Or, the time I traveled thousands of miles to get lost, only to find something totally familiar.
 |
| Photo courtesy of Amanda Calderón |
By Amanda Calderón, Sweet
I love the beach but not
at night. I look out into the roaring black and am filled with a kind of
dread at the open ocean, the loneliness it recalls, the thought of
being stranded in the midst of a lot of nothing without so much as a
source of light.
[post_ads]I said
this to my husband once, some years ago, at night on a beach in
Isabela, on Puerto Rico's rocky northwestern shore. It didn't seem so
unreasonable that I should feel this way, at least in that particular
moment. After all, draw a straight line north from Isabela and you won't
touch any land until Nova Scotia. Do the same due east and you'll cross
the Atlantic entirely, just skirting the Cape Verde islands before you
land in Nouakchott, Mauritania.
I am always reminded of how small and
exposed (stranded, alone) Puerto Rico seems when I see it on a map, when
some hurricane is bearing down on it from the west. Perhaps it's some
kind of island psyche that cows me in these moments.
In Puerto Rico, anything approaching a clear picture of life before Columbus is pretty difficult to come by.
But
my husband is no island person. He's from India, and his own memories
of the beach at night come from Kerala, the tropical state in the
southwest. There, fishing boats linger offshore in the Arabian Sea from
dusk until dawn, and as the sun sets, bulbs and lanterns are switched
on, forming constellations on the horizon. For him, there is no
loneliness in such a scene. Life at sea is well populated and just in
touching distance. It was appropriate then that the first time I went to
Kerala, arriving in Thiruvananthapuram at 1 a.m. after many, many
harrowing hours of travel from New York, the first thing I saw were
those very lights on the ocean.
 |
| Communist graffiti covers a rock near where da Gama landed. Photo courtesy of @amcalderon |
Whenever I go to Kerala, I
revel in the familiar—the heavy, humid air that greets me straight off
the plane, the palm trees, the big billboards against the green
foothills along the main road, the constant construction and seeming
lack of zoning. Hotels stand next to gas stations stand next to
one-story houses—that sort of thing. There is a good deal of outdoor
dining. I sip sweet, milky coffee or frothy, fresh-squeezed pineapple
juice while jet black birds lift entire slices of abandoned toast from
other tables. At lunchtime, like in Puerto Rico, I'm served fish that's
just been pulled from the sea that morning and fried.
Even the name Taino seems to not have been a name at all, but a way out of a tough situation.
I went on and on like this during a recent trip to the city of Kozhikode (pronounced KOHRR-uh-kode
and formerly known as Calicut), in the north of Kerala. Kozhikode is an
old port town, and its long history is quite palpable at every turn. As
a Puerto Rican, the idea of ancient history in a tropical place—of
ruins or, even better, intact, pre-European monuments—seems an
impossibility. Think of the humidity and salty air corroding wood and
stone, the thickets and trees overgrowing everything.
[post_ads_2]
In Puerto Rico, cave drawings, carved stone statues known as cemis,
and burial grounds do survive, but anything approaching a clear picture
of life before Columbus is pretty difficult to come by. Even the name Taino—the
term for the largest group of the now-vanished indigenous people of
Puerto Rico—seems to not have been a name at all, but a way out of a
tough situation. As the story goes, a group of native Puerto Ricans were
being held captive by a rival tribe. When Columbus encountered them,
the captives (stranded, alone) sought to distinguish themselves from
their captors, insisting they were tayno or taynon, "good guys."
 |
| A medieval mosque rebuilt in the 16th century after it was sacked and burned by the Portuguese. Photo courtesy of Amanda Calderón |
Meanwhile, in Kozhikode,
we visited a mosque built some 700 years ago by a Yemeni merchant,
attacked and burned some 500 years ago by the Portuguese, and rebuilt
shortly thereafter by a Hindu king using wood he took during his own
retaliatory raid of a Portuguese fort. That mosque still stands today,
painted aquamarine and surrounded by rows of checkered black and white
tile.
A large rock Vasco da Gama would have passed is now covered in Communist party graffiti.
By
contrast, the monument marking where Vasco da Gama landed in 1498 is a
small obelisk on a pedestal on a roadside in a residential neighborhood
near the beach (the sea has retreated a bit since da Gama landed there).
A large rock da Gama would have almost certainly passed on his way in
is now covered in Communist party graffiti.
[post_ads]In
an unexpected detour, our guide in Kozhikode brought us to his
brother's shipbuilding yard. We expected to see a few fishermen
hammering away at some small wooden boats on the beach. Instead, we were
greeted by towering ships in various stages of construction. Each could
easily carry over a hundred people, my husband estimated. Among them
was a gorgeously crafted wooden boat with fans engraved along the bow.
When it is finished, it will be hoisted onto a larger boat and brought
across the Arabian Sea to Dubai, where the wealthy will admire imported
palm trees and glinting glass skylines from its deck.
 |
| A fishing boat mid-construction in Kozhikode. Photo courtesy of Amanda Calderón |
Most of the boats in the yard, however, were steel. These were Indian
fishing boats. When they're built, they'll go out into the Arabian Sea,
too. They'll stay there for weeks at a time and come back with big
hauls. At night, the crew will light lamps on board. They'll cook and
eat and chat by that light. Perhaps some of them will miss home, but
they will hardly be alone.
