My Life in God's Own Country

by Joerg Drechsel

It all started in black and white. As a kid - I must have been 12 or 13 years old - I watched a program on television: I remember pictures of coconut palms, beaches, rivers and elephants coupled with a story on the first democratically elected communist government on earth somewhere in the south of India, in a state called Kerala. I knew then that is where I wanted to go, but the images sunk in my memory like many others of our childhood, vague and dream-like. More than a decade later, as a young man testing his limits, I hitchhiked on one of those painted pop-art trucks from Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu to Cochin.

It was my first journey to South India and my first entry into Kerala. We stopped at a roadside food stall. While I was having dinner with my driver, a thali on a banana leaf, a man passed by with his elephant and, right there, the black & white pictures of my childhood popped back: I had reached!
 
Later in the night the driver dropped me at Cochin port on Willington Island. Carrying my suitcase on the shoulder I crossed the old iron bridge towards Mattancherry, walked all the way to Fort Cochin and checked into a small lodge in Rose Street. Next morning on my first walk I was overwhelmed by the laid back beauty and multi-layered tactility of the old Indo-European town. I returned to the lodge and rented the room for a month. It is a 3 minute walk from where I live today.
 
I met people and made friends. I still remember my first invitation to one of those white washed Dutch homes with a wide teakwood staircase leading to the first floor. Entering the hall I saw my friend, a Roman catholic by faith, sitting with two other men drinking their afternoon tea. He introduced me to his two best friends, one a Hindu Brahmin and the second a Muslim.
 
It was my initiation into a society where Hindu, Christian and Muslim share a common world, into a culture that absorbed over centuries concepts and beliefs from East and West to create a composite, yet shared identity. Today Kerala is branded as 'God's own country', a country where everybody is free to worship his God.
Yes, places like this still exist.

Time passed: a family, two wonderful daughters, and a career in the fast lane, the years zoomed by. I stayed in touch with the people I knew in Cochin and went occasionally for a visit, to prove that the dream still existed.
 
Back in the 70's I had driven by road to India, passing the Balkans to Istanbul, then Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan. The Khyber Pass opened to the plains of the subcontinent and once you passed the border near Amritsar, it was just a few hours to Delhi. It was an open world with fairly open borders, with a trail of people travelling overland from East to West and West to East.

By the mid 70's the revolution in Iran started, then the war in Afghanistan, ethnic conflicts in eastern Turkey and finally in the late 80's this wave of ethnic and religious turmoil reached the Balkans, the backyard of Europe. A drive for the summer vacations to Greece ended at the outer border of Austria. All along the trail of my wandering years people got killed for having the wrong faith or belonging to the wrong ethnic community.
Saddened and angry, this brought me back to Kerala, the place I knew where everybody is free to worship his God.
 
In 1994 the children had grown up and moved gradually into their own lives. My wife and I thought it time to move on for a new challenge. We returned to Fort Cochin; it looked unchanged and frozen in time. Walking through Fort Cochin, our friend showed us 'Malabar House', one of the largest Indo-European bungalows. The magnificent building was in a terrible state; deserted, boarded up and overgrown - a lone watchman camping on one of the terraces. "It is up for sale", our friend commented. We looked at the building, looked at each other - it was love at first sight.
 
The bungalow was too big for a home, and starting a boutique heritage hotel seemed the logical conclusion. But from this simple conclusion it was still a long way to go. We had to negotiate with the bank which owned the building, clear a lot of legal hurdles, get various permits, licenses and sanctions. Finally, by the end of 1995 we took possession of the 'Malabar House'.
 
We planned a rehabilitation and adaptation that would innovate without forgetting the traditional inheritance to create a tropical, authentic and ecologically correct experience.

Even emotional baggage had to be converted into architectural drawings. We had to define form and materials. We worked on the use of vernacular forms and local materials, fused them with contemporary design and plotted the creation of crafted spaces. For us, it seemed the way to achieve what we wanted: creating a pleasure for the  senses, an emotional context for self- discovery.

The rehabilitation of the existing block took us 22 months and at times we had more than a hundred people working on the site. It was time consuming. Including the utility block and all the landscaping work we took almost four years to complete this labor of love. In the entire work process we used only regional man-power, we had no power tools on the site and all building solutions were "hand crafted".
 
All these four years I spent most of my time on the actual construction site. It was a period of learning and understanding. Working with crafts persons opened up a new dialogue between tradition and innovation, between vision, consummate craftsmanship and material.
 
I learned every day from their inherent knowledge of climate, flora, light, space, and material. It made me understand that the struggle of crafting a space creates a richer texture. In this context minimalism is more than an aesthetic tool - it becomes a selection process of what is meaningful to you.
 
This learning and understanding has been a revelation. It has shaped my work on the 'Malabar escapes' and it is the strongest source of inspiration for all our projects.

Living and working in a new environment, culture and country is certainly different from visiting it. You enter into a new society, develop relationships and friendships. You start to know your ways, you network, adopt values and re-work your opinions.
Ten years have passed and a lot of things once important in Europe have faded away. In many things I feel a distinct European identity, while in others I am the "new Indian" as my friend call me. Depending on the topic "I" can be Indian or European. To many this might be confusing, for me it is enriching and challenging.
 
India in general and Kerala with its broad educational base in particular are developing at an amazing speed. There is joy, growth and optimism. Learning gets rewarded by better opportunities and the opportunities grow day by day. It reminds me at times of the period when my Keralan odyssey started in front of the black & white TV, the German "Wirtschaftswunder" of my childhood.
 
Since then a bit more than half a lifetime has passed - often restless, always full of questions. I am not a young man anymore, but I keep my curiosity and I still like to test my limits, not so much of endurance, but of understanding.
 
"The core issue of mutual respect", says Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel prize in economics, "is what ability and opportunity the members of one society can develop to appreciate and understand how others function".

Kerala has this ability to give space to its different religions, ethnic identities and political ideologies; they all merge to become part of a common identity. It gives space to us, the "immigrants" from Europe and we take pride to be part of its achievements; it also creates a unique opportunity for the visitor to see more than the exotic and charming.