December 19, 2024
Last night, a friend told me they’ve stopped traveling. His world travels, he claimed, made him weary of endless airport security lines and long flights. Since they prefer staying home, what’s the point of traveling? His comments resonated with me. While we’ve travelled extensively and still yearn for more adventures, the ease of watching travel programs at home is appealing. But his comments brought up memories of some journeys that we took in the past and decided to blog with them. Following are my memories of our Indian adventure in Kerala in 2011. More of our journey will be detailed in later blogs.
Our guide, Dinesh, collected us from Kōchi Airport and drove us to Green Woods Bethlehem Homestay. It was located in a tranquil Kochin suburb. Despite its small, fenced-in suburban appearance, the house’s interior was unexpectedly large. We walked through a landscaped garden to reach the building. The hostess asked for our passports; the first business item at the hotels in India was to take your passport and make a copy. Despite providing copies, hotels and guesthouses sometimes still needed the original documents. Our room included a seating area and was furnished with English colonial pieces and mementos. We found the dining area upstairs on the roof with a canopy and many plants. It overlooked the landscaped garden
Following a light dinner, we went with Dinesh to see a Kathakali dance. I had never heard of this type of dancing before, but I discovered it originated in Kerala about three hundred years ago. It remained largely unknown beyond the State’s borders. Kathakali, a story-play, is renowned for its costumes, musical accompaniment (drums and cymbals), and symbolic storytelling drawing from the Puranas—Hindu legends and myths. The stories are conveyed through pantomime, sign language, and physical expressions, like fluttering eyelids, twirling fingers, and quivering lips. Even without comprehending the Hastalakshana Deepika-derived sign language, the pantomime’s expressiveness made the story clear just by watching the actors. The actors were all males; males performed even the female roles, although, given their makeup and dresses, I could not tell that they were all males in the audience.
It is not just the play but also the preparations for the play itself that were part of the entertainment. Once seated, the actors came in and painted each other’s faces with vivid hues. It took a long time. One actor was painting another for more than an hour. It was interesting but long. I learned that each of the paints, prepared from local materials, had significance and symbolism. For example, green paint on the face meant a noble protagonist and black clothing was designated as a she-demon. They prepared all the paints used for the makeup from local natural materials: they make red from red earth, such as cinnabar, and they make black from soot.
Besides the wide use of facial makeup, the story relied heavily on costumes to identify the roles. For example, the actors wore huge headgear that, along with the makeup, signified who the actors portrayed: the hero, the villain, or the female. Each actor donned a beautiful, decorative jacket over a long skirt with thick cushions for added volume. The show lasted more than three hours, and we were tired just by the concentration on what was happening on the stage. Dinesh told us that there were Kathakali schools to preserve the old ways.
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