FORT KOCHIN

Kochi was the first European Colony in India and was ruled by the Portuguese during the fourteenth century, then by the Dutch and finally by the English. Some areas feel distinctly and bizarrely European, yet you only ever have to walk for five minutes to find yourself on a narrow road, busling with activity, several stalls piled with all manner of unlikely things, which feels completely and utterly Indian.

Wandering along the sea front; a visceral world of still squirming sea creatures and fishermen bargaining in huddled groups around mounds of fish layed out on blankets. The atmosphere was frenzied, but for once we weren't the object of attention for those behind the stalls.

We visitted a palace built by Portugese settlers in the sixteenth century. The walls of several rooms are covered in intricate murals depicting scenes from the Hindu epic stories the 'Ramayana' and 'Mahabarata'. I copied this image from one of the walls, which was repeated four times; mothers giving birth to Rama, Bharata, Laksmana and Satraghna. The four sons are incarnations of the God Vishnu, brought into the world by the Gods to slay the Demon King Ravana.

Near to the Palace was a Jain temple. Jainism is one of the most ancient Indian religions and appears superficially at least to be quite closely related to Hinduism. These similarities may be more the result of the fact that the two religions evolved within the same culture; there are many differences in the daily ways of life that Jains adhere to. One of the central beliefs is that animals and plants, as well as human beings, contain living souls. Each of these souls is considered of equal value and should be treated with respect and compassion. Jains are strict vegetarians and in the temple complex we visited, a large bird house sat on a pole almost as high as the temple roof. At midday people gather for the feeding of the birds, in which grain is scaterred to incredible flurries of pigeons who descend on the courtyard in what feels literally like a storm. I couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for the few sparrows who tentatively tried to get in on the act- even in such a ceremonial event the strongest species win out!

THEYYAMS

Red
Red
Red
Red dress as the living embodiment of the goddess
Red sky flaming with fireworks
Red rain as fire floats slowly down-the post-explosion aftermath
Red faces flushed with excitement at the night's spectacle
Red noise of the drummers' passionate beats, enfusing the atmosphere with wild abandon
Red

Theyyams are traditional dances of spirit possession. The dancer literally becomes the god or goddess after three days of fasting and prayer, working himself into a trance that explodes into the public temple with an all night dancing frenzy. As the living embodiment of the divine, he brings blessings and good fortune amongst the people. Women rushed to shower money over his sweating body and receive blessings, whilst children followed behind him moaning and wailing...

Traditions of carnavalistic expression have long been a subject of interest in anthropology. Times where social boundaries are transgressed, social norms broken, and social roles reversed. Like the valve on a pressure cooker, these rituals can provide society with a sense of release, allowing a segeregated space of disobedience for continued obedience in the everyday world, a means of 'getting it out of your system' in order to allow the system to keep functioning.

Although the night's Indian audience seemed just as bemused and confused as I did, I thought back to the Indian society of a hundred years ago. Repressed by the British and confined within their own caste system to strict codes of behaviour, for them at least, the theyyam could have been exactly that moment of release and opportunity to go beyond the repressing boundaries of the everyday world.

And I looked again at the world around me today, where bodies are continually repressed in order to be 'civilised', where going 'wild' is seen as 'mad' and likely to get you sectioned. What is becoming of us without these spaces of unhibited expression? Without these moments of madness? Surely we need these moments of transcendence, to step away from the world in order to step back again more fully alive? Where have our spaces of the 'wild' gone?

KERALAN BACKWATERS

'The countryside turns an immodest green. Boundaries blur as tapioca fences take root and bloom. Brick walls turn mossgreen. Pepper vines snake up electric poles. Wild creepers burst through laterite banks and spill across the flooded roads. Boats ply in the bazaars. And small fish appear in the puddles that fill the PWD potholes on the highways.'(Monsoon in the backwaters, from 'The God of Small Things' by Arundati Roy)

The backwaters are a maze of water ways- some narrow and choked by purple water hyancinth vines, some swollen and still and wide, reflecting the sky. Islands of colour and activity are being gradually eroded by the watery wakes of the house boats that chug up and down bearing tourists who lounge on deck chairs with binoculars.

A moonlit canoe ride, the distorted moon laps at my fingers trailing in the waters. They sing songs from their watery history. The repeated pounds of oar on boat drives the rhythm into my body. Voices sing and repeat in simple cadences to keep the rowers in time. But time has faded like the lights by the shore and we are floating through a formless void, no bodies, no place, no where, only the rhythm of this eternal sound and the darkness of waters and stars .

We stop at a tin shack full of sweating men-their smell mingling with the pungent odour of home brewed coconut 'Toddy'. Eyes rove hungrily up and down our white flesh....we don't stay long.

We went for a cycle ride and found ourselves following tiny paths at the edges of the most narrow channels. Everywhere, washing laid out on blankets by the riverside and women soaping clothes on stone steps. A child swimming with a float of empty water bottles tied together. An abandoned house, a tree growing through its roof, strangely boat like with its swollen timbers flaking one by one from its walls. Bridges- simple planks laid between banks or grand arching, sometimes crumbling concrete structures. Paddy fields florescent in the mid day sunlight, women working in rows, bent and turbanned against the sun. A pump screeching on one bank and an old boat on the shore, long and thin, planks connected with coconut fibre ropes.

Men clearing water hyacinth that grows in furious, intamable swathes, making the rivers look like fields of purple flowers.

A row of white blossom trees, a newly painted church

The distant wail of a temple through the trees, a stall with snacks and vegetables piled onto blankets on the ground. Women squatting in groups at the waters edge washing bowls of tiny silver fish. A man punting a boat full of barrels chants his way up the river, 'Buy fish? Fish? Fish?'

Life at the River- Arup Doss

We came to a field where thirty women were up to their knees in mud planting rice seedlings. They invited us to help them, to the great amusement of a gradually increasing crowd of onlookers! We jumped in, mud up to the thighs and squelching, oozing between slippery toes, warm and strangely sensual. A wadge of green rice stalks are shoved into our hands and the laughing, but kind, womanly face animatedly points at the lines of green already planted. They are filling the gaps left behind by previous planting. Drop it in place and squish it in gently. Drop and squish, drop and squish. Wading and squelching through the muddy waters. This is highly unfeminine work, yet the only men in sight are the onlookers, or the field control man who is somewhere far off in the distance. No matter what the crop of where the field, it is always women I have seen crouched for hours in back breaking positions under the relentless sun. Always woman at work, and always men 'overseeing'. I have never seen such a patriarchal society in all my travels and I know under the surface hilarity of this situation, under the green laughter in the sun, there lies a muddy field of patriarchy these women must squelch a survival through...

Like most beautiful places, there are the shadows of a mottled history beneath the florescence of the rice fields and the bright arrays of washing strung out over the waterways. On an island rising from the mud of a paddy field the roof of a chapel has fallen in. It was once a church for 'Untouchable' Christians. There is a paragraph about the conversion of untouchable Hindus to Christianity in 'The God of Small Things':

"When the British came to Malabar, a number of Paravans, Pelayas and Pulayas converted to Christianity and joined the Anglican church to escape the scourge of Untouchability. They were known as the Rice- Christians. It didn't take them long to realise that they had jumped from the frying pan into the fire. They were made to have separate churches, with separate services, and separate priests...After Independence they found they were not entitled to any Government benefits like job reservations or bank loans at low interest rates, because officially, on paper, they were Christians, and therefore casteless. It was a little like having to sweep away your footprints without a broom. Or worse, not being allowed to leave footprints at all."

This is a 'suicide fruit', an image which rather scared me; looking innocent and tasty growing freely beside the road. But one of the local residents told us that just a small peice of fruit would kill a human being quickly- its vrey poisonous.

KATHAKALI

It is the dance of the gods, the story of the gods. It is a performance of movement, song, acting and music that is more religious worship than theatre......

Kathak-story, kali-to act. Stemmed from temple performances of religious text in the 18th Century, Kathakali was developed specifically in the Southern state of Kerala. Masks, costumes and over dramatised make-up was used in order to convey expression to temple crowds. Popular stories of gods and their deeds were chosen from the Maharbharata-a collection of holy Hindu stories of the gods.

Small gods, and soft burning lamps are the only signs of the religious routes of the dance today, tucked quietly away in shady corners.

At the time we did not know that traditionally the performance of Khathakali was itself a sacred act of worship. At the time we did not know that the first tourist performances caused outrage. At the time we did not know that some performers physical punished themselves after tourist shows for the sins of secularising Khathakali and performing for money.

Ignorantly unaware, our eyes greedily lapped up the colourful transformation of man to god.

Stones, wetted and rubbed produce different primary colours for make-up. The demonstrator wields his red evidence like a childhood magician for all to see. Colours from stone. Stone with colour living inside waiting for the 'open sesame' to reveal it's magic. I wonder if the first to discover it were shrouded in much magic and status, like the first stone-age descendents who learned how to make metal from stone. Lancelot's sword from stone one of many great symbolic legends of those early magicians.

He is a living artist-painting his masterpieces on the still breathing canvas patiently laid out before him.

Fingers wind and weave intricate messages in time with the drums soft rhythm. The combination of over dramatised facial expression, body gestures and hand-signals narrate the story without words. Lips twitch in anger and droop in comical sadness. Fingers gracefully mime commands whilst feet convey emotional states with the speed of the rhythm.

With a soft tremour to a rattling anger, the drum speaks for the silent performers. Every movement they make is vocalised by the drummer. The drum for the dancer or the dancer to highlight the drums intricate patters? And in the background, the tinkling of the cymbals hold steady the singers narration that rises to heart renching cries of holy pleas and falls lows to melodic murmurs.

The music rises, expectation is in the air, a curtain is lifted and held on stage whilst two barefeet cling-cling their ankle bracelets onto stage behind the curtain. As the drums rise in dramatic urgency the top of black hair or a metal clawed finger teases us in anticipation. Then, in a swirl and a swish of colour a goddess of the underworld, shrieks her way onto the stage, spinning her matted locks around in a frenzy .

She has fallen in love with a heavenly prince and she is awakened to her own appearance after seeing the virgins of heaven. She cries her disgust at her matted hair. She shrieks in anger at her black pointed breasts.

And though I am laughing, I am also crying...Alot of my life has been haunted by those painful shrieks and cries of self-disgust and loathing...I wonder how old this story of self-hate really is, how many other eyes have looked with that black disastisfaction on themselves, how many other skins have burned with painful shame at their reflection?

But she magically transforms herself into a beauty to match the heavenly virgins and sets off to seduce her prey. It seems self-help and the obsession to recreate oneself a-new rather than accepting the reality of who we are, is not just a fad of the West. Even the gods seek to hide from their dark sides...

The lover is found. The lover is wooed. The lover is not fooled and promptly slays her after a clash of colours and twirls.

Is this the triumph of good? The fight to slay the darkness within us which has echoed its song through the history of all religions? The devil is outcast from the garden and notions of darkness as evil produced a history of colonial represssion-dark skins were automatically outside 'civilisation'. Darkness and light, good and evil. Dualisms that teach us to fight, repress and supress our 'dark' sides. But though we should not feed this 'dark' side neither should we starve it. I think of the words of an Indian guru that repression of one's bitterness, jealousy and hate only leads to a false suppresion rather than freedom from it.

"The seed is diminished but a seed is very powerful. A seed can at any time produce a tree. The right situation, the right season of hurts and the tree will again sprout. Diminishing is not the way. Understand it, accept it. Bring it into the light and see it for all that it is....and in seeing, you will immediately drop it in disgust" (Osho).