Category: Travel

Exploring Kathakali: A Journey Through Kerala’s Cultural Heritage

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. 

Travel Surprises

December 14, 2024

While looking for lodging near Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater online, I discovered the South Broadway Manor in Scottdale, Pennsylvania. I preferred not to stay in a motel that resembled a strip mall. I was immediately captivated by the photo of a spacious Georgian home on a hill surrounded by open land. I believed that’s what the surrounding landscape was. But when we arrived at night in the rain, I was disappointed. We drove through a rustbelt town, Scottdale, to find the stately Georgian home on an average-sized lot in a neighborhood of hundred-year-old decaying houses. I admired the photography of how someone captured this manor to make it look so attractive in this modest community.

The interior, however, was far better than expected. I was incredibly surprised when I entered the gorgeously renovated B&B’s lobby. Historical pictures hung on the wall above a comfortable couch, and an impressive chandelier provided light. We met the hostess in the kitchen, who was waiting for us with cookies and lemonade. We connected with her right away. Her voice is full of pride, and she offered a tour of her house. 
Upstairs, she showed us to our room, which was called the “Crystal Rose.” The room included a four-poster bed, a period dressing table, a two-seater couch, a fireplace, and more period furniture. Impressionist pictures covered the walls. Marble and onyx enhanced the bathroom’s elegance. Overall, it was a beautiful bedroom suite that immediately made me feel at home.

We and Pat Hill, our hostess, instantly clicked on a personal level. Her squinting, she explained, was a side effect of her recent cataract surgery. I expressed my admiration for her restored Gilded Age-style mansion. By way of explanation, she recounted her decades-long collection of antique furniture and volunteered to give us a complete tour of the house, room by room. The rooms each had their own unique theme. In the Federalist room next to ours, there were uniforms and an impressive collection of pistols. She explained that her brother was a Civil War aficionado and collected paraphernalia from that period.

We were treated to a sumptuous breakfast in the formal dining room, which had charge plates and a grand chandelier. Guatemalan chef Raffael prepared a hot gourmet breakfast for us, including a selection of fresh fruits. Over the meal, we learned more about Pat’s fascinating life, including her forty-year stint as a ‘fit model’ in Manhattan and her decision to return to her hometown and purchase and renovate the mansion.

When renovating the building, Pat found a stash of pre-prohibition whisky in the basement. The “Old Farm Pure Rye Whisky” bottles were distilled in 1912 and bottled in 1917. To protect a potentially valuable asset, Pat hired a longtime friend to live in and care for the house, with special attention paid to the whisky. However, when Pat moved the cases of whisky later, she discovered that most bottles were empty, consumed by the caretaker. Pat was disappointed by that event, leading her to report the theft to the police. The subsequent trial used DNA to prove the caretaker consumed a quantity of whisky now worth more than $100,000. Fortunately, some bottles remained intact, although Pat does not expect restitution.

Today, a bottle from among the 108 bottles (nine cases of twelve) is valued at $2,500, as Pat found out. But why would anyone have nine cases of whisky in a house, even if it is a mansion I asked? Pat guessed the house’s builder was known for greeting guests with a shot of whisky in the foyer. What a wonderful habit, I thought. I followed up by asking who the original builder of this manor was. It was P. J. Brennan, CFO of the now-defunct Henry Clay Frick and Company.

Upstairs, I found a book with Flick’s biography next to our room. Our hostess, attentive to detail, also included a Frank Lloyd Wright biography alongside Frick’s. Two comfortable chairs were also there, inviting me to sit and delve into Frick’s life. In addition to coffee available all day, a large glass bowl full of mint was next to the books. Yes, we did have a thoughtful hostess.   Over a thousand people in the region worked for Flick’s company at the turn of the century. Scottdale was a booming town built on coal and coke, supplying Andrew Carnegie’s steel plants. Scottdale’s history is rich with turn-of-the-century millionaires and their mansions, some now B&Bs, but the town’s decline followed the coal industry’s downturn, leaving it a rustbelt town. We stayed in one of these renovated mansions built originally by a millionaire. It was meticulously renovated, and it was a treat to stay there.

My Impressions of Three Frank Lloyd Wright Houses

December 1, 2024

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House in Buffalo, built in 1904, would inspire any young man seeking a career in architecture (Darwin Martin was the CEO of the Larkin company). Stepping from the entrance porch, sheltered by a low overhang, into the lobby with a much higher ceiling conveyed a sense of warmth as if coming in from the cold outside. A massive fireplace dominated the right side of the lobby. A pergola, visible through a stained glass window, pointed towards the coach house. Entering, the lobby was dark with the surrounding walls made of sculptured stonework, using local materials.

The house layout was logical and straightforward; the reception room for entertaining guests opened on the left of the lobby. On the right was a large and extended room divided into the dining area, the living room, and the library at the other end. What gave elegance to all the spaces were windows all along the walls facing the outside, with colored patterns embedded in them. The windows illuminated the rooms and allowed occupants to view the surrounding landscaping designed for viewing from inside. Walking through the rooms was very comforting; I wanted to sit in the living room and enjoy the view through the windows.  

FLW was a total architect, designing not only the outside but also the inside of the house with most of the furniture, sometimes conflicting with the client’s wishes. For example, he created the bed for Mr. and Mrs. Martin in the main bedroom. It was esthetically pleasing but so short that Mr. Martin remarked that he could use it only while lying diagonally across the bed. Mrs. Martin had real trouble with the bed and decided to move to another bedroom with a larger bed in a few months.

Another example of the architect pushing his ideas was the grand piano the Martins wanted in their living room. FLW demanded that the piano be made of a specific wood to match the room’s color scheme. The piano would have taken a long time to manufacture and was so expensive that the Martins decided to buy one from a store, ignoring its color.

The design of the library floored me, I didn’t see any books. The books were in casbinets, designed by the architect, that swiveled to provide access to the books. It also surprised me that the library was furnished with a large table in the middle, against which were two bench seats facing away from the table on opposite sides. It seemed as if the architect did not want people to face each other when reading.

Impressed by the Martin House, we saw another FLW design, “Fallingwater,” a summer home for the Kaufman family of Pittsburgh, of department store chain fame. Fallingwater is one of FLW’s best-known designs, with a waterfall running through the building, built in 1936. Expansive balconies overhang cascading water; used in a famous building picture. The Kaufmans had one son, and the humongous living room was the most striking impression I had of walking through the summer house, created for only three adults. It was a vast open space with a few chairs and a massive balcony up front overhanging the waterfall. Windows covered three sides of the room. Against the back wall was a dining table of ordinary size with four chairs dwarfed by the oversized living room.

After seeing the main level of the house, the guide took us upstairs. Curiously, the staircase leading to the bedrooms had bookshelves; I understood that the son loved reading and insisted on having open bookshelves along the stairway and in his room, a design the exact opposite to the one in the Martin House library. However, his creative furniture design was evident in all the rooms; FLW designed a lamp for the night tables next to the beds with a vertical V-shaped wood construction that could be swiveled to throw light on a book when one read in bed. Equal attention was paid to window design; corner windows could swivel to open to let in air from two sides of the house and let the sound of the waterfall in from below.

In contrast to the two large houses designed by FLW, the Martin House and Fallingwater, we visited a 2.100 square foot Kentuck Knob, close to Fallingwater, also designed by him. The project was built in 1956 for the Hagan family for $90,000, who made their fortune in the dairy business.

The critical elements of the typical FLW style are all here: the house growing out of the land, situated to take advantage of the landscape, bringing natural elements into the house, and using local materials. It has long horizontal lines with a large overhanging roof. However, the design style has changed; the house has hexagonal instead of rectangular rooms. Designed by FLW, a long bench runs along the back wall of the elongated hexagonal living room, facing a window wall that overlooks the valley below. Sitting on the bench provides an excellent view of the panorama below. There are a couple of uncomfortable-looking chairs designed by FLW in the otherwise empty room. The long bench along the back wall was bizarre; would ten people sit side by side to watch the view in front? Not likely. A living room for me conjures up arrangements of chairs in a circle or in small groupings, where intimate conversations could take place.

Extending from the living room along the window wall, the dining room provides access to the kitchen and bedroom wing. The hexagonal kitchen features a twelve-foot-high ceiling and a skylight. The original design for the kitchen did not please Mrs. Hagan, who was an excellent cook and liked cooking meals (there were no servants in this household) and insisted that the kitchen be enlarged. The redesign narrowed the hallway connecting the kitchen to the bedrooms. The idea crossed my mind that FLW did not cook and did not have a high opinion of women to design such a miserly kitchen, especially without an outside window. That would be standard today.

Kentuck Knob is now owned by Lord Palumbo, a British property developer from London, England. Even at 89, he still visits the guest house on the property for a month every year. Today, according to our guide, this building, with a market price of three million dollars, would cost one million dollars to build. Kentuck Knob is meticulously maintained and in excellent condition, operating as a tourist attraction.

These buildings, and others designed by FLW, are national treasures, the product of arguably the most talented American architect. The architect’s ability to seamlessly integrate the last two buildings into the hillside, while capturing the best views of the surrounding countryside, really impressed me (in contrast, the Martin House sits on a suburban lot). The architect’s meticulous attention to detail, designing everything from the exterior and interior to the furniture, really impressed me.

Designing all the furniture came with some consequences, though. All three houses had surprisingly small bedrooms. As a result, the architect’s design, which included beds, nightstands, and built-in cabinets, made it impossible to use any furniture from the previous home. It’s not surprising that FLW’s strong personality caused friction with some members of his clients’ families.

FLW’s clientele consisted of three wealthy businessmen, all of whom had attained success in previous endeavors. Do people living in architecturally stunning homes experience greater success and happiness? We don’t. know. The only thing we know is that it was expensive to hire a renowned architect. After comparing architect-designed houses to basic shelters during my travels in Asia, the Middle East, and South America, I noticed that most people live in simple homes, making the field of architecture seem not so important in a global context.