India 6: Calicut-up, or, What kind of pun can you make out of Kozhikode?

My final stop on my pleasure cruise through southern India was Calicut (or Kozhikode) in Kerala, on India's southeastern Malabar coast. Kozhikode is the city's name in Malayalam, the main language in Kerala (and which one Keralan informed me is the language spoken in heaven, so we'd better get a head start on it now); "Calicut" comes from an Anglicization of the Arabic name for the city. 

Calicut has been a center of trade, especially in spices, since the 7th century AD when Arab traders first interacted with it. Also, Vasco da Gama landed just north of the city in 1498, integrating Calicut into an inter-oceanic economy which by the early 1500s would ring the globe. The excellent Indian cloth traded through Calicut came to be known as "calico."

For my purposes, though, Calicut's interest lies in one of its later famous sons: the subject of my research in India, VK Krishna Menon. Although he spent little time in Kerala after leaving it for college in Madras in the 1910s, a small museum commemorates him in his hometown. As does an indoor stadium, which I think he would have found bemusing. Youngsters were playing volleyball in there the day I went by, as I recall.

But in any case, the museum was atop a hill in the lovely, amazingly green forest, in a compound with an art gallery and a planetarium. I focused on the Krishna Menon museum, which gathered many of his effects, and which I found revealing:

A model of Sputnik, gift of the Soviets

Gift from the UAR (Nasser's Egypt, known as the "United Arab Republic" after 1958)

Krishna Menon's desk, complete with bust of Lenin and framed photo of his friend and colleague, Jawaharlal Nehru

Krishna Menon in profile, complete with cane. (He always used one after being hit by a car in London once!)

Myself with Mr. Menon...

...and with the museum's curator, who kindly allowed me to take photographs.

Not all of Krishna Menon's effects were Soviet- or Third World-themed, but enough were to help me understand him better than I did before visiting the museum! Which helps me justify this as a research trip.

There is a strong Communist tradition in Kerala; in fact, Kerala was briefly home of the first democratically elected Communist government from 1957, but Nehru, while on the left, would not tolerate a Communist government in India, and had the government disbanded in 1959. (Communists would be elected and form the government of West Bengal in 1977, which they held until 2011.) The Communist Party retains a presence in Kerala, as evidenced by this poster I saw while walking through town:

The Four Amigos; or, the decreasing efficacy of facial hair over time

I didn't tarry long by the dictators of the proletariat, though, since I was on my way to the beach. Having put my feet in the Bay of Bengal back in Chennai, I was determined to put my feet in the Arabian Sea, thereby claiming the entire Indian Ocean for the Reeves family henceforth and forevermore. For reasons I cannot explain, while the Bay of Bengal was warm, the Arabian Sea was cold.

On the way back through town, I went through SM (Sweetmeat) Street, a thriving market which has reportedly been in operation since the 7th century.

Then, just to give you a taste of the contrasts contained within the continent that is India, later that night I ate the best beef of my life: cooked in banana leaf, it was so beautifully tender and seasoned; ah...bliss.

Along with Enugu in eastern Nigeria, Calicut is one of the greenest, most lush places I've ever been. Kerala is a popular holiday destination for Indians and foreigners alike, and I look forward to getting back. And this time, not for "work."

***
The video today offers the way I think many Western (and some Soviet) policymakers viewed Krishna Menon, who constantly frustrated them at the UN and on the sidelines of major diplomatic gatherings, such as the 1954 Geneva Conference on Korea and Indochina, and the conferences seeking a solution to 1956's Suez Crisis. The view was misguided based on the evidence I've seen, but I do sometimes like to think of him as a Bond villain.

Krishna Menon, making his case for Bond villain in 1955:

Compare, Time's super-villain of 1962:

The other super-villain of 1962: