Deepthi Murali walks and talks with Elizabeth Thomas Tharakan, founder of Heritage Walk Trivandrum, and discusses public history and heritage awareness in Kerala's capital.
Heritage enthusiasts at Sundara Vilasam Palace (Image Courtesy: Heritage Walk Trivandrum)
In early December, I joined about fifty others near the southern entrance of the famed Padmanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram for the third of a four-part series of walks designed by Heritage Walk Trivandrum. Street vendors and temple-goers alike stared at the oddly diverse group of people who had assembled so early on a pleasant if humid Sunday morning. Under the leadership of Elizabeth Thomas Tharakan, archaeologist and one of the founders of HWT, and conservation architect Sharat Sunder Rajeev, our main guide, we walked the length of the road historically known as “mekketherivu” stopping every few meters to look at a nondescript old building here, a partial ruin there, and sometimes, to preen into an area where once a glorious building had stood proudly but was no more. It was a remarkable experience—the act of walking over and viewing the city’s urban fabric organically woven one layer atop another for over 300 years, while listening to expert narration of the area’s micro history.
Partial ruins of Changanasseri Moovidathu Madom (Image Courtesy: Prasath Rajendra and Heritage Walk Trivandrum)
I met Ms. Tharakan later that week to talk about Heritage Walk Trivandrum (HWT), a community that was formed for and by local history enthusiasts. Launched in 2013 by Ms. Tharakan and two eminent scholars of Kerala’s history Malayankeezhu Gopalakrishnan and Prof. S. Achuthshankar Nair, HWT remains a vibrant group that has seen exponential growth through social media sites like Facebook and word-of-mouth references. Ms. Tharakan is a ball of energy with a ready smile and eyes that sparkle with wit. Off the bat, she centered our conversation on her motto: “Heritage is not big palaces—that construct needs to change.”
The insistence on bringing hardly known entities of Thiruvananthapuram’s past to its residents is palpable in the walks HWT has designed thus far. It started with Pettah, an area hardly associated with the illustrious history of Travancore kingdom (of which Thiruvananthapuram was the capital since late-18th century). Pettah was the old entry point to the city, a town of merchants with a sizable Anglo-Indian population. It became the center of trade since entrance to the holy city was barred for most traders as they were not Hindus. The second HWT walk was to the general hospital, and the next, onwards to Vanchiyoor district court area. Ms. Tharakan confesses that they deliberately avoided the fort area, often associated with Travancore’s royalty. In mainstream consciousness, Thiruvananthapuram is the fort area with Padmanabhaswamy temple as axis mundi. Ms. Tharakan opines that this is a disassociated view of history. For her, the urban history of Thiruvananthapuram is steeped in the social milieu outside the fort as much as the political intrigues and socialcultural rituals inside it.
This concern for marginalized histories and peripheral regions has made HWT a considerable public history project intent on sensitizing people to their neighborhoods as well as to contemporary issues in these localities. In a rapidly growing city where real estate prices have given rise to inexplicable arson in areas like the historic Chalai market, Ms. Tharakan insists, events like heritage walks are ways for the public to engage with and become aware of larger sociopolitical issues concerning endangered urban spaces. This is necessary in a state that has placed heritage awareness and conservation on the back burner.
HWT has since undertaken tours outside the city as well to other places of historical and cultural importance including the historic British settlement of Anjengo and the rather arduous trek to see petroglyphs at Pandavanpaara. Ms. Tharakan says: “It’s a joy to learn about these places myself but more so to observe senior citizens who have lived in the city all their lives learn something they never knew before. There is an intense joy in such discoveries for them.” For some, it’s a humbling experience too.
Planning these walks are challenging. Most of them cover busy arterial roads packed with vehicles and people. Ms. Tharakan believes in keeping HWT truly open and never turning away an attendee. This means that at any given walk there are at least 40-50 enthusiasts. Further, many buildings on the walking routes are private residences or government buildings that require exclusive entry permits, not to mention, the need for highly knowledgeable group leaders to conduct the tours. For Ms. Tharakan these tasks are not the least bit daunting. Before every walk she goes through a detailed trial mentally noting possible detours or breaks as needed so as to not overwhelm participants.
Kalaimakal Kalyanamandapam (wedding hall), previously part of the Thevarathu Koikkal palace complex (Image Courtesy: Uma Maheshwari and Heritage Walk Trivandrum)
In the walk that I participated, we were led inside the Kalaimakal Kalyanamandapam, a modest venue for weddings that until early-20th century, was part of the queens’ palace complex. As we admired the Nayaka-style colonnaded hallway, Rajeev explained that the space that we were standing in was historically used for royal weddings. Some group members reminisced about other weddings they had attended there in recent years. Others familiar with the building pointed out alterations and renovations. A long-time resident remembered that right outside the building there was an Aanakotta, a tall, roofed structure that sheltered elephants, all its traces were long gone. The next day, as HWT’s lively Facebook page was updated with numerous photographs of the walk taken by participants, one historical photograph reappeared—it was the Aanakotta. Details of when it was taken down surfaced and an interesting conversation on preservation followed.
The destroyed elephant shelter on Mekketherivu (Image Courtesy: Elizabeth Thomas Tharakan and Heritage Walk Trivandrum)
There is something remarkably magical about HWT’s success in bringing together a community both online and on the road. Those that participate become avid enthusiasts and the discussions that were initiated on the roadsides of Thiruvananthapuram continue for weeks over Facebook. Any member can post on this page and the site therefore becomes at times a page for civic activism and social awareness. Ms. Tharakan is adamant however that HWT is not about outright activism on behalf of heritage or history. It was conceived as and remains a program for public history education. Indeed, Ms. Tharakan is particularly animated when describing their exclusive trips for school-aged children describing the joy of discovery that they enjoy on learning something new about their city. Nevertheless, one cannot deny that HWT has forcefully brought historicity to the fore. Recently, some participants from the walk have banded together to call for the conservation of one of the iconic buildings from the Moovar Madom complex in the Fort area.
Today, with 3000-plus members, HWT’s core group of scholars is preparing an edited volume of essays on topics covered in their walks. Ms. Tharakan hopes that the success of Heritage Walk Trivandrum will encourage organizations or history enthusiasts in other cities to initiate such programs using HWT as a template. (A Heritage Walk Kollam is being planned as of now.) Indeed, for a great many of the current generation of Malayalis, history stays within the four walls of a classroom. We need more walks to break history out of those walls and into the daily lives of Keralan people.
More information on Heritage Walk Trivandrum can be found at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/heritagewalktvm/
*All images in this post are credited to their respective owners and to the Heritage Walk Trivandrum Facebook page from where it has been sourced with requisite permissions.