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Banana Chips, Gulf Dreams and Vasco da Gama
... Calicut

Sashi Kodasseri

College kids still drink toddy and chase it with fish fry in thatched huts, and they still trip on the extremely potent marijuana that Kerala is known for. Culinary habits are hardest to change and though the average Calicut teenager will eat a burger at a fast food joint, he will return home to pig out on puttu and kadalla (puttu: a kind of steamed solid tubes made from rice flour eaten with kadalla, chick pea or green pea curry).

The jean-clad, burger-chomping youngster in Calicut first appeared circa 1981 when the Gulf boom was at its peak. A favourite haunt was an open air fast food bistro on the beach (happily, it still exists) called Mamas & Papas (after the 1960s folk rock band). College students, who had time to kill and money to spend, roared up and down the beach road on their Yezdi bikes to "imbress the gails", and stopped over at Mamas for a bite or to listen to Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, Weather Report and Al Di Meola.

Mamas became so popular that it made owner Cyril Steven a celebrity. The food was good, the massive collection of music was impressive, there were hordes of expat Iranian and African engineering students to lend a touch of colour. Most important, the 'gails' flocked around like pigeons do for a bite of seed.

"All this is great. The fact that you don't have to go to Bombay to get the latest things," says Nitin Sahadevan, who manages Archies, a shop for women and children.

"But what saddens me is the flat culture gobbling up Calicut," he continues. "The builders are cashing in on the fact that many Gulf returnees or people who have lived in flats in places like Bombay, don't want to spend the time and money on building a bungalow. There are very few tharawad style houses left in Calicut. And if they do build a house, it ends up hideous. The quaintness of our architecture is slowly vanishing."

Local lore says some Gulf returnees -- "filthy rich" and devoid of aesthetic sense -- have used fluorescent green glazed bathroom tiles for the facade of their dream homes. Or pink or yellow and other strange psychedelic combinations/permutations.

"Architects over here don't give a damn," says Kader Koyapathody, who owns a large rubber estate and a plywood manufacturing unit.

"There is a lot of money to be made from these Gulf returnees with petro dollars peeping out of their ears. So shut up and build what they ask you to. Don't question their aesthetics. Or you'll lose the contract to another architect who will willingly install a western closet for the man's pet Pomeranian. That's the way things are here," he says, spewing sarcasm at what appears to be the locals's favourite hate object, the Gulf returnee.

If the architectural fantasies of Gulf returnees induce contempt in many locals, the state government's plan to celebrate the 500^th anniversary of Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama's arrival in Calicut had activists and intellectuals shoot down the proposal.

"Vasco da Gama was a treacherous man, an invader, who laid the city to waste. Are we going to celebrate the arrival of a plunderer?" fumes Professor Sreedharan Menon of the Malabar Christian College, Calicut.

To the average Calicut-an, da Gama is just a blotch in the city's colourful past. In fact, some like Nitin jokingly refer to him as "Ah! Nammade Vasco, (Ah! Our Vasco)" followed by a smooching sound and snapping of fingers. The only sign that he actually came to Calicut is in the form of a stone obelisk which says matter-of-factly, "Vasco da Gama landed here in 1498, Kappakadavu".

Six years after another Portuguese sailor landed on another side of the world, in quest of the same Indian riches and spices, da Gama landed in Calicut in May of that year as an emissary of the Portuguese king Dom Manuel. His mission was clear -- to establish a trade route to India. He was followed by Pedro Alvarez Cabral who set up the first Portuguese settlement in Calicut. Cabral systematically destroyed the ships of the Arabs, the first foreigners to do business with Calicut.

After Cabral once destroyed many ships and killed the crew, the infuriated locals burned down the Portuguese settlement and massacred half of Cabral's men in retaliation. Cabral fled to Cochin. When news of this reached Dom Manuel in Lisbon, he sent da Gama on a second passage to India with orders to destroy the Arab trade with Calicut forever, burn down the city and establish Portuguese sovereignty in the area.

Which he did with a vengeance, setting the stage for Portuguese domination for the next 150 years till the Dutch came down on them like a boulder on a box of doughnuts.

But that's all history. Nothing of that tumult remains. The only reason to visit the area is the Kerala Ayurveda Pharmacy's Kappad Beach Resort, about an hour's drive from the Calicut international airport.

This is a beautiful health spa surrounded by a quaint little fishing village. Apart from the regular services a resort offers, it takes guests on fishing expeditions, organises dance dramas like the famed teyyam and demonstrations of the ancient martial art Kalaripayattu. The main attraction is the ayurvedic therapy on offer. This includes a herbal steam bath, 'synchronised massage' and other therapy that promises to revitalise the system, enhance immunity, tone up the body and relax the mind.

What else does one need on a holiday?

Photographs by Rajan Kallai

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