Getting all romantic about India...ooh la la

I have mentioned my travels to India in a previous blog so I thought I may as well add this short piece I wrote last year for a Guardian travel writing competition. I did not get anywhere with it, however it was great practice trying to fit this experience into 500 words (hard, I tend to ramble).
The piece had to be no more than 500 words long, describing somewhere lovely/unusual you had stayed. I wrote about 'The Backwater Farmhouse' in Kerala, South India, where Carla and I met Manu (mentioned previously too). I think I did get a bit soppy about the place, but it really is beautiful and the family that run it really make it. I have included some pictures at the end.

One of the must-do activities on any South India itinerary is a houseboat tour on the Keralan backwaters; a 900 km cluster of rivers and lakes tucked quietly into land behind the Arabian Sea.

Following a friend’s recommendation, my travel companion Carla and I took a train from Trivandrum, on the south west coast, to Cherthala, in the Allapuzha district. The four hour journey north lilted us hypnotically through palm-strewn landscapes (Kerala translates as ‘land of the palm trees’). We hopped into a tuk-tuk at Cherthala that navigated us down to dusty vein-like roads of the small village of Thazhappu, no other tourists in sight.

Manu, young and striking with warm brown eyes, was waiting for us outside The Backwater Farmhouse. Run by three generations of Manu’s family, the guesthouse comprised three detached bungalow rooms with verandas facing tranquil backwaters. Two wooden houseboats sat moored at the water’s edge.

Our room was spacious, modern and well ventilated with a red chalky floor, a huge double bed with a mosquito net. The ‘ensuite’ opened to the sky. A trip highlight was standing under the trickling cold shower in the morning, hearing the birds sing, the cows rumble and looking up at green fleshy coconuts hanging from bright palm fronds.

We ate a delicious traditional Keralan dinner of fresh fish and vegetable dishes overlooking the water as the sun set. Thick curried coconut gravy had an alluring spicy sweet aroma.  The chef, Lucky, introduced us to Chucky, a wild eagle that visited the branches above his kitchen daily.

In the morning, after masala chai, spicy omelette and fruit, we boarded the kettuvallam (house boat), previously used to transport rice to the port town of Cochin. Many new houseboats, built for tourists are powered by noisy motors but ours slid silently along, punted by two friendly village men with long bamboo canes.

Muted pictures of kingfishers stuck to our beer bottles posed pale imitations of the bright blue and yellow birds we glimpsed flitting through the air and punctuating the greenery.

In the afternoon we returned to the Farmhouse. Manu gave us a tour of his village Thazhappu, introducing us as his English friends. Children boldly greeted Manu in Malayalam, the official language of Kerala, and sidled up to us, with flowers outstretched on their palms. One little boy ran from his house shouting “one pen”. Manu explained that the children like to show off fancy pens to each other at school. Carla dug a pen from her bag for the boy. He thanked us and ran back to his Mum, pen clutched tightly in his fist.

Later, laying in bed on the houseboat the natural lullaby of frogs’ bass-tone creaks, crickets’ maraca-like rattling and fish tickling the water surface soothed us to sleep.

In the morning the family gathered to say goodbye. Manu’s grandparents laughed and shook our hands vigorously. We hugged Manu, Lucky and bid farewell to Chucky.  In India they have a saying: “A Guest is equivalent to God”.

Carla drinking delicious masala chai overlooking the backwaters

 Shower under the trees

Aboard the houseboat (kettuvallam)

Walking around Thazhappu in the afternoon...we also ran into a snake, only a small one, but I was quite impressed that I didn't have a heart attack and keel over (I am petrified of them). He looked quite at home and harmless though.

Manu and Lucky

                                                                                             Chucky!

We travelled to Goa with Manu after staying at The Farmhouse and are still in touch with him. He recently informed me that since our trip, Chucky the eagle has hooked up with a lady eagle! He flew away to be with her for many months and left his daily visiting post in the palm tree above the kitchen. However, he finally came back to visit Lucky and co at The Backwater Farmhouse with his ladyfriend. I loved this - he came to introduce her to the family :)

David Shrigley at The Hayward Gallery - 'Brain Activity'

The first UK survey of some of David Shrigley's work has just opened at The Hayward Gallery on London's Southbank. I decided to check it out this weekend.

I first encountered David Shrigley via his postcards. I remember seeing some of the annotated comical and child-like scrawlings in friends collections and in passing (places I cannot quite recall, but I started to recognise his style somewhere along the way). I then came across a collection of his books and postcards in a little art shop in Portobello Road. I was enchanted by his funny and sometimes dark humour and drawings and bought a book of postcards. Some of them hang in the bathroom now:

The exhibition is small but satisfying. It's not often you get to walk around an art gallery and hear people giggling and find yourself doing it too. I love art, but often taking in an exhibition is an experience that requires either an appreciation of aesthetic technique and craft, an understanding of the idea behind the art, or the patience and ability to question the many notions of the artwork and not get frustrated when you can't figure it out and are left thinking 'what the fuck was that?' Artists, more often than not, want you to think just that. To an extent, I think the idea of art is to take us out of our comfort zone; to take everyday reality and tip it upside down or shake it up and sometimes leave you just there, thinking 'huh?' Some artists do it in an annoying, pretentious way. Some art work is ridiculous and we should be allowed to say 'that's stupid' and still appreciate it or just trash it, but we often have stunted conversations afterwards with others who have seen the work that go something along the lines of:

"What did you think of it?"
"Well, some of it was really good. Very clever, I really understood what he was saying. The use of dog poo as a metaphor for the smears and stains on a world marred by economic and political recession and our inability to deal with our shortcomings."
"Yes, I thought exactly the same. The dog poo was great. He's a genius to have thought of that."

Ok, I can't say I have ever had a conversation like that...but basically art can be bloody pretentious, and we often feel like we are stupid idiots left behind in the normal everyday world if we do not 'get it'.

I like that David Shrigley's work lacks this pretention. It does not take itself seriously. The exhibition is a mixture of sculpture, drawings, paintings, photographs and animation. His messy lines and oddball characters made me feel welcome and at home. Some of the exhibits still left me thinking 'what the fuck?' In hindsight, I think Shrigley was perhaps drawing attention to this aspect of the art world and even pointing a comical finger at it. Even the works that puzzled me, more often than not made me smile. There was a cabinet full of metal objects - hooks, knives and nails in battered metal, many with silly faces engraved in them. I stared at the objects for some time trying to figure it out. What was he trying to do? What was this display about? Later I encountered the following drawing:

At this point I harked back to the cabinet and realised that it was a nod at a 'typical' museum display. The display (discounting the silly faces of course) looked very much like a cabinet you would find in a history museum. But then this is a museum, so he is also calling his own work a load of 'crap'. There are nods to contemporary artists in some of the pieces on display - for example an animation in which a middle aged man sleeps restlessly is reminisscent of Warhol's video installation of his sleeping boyfriend. It is not clear whether these homages are affectionate or mocking.

We are called to question too, as well as Shrigley himself. The very models of 'artist' and 'viewing audience' are questioned and mocked gently in many of his cartoons. The below are not both included in this exhbition, but are previous works I have encountered:

Shrigley's take on art is refreshing. It is fun.

The small things are magnified, the large matters rendered trivial. We pass a huge ceramic cup of tea, a long platform with numerous pairs of black ceramic boots on it. Later a row of ceramic eggs line up above our heads. A taxidermied jack russell informs us he is dead, despite the vigorous look on his face and his active stance.

Shrigley seems particularly interested in awkward situations and how we cope with them. One picture has a caption that reads something like 'let's have a cup of tea, that will make you feel better'. The man sitting on the sofa behind the offered cup of tea looks deranged and petrified and out of his mind, something a cup of tea definitely won't fix anytime soon. After looking at a sculpture of ants the viewer is confronted by a tiny door into the next room of the exhibition. It was fun watching who got on their hands and knees to crawl into the next room like an ant and who looked at the door and decided to walk the long way round.

Some would argue that Shrigley was the most pretentious of them all and his art is shit. I think he would relish these opinions as he begs the question himself many times through his work: what is art and futhermore, what is good art? I bet this exhibition angers some of the serious high-brow art crtics no end. And I bet, more than anyone, Shrigley will be pleased about that.

(also not included in this exhibition, but sums up the point nicely I feel)