A fitting tribute to Kochi

Illustration/Uday Mohite

Kochi is my most favourite town on earth. I intensely love small towns - the patli galis (there's a Kit Kat Lane here, don't ask), the food (the fish and mango curry at Paragon, which is also in Ernakulam district, is a shortcut to heaven), the scents (cashew flowers), small shop ads (with a man wearing a dishdasha tunic, the 'Abu Dubai' influence), the slang ("Doh!" when calling a buddy) and the graffiti ("Mandir Kab Banega?" with three waiting figures gone skeletal). Well done, Kochi.

Fort Kochi island is so civilised, it has ingeniously absorbed all its multiple colonial, religious and trade influences into a rich fabric. The St Francis Church (built in 1503; Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama was also initially interred here in 1525), Calvetti Juma Masjid (1384), Paradesi Jewish Synagogue (1568), colonial Dutch Cemetery (1724), Sreekrishna Temple, a Jain mandir and the Chinese fishing nets, all coexist on an island less than 2 km wide. Best of all, this is no big deal. The people of Kochi are how the rest of India should be. What's more, it hosts the brilliant Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB), that spectacularly raises the bar for international art events in India.

The KMB focuses primarily on the visual arts, sculpture and multimedia installations, but includes films, performances and discussions, with multiple initiatives, including the Students' Biennale. The current, fourth edition of 2018 has received an estimated 6,00,000 visitors, including ordinary families and school children.

I was delighted to return to familiar ground. I had curated The Die is Caste, a package of films and music, for KMB in 2017, exploring various aspects of caste. The musicians included Dalit singer Bant Singh (Punjab), Manimaran (Chennai)
and the Karinthalakoottam folk troupe (Thrissur).

Curator Anita Dube has done a brilliant job with this edition, called Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life. In addition to top-notch artists from across the world, including William Kentridge and Shirin Neshat, she has included a significant number of women, queer and marginalised artists.

The many rewarding works include Shilpa Gupta's For, In Your Tongue, I Can Not Fit-100 Jailed Poets, a room full of 100 microphones, suspended over spikes piercing pages of poetry, with voices reading banned poets worldwide.

In Aspinwall House, where Chilean poet Raúl Zurita's Sea of Pain had broken our hearts in 2017, is Jun Nguyen Hatsushiba's film Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam: Towards the Complex - For the Courageous, the Curious, and the Cowards, in which Vietnamese drivers struggle to drive cyclos (three-wheelers) underwater, commenting on how they struggle to survive: you take off your shoes and wade in calf-deep water to immerse yourself in this work.

Sue Williamson's impressive installation, Message from the Atlantic Passages, comments on African slaves shipped to America: each slave is represented by a bottle with its neck enchained; hundreds of bottles suffocate together in suspended fishnets, dripping seawater. (African slaves were once brought to Kochi, too).

KMB's many delights include Bapi Das, an autorickshaw driver-turned-artist, who does remarkable artwork in embroidery; and Mexican Tania Candiani's magical String Loom, in which the loom transforms into a musical instrument. The biennale also offered us Faris Kallayi as guide: he was excellent, and had read way more than the catalogue information.

KMB director Krishnamachari Bose told me they had a Biennale Day talent show that included all the KMB staff, including the sweepers, a group of whom put on an impressive dance performance. Salute! KMB left me on a high. I can't wait to return.

Meenakshi Shedde is South Asia Consultant to the Berlin Film Festival, award-winning critic, curator to festivals worldwide and journalist. Reach her at meenakshishedde@gmail.com

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