I got back from Fort Kochi yesterday morning and again there’s this feeling of being displaced, I was there for five days, alternating workshops between Bienale and hack4play, the place greets you with European architectures, churches, humid weathers, it was like being back in my mum’s maternal village, going out for ice-creams after dinner, walking back homes, having a few good laughs with friends, the cool breeze hitting after a hot day. After having gone to Goa, I knew better this time to not start whining by the end of the first day, walking back by myself in calm streets felt almost lonely. I was still coming from a busy city life, so slowing down to the tune of the slow melody was a step.
So after the end of the first day, I declared to my travel buddy that “I might not stay here longer, it’s almost too quiet”
By the second day, after some initial resistance I made myself go to the Day-2 of the applied theatre workshop, it’s the most I learned and absorbed and the workings of theatre, the expression, the posture, the gait, the functional fluency of our ego states, the way to “throw” words outwards vs inwards, it was beautiful without being a lot. The facilitator was an amazing person, Manu Jose, who runs the Ala theatre in Cochin. I am grateful for being a student.
By the end of the day, I have molted, found some good company and have started to fall in love in the city, it has so much culture and history to just walk by and absorb. The place is touristy, sure, but not so much, as to get annoying, pestered or frustrated. I enter an art gallery, as the words “Feel free to enter” are printed outside, only to find later it was for staying-guests only. There I found a book — “History of Fort Kochi” lying and I start inhaling it. The Dutchs, The Arabs, the Chinese, everyone was here.
I stood outside the Dutch cemetery watching how other people were photographing the past. How far they have come to see where the remains of their ancestors were lying. I almost saw the tomb of Vasco-da-Gama, I was so looking forward to it, yet I went to the St. Francis church on Sunday and Sunday is church-day, so no visitors.
The next evening, I observe closely as the fishing nets are being pulled in the evening, the scores of fish caught are now in tubs trying to make a last jump hoping they will get back into water. If I were coastal-born, I would have easily looked at them as the — vegetables of the sea — I think this time I was not conflicted, I didn’t have a desire to save them and put them back in the sea and I was contemplating on whether I’d like to eat fish. The episode of Beastars starts playing in my head, “..the big fish eats the small fish…all become part of the sea…this is life”
I attended cyanotype photo making, lamp making — used the drill for the first time, soldering workshops. And how to undo mistakes, wrongly soldered components, and how important it is to be exact and precise such that the circuit is complete so as to flowing of the electrical current.
I think it was a beautiful trip with so many cool people to interact with and first time traveling with a travel-buddy, the perspective of the friend ornated the beauty of the city and as the friend said – “made leaves greener, skies bluer and ships shippier”
Cheers!
i-would-like-to-move-to-kochi-soonly
Calra
P.S. Ode to the bio-luminescent planktony backwaters
In the darkness of the night,
you lit up with oar splash,
glowing blue and white,
showing us the light,
we holding tight,
until you,
were,
out,
of,
s
i
g
h
t
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