On the hunt for a spiritual Christmas in India

11 December 2014 - 17:59 By Gavin Bell
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Hoping to find some Christmas celebrations more spiritual than commercial, Gavin Bell heads to India's balmy southwest coast

Christmas Eve in Moongode went off with a bang. Several loud bangs, in fact, followed by showers of light cascading over palm trees in the sultry night air.

The fireworks followed midnight mass in St Sebastian's Pilgrim Church, a brief nativity play, and an enthusiastic dance routine by little girls in white dresses.

Then Father Christmas turned up to cheers to dispense a shiny new red motor scooter, a washing machine, a refrigerator and other goods to the winners of a raffle to raise funds for a community centre. Christmas in Kerala, jewel of the Malabar Coast, is different.

It was my wife's idea to experience Christmas in another culture where, we hoped, the celebrations would be more spiritual than commercial. Hence our festive-season passage to India.

Kerala is an odd place. Nominally communist in its politics, it is one of the most religious places on Earth, with large Hindu, Muslim and Christian communities in which devotions are integral parts of life.

They live in a tropical forest that has been cleared here and there for settlement and cultivation, but allowed to thrive in wild profusion everywhere else. This leaves a tangle of verdant landscapes as exuberant and chaotic as the towns, uniting man and nature in an enthusiasm for life.

We arrived 10 days before Christmas and headed to the city of Cochin and, more specifically, Fort Cochin, the ancient trading post of colonial powers lured by Malabar's "black gold" - pepper - and the exotic spices of cinnamon, cardamom and ginger. The epicentre of the trade, the nearby waterfront district of Mattancherry, still evokes the chaos of the Portuguese, Dutch and British eras in a maze of colonial architecture, warehouses and shops bustling with traffic. No fairground dodgem cars can compete for thrills with the tuk-tuks of Mattancherry.

A more serene ambience prevails in the Church of St Francis, the first built by Europeans in India, where the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama was buried in 1524. His remains were later removed to Lisbon, but British imperial echoes remain in large cloth fans known as punkahs, which swing above the congregation. Outside, an old parade ground where generations of colonial soldiers drilled in oppressive heat is now a scrubby field of dreams for schoolboy cricketers.

 

Tourism has transformed the old residential quarter into a pleasant district of cafés, restaurants and craft shops easily explored on foot. The rambling property where Da Gama supposedly spent his last days on Earth now accommodates a guesthouse, a café, a bookshop and, appropriately, a travel agency, all bearing his name.

Our intention was to ease gently into the festive season with a two-day cruise through the Kuttanad backwaters, a labyrinth of hundreds of miles of canals, streams and inland lagoons in low-lying land that sustains small communities of fishermen and farmers. Their bucolic way of life, as portrayed in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, sounded like the perfect antidote to the madding crowd of shopping-mall Santas at home.

And so it proved. A chauffeur from the houseboat company whisked us through a noisy cavalcade of traffic to Alleppey where a kettuvallam, a luxuriously converted rice barge, was waiting to transport us into another, more tranquil world.

Within minutes of leaving the jetty, we encountered a duck farmer. He was paddling a canoe and herding hundreds of ducks downriver. It was not a good time for his flock. For most of the year they are kept for their eggs, but an important item in traditional Christmas feasts in these parts is duck curry.

We passed fishermen casting nets from canoes, and brightly painted little houses nestling among palm trees, giant ferns and flowering shrubs. A menagerie of goats, chickens and cattle with birds perched on their shoulders roamed fields and gardens, and the air was alive with birdsong.

As we glided along at walking pace, we were enveloped by a sense of peace. The put-put of the engine became soporific, especially after a generous lunch of grilled kingfish with coconut and vegetable curry dished up by our on-board chef.

We had splashed out on a private kettuvallam and an extended cruise that took us deeper into the backwaters than most houseboats. Thus we were alone in our own little world with our skipper and chef and their assistant, coasting on calm water amid vistas of green fields and rice paddies glinting in the sun. I have rarely felt such utter calm and contentment.

At dusk, navigation stops to permit fishing. This is also a time for bathing and washing clothes, and for birdcalls and music to drift over the darkening waterworld. Moored to a riverbank, we fell asleep to the sound of a Christian preacher intoning the gospels through the darkness. Peace on Earth.

 

In the morning we were awoken by children's laughter, and looked out to see a school "bus" cruising by - a richly decorated motor launch packed with children.

A dusty path leading to a Hindu temple in the hamlet of Mancompu was busy with worshippers called to prayer and we joined them, passing a man washing a cow. Virtually everyone greeted us with a smile or a wave. Goodwill to all men.

We were not allowed to enter the temple but, over a low stone wall, we observed people laying offerings before colourful shrines. It was a bright, happy scene far from the dour Scottish Presbyterian services of my youth.

In the village of Pulinkunnoo, we found parishioners concerned about protecting Jesus from the weather. Their church had a splendid white tower topped by a figure of Christ, thoughtfully provided with a blue umbrella to protect Him from the heat and monsoonal rains.

Both of which are plentiful, nurturing a bountiful land. Here it is not so much a case of mankind returning to nature - it's more that he's never left it. The backwaters are the lifeblood of its communities, providing fish, irrigation for rice paddies and vegetable patches, and transport for everything from building materials to schoolgirls.

They would have been a fine place to spend Christmas, but we'd arranged to head south by train to the beach resort of Varkala.

Unsurprisingly our train was late. A character in a novel by the Indian author Ruskin Bond offers sound advice: "It is no use getting upset about delays in India. They come with unfailing punctuality." So I wandered off to get a coffee and returned to find my wife surrounded by young people politely inquiring where she was going and eager to offer advice. Goodwill to all men (and women).

The beach at Varkala, beneath red cliffs, had a split personality. One end was packed with Western sun worshippers, and the other was teeming with Hindus consigning the ashes of dearly departed to the ocean. Fortunately there was a good space between them.

We discovered there is no Christian church in Varkala. The nearest is St Sebastian's Pilgrim Church, on the banks of a lake down Mother Teresa Lane in Moongode, a rural parish a short tuk-tuk ride away. This is where we found Father Solomon Elias ministering to 600 Catholic families, who happily invited us to midnight Mass. He also asked us to join him for Christmas Eve dinner in the convent, hosted by Sisters of the Sacred Heart. I was not sure whether the wine served with delicious pasta had been consecrated, but it tasted divine.

Later, the church was overflowing with a sea of colourful saris, with standing room only at the back. We are not Catholics and understand little of the rituals, but we got the gist of the celebratory mood. The fun reached a climax with the fireworks, and the arrival of Father Christmas with the red motor scooter. As Santas' grottos go, the lakeside in Moongode on a warm, starry night is hard to beat.

We spent much of Christmas Day on the lawn of our hotel, watching Krishna eagles circling in an azure sky, fishing boats drifting by on the Arabian Sea, and butterflies flitting around hibiscus blooms. The dulcet tones of Bing Crosby drifted from an adjacent property, wishing us a white Christmas. Thanks Bing, we'll pass this time.

- ©The Sunday Telegraph

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