I have been to Trivandrum several times years ago, but I never went beyond the station, which is situated in possibly the ugliest part of town. So I had a pretty poor impression of the place. In fact much of the city has traditional Keralan houses with pointed tiled roofs, surrounded by large, leafy trees.
My friend's enthusiasm for Kerala is boundless, but then he is Keralan. "The Communist state of Kerala is the most equal state in India. There is very little poverty. The roads are clean, public buildings are clean, hotels are clean and the food is cheap. There are fourteen cinemas in Trivandrum and the five biggest ones were all built by the communist party. They run this film festival and they make sure that it is big."
I have to agree with him about the cleanliness of the place, the cheapness of the food and wonder of wonders, the rikshaws all use metres. There's no arguing over the price of a ride. Just jump in and tell them to switch on the metre, if they haven't already. And if you want to walk they don't hassle you.
We started early at nine o'clock in the morning with "A Season in France" by Chad director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun about African refugees seeking asylum in France, unsuccessfully, a very emotional film, moving but understated. Then we hopped in a rikshaw to go to a different cinema to see Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark, a tour de force all shot in one take in the Hermitage in St Petersburg. I'm left wanting to visit the Hermitage, just the Hermitage, nothing else in Russia.
We rushed back to the club for a nice lunch, then to a very old Iranian film directed by Bahram Beyzal, after which we both needed a rest so we went to the India Coffee House, a wonderful spiral building designed by a British architect called Laurie Baker in the 1950s. Laurie Baker met Ghandi, who told him to help the poor so he devoted the rest of his life to designing buildings in Trivandrum that were cheap to build, functional and pleasing to the eye. He used brick or stone, depending on what was available locally, but no concrete. The seating in the coffee house is stepped all the way up the outer side of the spiral, so that each little table overlooks the one below it. The coffee and food are cheap, as they are in all the Indian Coffee Houses. Every city in India has Indian coffee houses and together they form the largest cooperative workers union in the world.
Prime Minister Modi has decreed that everyone must stand for the Indian National Anthem at the start of every film. Last year some people were arrested for refusing to stand. The festival organisers managed to release them. This year there are several refuseniks at the start of each film. So far none of them have been arrested, well not as far as I know. You never know whether there might be some of Modi's spies in the audience taking sneaky photos of the refuseniks. I hope not. Keralans are fiercely independent of the Indian government.
The crowds are predominantly young men, a few young women and very few older people. So few in fact that over sixty fives are exempt from queuing. But I queue because I'm with a friend. No one takes any notice of me except the press, who keep trying to photograph me without asking my permission, which I consider to be rude, so I cover my face.
My friend is threatening to abandon me and return to his vow of silence. He hasn't actually taken a vow of silence; in fact he's the chattiest person I know, a fund of information on literature, film, music, art, Indian history, but he says that he spends more and more time alone, meditating and that after he's been with a person for a day he wants to be on his own. I rather like having a companion in this sea of Indian people. It makes me feel less conspicuous, but I know people will be nice to me, maybe even chat with me.
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