RETURN TO INDIA

00:15, february 2nd 2017 LANDED, Cochi Airport.

I did it. I have booked a hotel room from Bangkok.

I know, I know… to adventure, booking ahead is the Kiss of Death…but the idea of walking around in the middle of the night looking for a place to stay somehow convinced me that although very very middle-class, booking ahead would make my life very very easy.

I know, I know…..to a travel very very easy is the Kiss of Death.

Maybe I am getting a bit senile.

My pre-booked hotel is walking distance from the arrivals, exactly the kind of slightly sad middle-class hotel you would expect around an airport,  but the hot water is hot for real and the wifi works, which is pretty much a MIRACLE, and the two gentlemen at the reception, Mr Thomas and Mr Deepu are adorable.

The next morning Mr Thomas insists to give me a ride to the bus stop although I tried to convince him that as I walked the same way the night before I really have no problem to find my way back (the bus stop is just across the airport) but he rather leave the reception unattended and give me a lift.

The warmth of kindness. Welcome back to India.

The few minutes that the ride takes are enough for me to get to know that Mr Thomas is from Kerala, has three daughters who all got “high education” he says with pride and obvious love,  that he worked in Bombay for 25 years and finally him and his family returned to Kerala, being now “very very happy”.

 

 

Something I always loved a bout Kerala is the coexistence of Saints, posters announcing “Amma at the Lenin Hall”, Jesus and Che Guevara side by side, Holy Mary and Ganesh. Kerala’s syncretism is authentic and deeply rooted.

The original plan was to spend two days in Fort Kochi, but I found a old hotel: I am a old-hotels-hunter.

The rooms are more than “simple” but there are no tiles in this faded beauty: the charm of old marble floors made me stay for almost a week.

The Chinese nets are few, in these eleven years since I first visited Fort Cochi obviously things went wrong: too high maintenance costs for a too poor catch. I saw the nets being pulled out one after the other, empty.

Now most of the fish come with boats that have been fishing in open waters

Roaming the streets of this town and being absorbed by its multi-colonialistic past makes me feel as laid back as the shadowy entrances of its old buildings and alleys. Fort Cochi is a Grand Dame, a Duchesse, a living memory of the times before nobility went extinct, and with it a certain elegance that was the result of being pretty rich and highly educated

But what really makes me stay, is the Contemporary Art Biennale: the locations hosting it are outstanding, it’s a big (and complex) event and some of the art exhibits left me breathless.

Contemporary art has often the goal to create not only a sensation but also a reaction: one installation filled me with an emotion that was so intense that I started crying.

“The sea of Pain” from Chilean artist Raùl Zurita.

A dim-lit building flooded with seawater, you have to leave your  shoes (or -as they say here- footwear..) out and venture in the water. Here words become too poor, I leave photos to give you an impression

“Alan Kurdi was three and his photo circled the world. He lay face down and the blue red of his clothes was striking in its strange tidiness on the shore. Hours later the Turkish coast guards recuperated the bodies of his mother and small five-years-old brother, Galip, but of him there are no photographs. No one can mimic his final image moored face down at the water’s edge. No artist can provide that low bow. Ah, the world of art, the world of images, billions of images. The words of a poem are cleaner, more pure. When the boat filled with Syrian immigrants overturned, the father swam from one boy to the other trying in desperation to save them, but he could only see how they disappeared. I wasn’t there, I am not his father.

There are no photographs of Galip Kurdi, he can’t hear, ha can’t see, he can’t feel, and the silence comes down like immense white cloths.

Below the silence you can make out a piece of sea, of the se of pain. I am not his father, but Galip Kurdi is my son.”  -Raùl Zurita.

I read, I cry, I walk back in the water, I cry.  Salt of tears salt of sea water.

The one that made me laugh the most: Liu Wei, a young Chinese artist, with BIG DOG

Western historical architecture, building made of ….oxhide dog chew. All dog edible.

Wei, how the hell did you get an idea like that??? I love you!!!!!!!!

Days start flowing like a river, smooth and fast, each day is filled by a million impressions that seem to awaken my senses, my mind and my soul.

I am back in India.

PHOTOS©annalauvergnac