The Cultural Traveller

A FEW MONTHS AGO, I went to the outskirts of Mumbai to a place called Vasai, where there stood the ruins of a fort that was once the epicen­tre of the Portuguese presence in India. The fort had been indomitable because it introduced a new equation into the subcontinent: sea power. Border­ing the Arabian Sea, it was from there that the Portuguese estab­lished their territory which included what is now Mumbai. They strangled the trade of the local land-based rulers. Vasai was part of the beginning of the colonial age. What caught my attention was also the numerous churches among those ruins, memories of the orders of Franciscans, Dominicans and Jesuits. The coast in that re­gion had a large Christian community because of the competition among these orders for souls. In 1597, Gonsalo Garcia from these parts, who had a Portuguese father and a native mother, joined the Jesuits, became a missionary, went to Nagasaki in Japan and was killed there for his faith. He was later canonised and became the first saint out of India for the Catholic Church.

The Marathas became ascendant and drove the Portuguese out, and now the fort had new overlords but not for too long because the hour of the British had struck. Before me stood what was once a cultural entrepôt but now just stones on which layers of moss gathered during the rains, and to be there was to hear history repeat once again that the only true king is time. To really know a place you must know its stories. They might not be apparent at first glance but can be deciphered. Whether it be in the dialect, the food, the attire, the songs and the prayers, a destination is a composite of all that it has lived through. The cultural traveller relives it and in doing so enters the story.

In the distant past, years would have to be spent for the curious mind to know the land that obsessed him. The 7th century CE Chinese monk Xuanzang had to give 15 years of his life to come to India to know more about his own religion, Buddhism, and the country that gave birth to it. Today, such arduous investments are not required. It can be crunched down to days because even a teenager now is more knowledgeable than scholars of the past. We have access to all the information everywhere in the world through the phone that we hold in our hand. If we go somewhere, we can take many of the stories of that destination with us. It is then rediscovery and serendipity. The trap to avoid is tick-mark travel—carrying a checklist that must be touched and the entire purpose now being the checklist’s fulfilment. Good travel demands leisure, if not of time then of the mind. It is walking without hurrying, feeling and absorbing. Maybe seeing something in part but with immersion.

Go farther on from Vasai towards Gujarat, and you arrive at a small coastal town called Sanjan. It is, as one of the stories in this issue will tell you, where the Parsi community, arriving as refugees, is said to have first set foot, carrying their holy fire with them. About 40km away is Udvada, another sleepy town of un­inhabited bungalows, where that fire now is housed. And about 75km ahead is Navsari, a town where the Tatas made their begin­nings to become the premier industrialists of the country. Not just them, Navsari was where many traders of the community originated and built not merely enormous fortunes but contrib­uted them to the public good. That stretch of 120km has within it the evidence of what gave India its character—tolerance, hospitality, and willingness to let guests become family, who then contribute to the prosperity of the home.

There are places that invite us because they seek remembrance. Lucknow was once identified with the great singer Begum Akhtar but to go there now is to be confounded by the fact that most people do not know who she was. This is a Lucknow chasing its new identity in the modern world and not realising the effacement that is accompanying it. Some cities, especially abroad, are better at honouring those who bring light to them. In Kraków, the literary spark rages in its streets and cafés. The city has been home to many Nobel laureates in literature and they come to life every time a poet there thinks of a new turn of phrase.

The pages that follow are replete with stories of places and personalities that define them. Or even objects. Like the Cuban cigar, much coveted by connoisseurs worldwide. But how often does one see this lens inverted? What does it mean for the Cubans themselves? And in chasing that question, one discovers extraordinary parallels, as to the humble beedi—that both the cigar in Cuba and the beedi in Kerala were part of a literacy movement driven by politics. In Kerala, books would be read aloud to beedi workers and in Cuba, too, they did so as they rolled the cigars. Travel provides for such gratification, of going to the other side of the Earth and suddenly finding an unexpected connection to home.

About The Author

Madhavankutty Pillai

Madhavankutty Pillai has no specialisations whatsoever. He is among the last of the generalists. And also Open chief of bureau, Mumbai  

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