A Roman Holiday In Kerala

Travelling back in time for a Roman holiday in Kerala.

- Akshaya Pillai

My half of the window has a fake mist. On the other side, the sun reigns. I have taken this five-hour train ride to Ernakulum several times in the past five years, always knowing what to expect of the city. This time, I have to sift through my memory to choose an image that might suit the uncharted stop I am aiming at. Ancient rubble spat out from the earth’s gut, shovels leaning on makeshift tents, Harappan steps leading down to a great bath and other scenes cross my mind. I picture a prosperous city swallowed by water and forsaken to the elements. It could be William Watson’s Ballad of Semmer water that we are talking about. Muziris is equally fabled as a wealthy seaport of the first century BCE. It finds reference in ancient literature but vanished without a trail. Slivers and splinters of the chronicle have now been dug out and deposited behind glass shelves in newly built museums.

I fidget with my phone for directions. In the waiting room of the station, a group of chirpy twenty somethings with bursting backpacks and funky sipper bottles are waiting for the morning train to Goa. Their conversations swerve to Ladakh, plans for the next jaunt. It’s an ache for the new and the exotic.

If not for the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, I wouldn’t have rushed out for this journey. My first encounter with this ancient city was four years ago, 40 km away, in the form of rubble at Aspinwall House. Artist Vivan Sundaram had loaned 80 kg of pottery shards from Kerala Council for Historical Research (KCHR) to fashion a 40-foot long installation titled Black Gold. Laid out as an archipelago symbolising pepper and all that it stood for, the terracotta mound seemed like an angry wife’s answer to a domestic quarrel.