale question the principles of some of the donors, who funded the show.

Having read this, you can call me ‘old-fashioned’ or ‘politically incorrect ‘ if that makes you feel better. I might well be both, but I was brought up by my artistic parents to appreciate the works of both old masters and contemporary artists equally, be they works by Piero della Francesca or JMW Turner or Brancusi or Barbara Hepworth or Rachel Whitehead or Anish Kapoor.

Visit the Kochi Muziris Art Biennale if you can before it ends in early March 2023, and judge it for yourself. Almost all of the exhibits are housed in heritage buildings, which are alone worth seeing. I look forward to the next show in 2024/25.

A stroll along Gujarati Road

SOME YEARS AGO, I bought a book in the antique shop on Princess Street in Fort Kochi. It is a modern reproduction of a book published in about 1910. Its subject matter, mostly in English, is a detailed description of the benefits of living in Cochin. Its intended audience was Gujarati speaking people thinking of settling in the area. It was aimed at Hindus, Moslems, Jains, and Parsis.

A few days ago (in February 2023), I purchased a recently published book by Bony Thomas called “Kochiites”. It describes the many different communities that have settled in Kochi. One brief chapter is about the small group of Dawoodi Bohri, Shia Moslems, who live south of the historic centre of Kochi. Another is about the Hindu and Jain Gujaratis (and Kutchis), whose communal activities are centred along the 1 mile long Gujarati Road. As my wife has roots in Kutch and the rest of Gujarat and we enjoy visiting those parts, we decided to take a stroll along Gujarati Road, which is in the Mattancherry District of Fort Kochi. It was Sunday morning.

Gujarati Road runs in a north south direction. We began our exploration at the Jain temple and moved southwards. At the Jain temple, we were not the only tourists. My wife was the only visitor who could speak in Gujarati with the lady who showed us around the spotlessly clean Mandir. Its interior has a beautiful inlaid multicoloured floor and the inside of the main dome was a replica of the kind of domes with concentric ridges that one sees in mediaeval Hindu and Jain temples, as well as in mosques constructed during that period. Photography was not permitted within the temple.

Our next port of call was the shop of Chamanlal H Mithalwala. For many generations, this shop, owned by Gujaratis, has been selling Gujarati sweets and farsan (savoury snacks). We were able to buy some freshly made dhokla. However, we were told that khandvi always runs out in the early morning on a Sunday, soon after it has been made. The owner is Kutchi, as are many of the folk who live near Gujarati Road.

The Sri Jalaram Dham, a Hindu temple frequented by Gujaratis and financed by them, is almost opposite the sweet shop. Built quite recently (2012), it is not particularly noteworthy architecturally. It contains several brightly coloured idols and a small tulsi tree grows outside. The priest (pandit) told us he came from Rajkot, and almost all of the worshippers are Kutchis.

Just to the south of the Jalaram Dham, we reached the Sri Cochin Gujarati Vidyalaya, a Gujarati school in which most of the teaching is done in English. Founded in 1920, it has about 3000 pupils and covers education from lower kindergarten to college entry.

Within the school’s compound, there is a Hindu temple – about 140 years old. Its ceiling is decorated with larger than life bas-relief lotus flowers. We spoke with a trustee of the temple, who showed us some of the original idols and explained that in the area there are about 200 Gujarati families. Of these, 48 are Kutchi Bhatias, about 100 are other Hindu Gujaratis, and the rest are Jain. The temple is Shaivite. Our informant told us about another temple, which is Vaishnav and is frequented by the local Kutchi Bhatias. This interested us because my wife’s mother was a Kutchi Bhatia.

As can be seen all over Gujarat, there is a chabutra (dovecote) next to the temple. There is another one at the Jain temple, mentioned above

We continued south along Gujarati Road, passing the Gujarati Bhavan (which we did not enter) and several wonderful fruit and vegetable stalls.

Near the fruit and veg shops, which are located near the southern end of Gujarati Road, there is yet another temple – the Shri Navneeta Krishna Mandir. This is the Vaishnav temple used by many of the Kutchi Bhatias. The main temple was locked up, but behind it there was a lot of activity. This was centred around the mandir’s gaushala (cow shelter), where cows are provided with a pleasant home.

Worshippers were feeding the cows and calves. They were also placing cloths on the cows before handing them to the priest who was standing amongst the congregation. We were asked to touch one of these cloths before it was handed to the priest. The congregants took it in turns to touch the priest’s feet, and receive a blessing.

Near to the temple, there is a large housing compound, all of whose residents are Kutchi Bhatias. One sweet couple invited us into their ground floor flat, saying to us: “Welcome to our home. As guests, you are gods.”
We chatted with them both in English and Gujarati. They gave us lovely cups of chhaas (buttermilk, a typical Kutchi drink). They offered to cook us lunch, but we declined because we had to get somewhere else. This charming couple, Deepika and Harish, did not want us to leave. When we did eventually go, I felt that we had been in the company of genuinely warm-hearted loving people.

Before setting off for Gujarati Road, I was worried that it might offer little of interest. How wrong I was! Although I have only briefly summarised our experiences, we saw many interesting places and met many friendly people. Over the years I have been falling in love with Gujarat and Kutch. This small outpost of people from that part of India in Kerala has only increased my affection for Kutch and Gujarat.

[NB Kutch, which is now a large district in the State of Gujarat, was an independent kingdom until 1947. Even today, no self-respecting Kutchi likes to be called a Gujarati!]

A letter box in Kerala

I VISITED INDIA at least 50 times over the last 29 years. It was not until this trip (2022-2023) that I began noticing letter boxes of historic interest. I spotted three of interest in Bangalore, and now I have found one outside the post office in Fort Kochi in Kerala.

Painted green with some gold coloured details it is hexagonal with a decorative top. Between the words “Post” and “Office”, there is a British royal cipher with the lion and unicorn. Beneath this is a V and a R entwined, a logo I have seen on Victorian letter boxes in the UK.

The old letter box, now sealed up so that nothing can be put in it, stands close to the verandah at the front of the post office. Within the verandah, there is a panel giving some information about postal services in the former Kingdoms of Cochin and Travancore

Postal services began in the Kingdom of Cochin in about 1864. It was known as the Anchal Service. The letter box described above might have been an Anchal post box originally, although it is unlikely.

According to an article (https://englisharchives.mathrubhumi.com/news/offbeat/last-anchal-runner-of-kerala-passes-away-1.3462681#:~:text=Anchal%20Post%20was%20the%20postal,on%20which%20bells%20were%20attached):
“Anchal Post was the postal service system started and existed during the Kingdom of Travancore to transfer official letters and documents. The post man of this system was called anchal pillai. He used to run carrying the dispatches in a bag with a stick on his other hand on which bells were attached.”
He used to run eight miles a day. People were required to make way for this important courier, and not to impede his progress. The last surviving anchal pillai, Kannan Chapli, died aged 90 in 2019.

The post office outside which stands the historic letter box is on Ridsdale Road opposite the east end of the church of St Francis (Church of South India), and was constructed in May 1928. At that time, Fort Kochi was in the Kingdom of Cochin. In 1949, it and its neighbour, The Kingdom of Travancore, were integrated into India and merged to form the State of Thiru-Kochi. In 1956, this state was renamed Kerala and its postal service became incorporated into the Indian Post system.

Interestingly, the post box outside the Fort Kochi post office bears the intertwined V and R. The information panel has a drawing of an anchal letter box. Similar in shape to the Victorian post box, the one in the drawing bears a different logo and the words “Travancore Anchal” and something in Malayalam script. If I am not mistaken, Cochin, unlike Travancore, became a British Protectorate. In which case it might well have become part of the British Indian postal system. This could explain why the historic letter box in Fort Kochi has a British logo instead of that used in the Anchal system. There might also have been Anchal boxes in the Kingdom of Cochin, but I am uncertain about that.

Today, letters are posted in a simple red cylindrical letter box not far from the historic one. The Victorian letter box is one of a huge number of interesting historic survivals that can be seen whilst wandering around Fort Kochi.

Six-pointed stars in Kochi (Kerala)

SIX-POINTED STARS IN KOCHI

MY FIRST VISIT TO Fort Kochi (Fort Cochin) in Kerala was in 1994. By then, I already knew that there was one or more Jewish communitis in Fort Kochi (‘Kochi’). As we drove into Kochi, I noticed many six-pointed stars, all identical to Jewish Stars of David (‘Magen David’). For a while I was amazed by the sight of so many of what I believed then to be Jewish shops and other establishments. Not long after this, I became aware that like the Om and the swastika, the six pointed star is a commonly used Hindu symbol. For example, the Canara Bank, not a Jewish outfit, uses the six pointed star as its logo.

Several communities of Jewish people lived in Jew Town, which is in the district of Mattancherry. Today, flocks of tourists visit the area to explore its numerous handicraft shops and the beautifully preserved Dutch (Paradesi) Synagogue, whose floor is paved with blue and white tiles made many centuries ago in Holland.

Apart from the much-visited synagogue, there are very few other buildings that have recognisable marks that indicate their former Jewish connections. On previous visits, I spotted what must have been another synagogue; a house bearing Magen Davids; and a locked up, well maintained Jewish cemetery.

Today, the 10th of February 2023, I spotted a building with Hebrew lettering above its main door. This edifice, which is undergoing restoration, is close to the Masjid Aisha on Jew Street, and about 0.5 miles south of the Dutch Synagogue. In need of much work, this is what remains of the Kadavumbhagam Mattancherry Synagogue (constructed by 1544 AD).

Kadavumbhagam Synagogue under restoration

Another building with well-documented Jewish connections, but no obvious marks, is currently being used to house exhibitions contemporary with the 2022/23 Kochi Muziris Art Biennale. Called the Kashi Hallegua House, this grand dwelling is about 150 yards south of the Dutch Synagogue. Above its carved wooden framed front door is the date 1761. This was during the period that the Dutch were the dominant European presence in the area: they were intimately connected with Kochi between 1663 and 1814.

For over 250 years, the Dutch house, formerly known as Krathi Veedu, was home to many generations of the Hallegua family. From where they originated, I have not yet found out but they were Paradesi – European Jews who arrived in Kerala from abroad, as opposed to Jewish people whose origins were other than European (no one knows from where they arrived in Kerala).

The last Jewish residents of the house, 85 year old Mrs Juliet Hallegua and her daughter Yael, left for Israel in 2019. The place was then purchased by Edgar Pinto, who converted the huge family home into an art gallery. Although the furnishings used by the Hallegua family have been removed, many of the original wooden window frames and cupboard doors are in place. The kitchen, now a gallery space, has a huge oven and a special carved stone workspace used for grinding food ingredients with a stone rolling pin.

The two Hallegua women were amongst the last of the Kochi Jews living in the town. There was another, Sarah Cohen (1922-2019) who lived very close to the Dutch Synagogue. Until she was in her nineties, she had a shop selling tablecloths and other handmade cloth items, many of them with Jewish decoration. Today, the only Jews in Kochi’s Jew Town are visiting Jewish tourists, a few of whom might have had ancestors who lived there.

Since our last visit in 2019, a couple of shops have opened. Named Shalom, their signboards bear the Jewish six pointed star. The company sells ready-made garments, but I suspect that apart from the name, it has no Jewish connections … but I might be wrong!