For the love of history
Going back in time to the start of the last decade, when I was a scrawny school-kid and (as is fitting) member of the ‘first choice’ quiz-team that was fielded by Varuna Vidyalaya in competitions around the city. The next cross on our calendar was the MKK Nair Memorial Quiz, conducted by the Kochi Kendra of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, an annual affair that had attained notoriety for having outlandish themes such as that year’s — “History of Kerala in the 18th century [1700–1799]” when interesting mash-ups such as SpEnt (Sports & Entertainment) and MELA (Music, Entertainment, Literature, Arts) were becoming popular.
This drew immediate yawns from our lot, but the idea of bunking a day’s class and earning some extra pocket money had us sold, not that we had an option of turning it down. It was a matter of honor for the school as the opponents were majorly sister schools under the same management and therefore we were playing to win. Departing from custom and not relying on broadband internet that all of us had access to by then, I was armed by the librarian with a book that covered what was needed and more. I don’t think I finished reading that book but some parts of it caught my fancy such as the ‘Battle of Colachel’ which put forth a macho image of an Indian king holding his own against a European aggressor and was absent from any of the history lessons we had at school.
We came out as runners-up for the quiz and on our victorious return to school, I was asked by my 4th standard Social Sciences teacher how I knew anything about the topic — to which I honestly replied that I had mugged up a part of a book the previous day, to which she chided that it’ll all evaporate the next. This was not to be, as can be vetted by the solo-traveling Noida girl whom I met at Vattakottai earlier this year, who was the (un?)fortunate audience of a crasher on the Battle, Marthanda Varma and Eustachius De Lannoy while loitering around on the granite blocks, but by then, a whole decade had passed and I had metamorphosed into a history buff.
The signs were always there, although I wouldn’t admit it to anyone, I enjoyed reading the history textbook, especially the parts that weren’t included in the syllabus for it read like a story with interesting characters. It would’ve dented whatever high-school popularity I had if I did and I convinced myself that it wasn’t that interesting as a whole for my apparent lethargy in tackling the parts that were going to be in the exams.
Books have been the major culprits behind this transformation. After having spent the 4 years of engineering reading a measly ~3 books/year, I found myself in a lull after it ended with 3 months to kill before starting work. Deciding that I was going to rejuvenate my reading habit, I went back to familiar territory, picking up Arundhati Roy’s much anticipated second novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, which although enjoyable didn’t satiate me or my giant bubble of available time. This was when I picked the fat Last Mughal which was surely going to take some time to finish, truth be told, I wasn’t expecting myself to finish and took it as more of a challenge than anything else. I hadn’t anticipated how captivating the events surrounding the Revolt of 1857 would be and not only did I carry it around everywhere and finish it, I became an instant fan of William Dalrymple. Although the amount of out of syllabus history reading was nil between this and the old paperback on Kerala’s history, I was quickly drawn to other works after, some of my favorites being Dalrymple’s City of Djinns, Manu Pillai’s Ivory Throne and the last book I read — Kannur : Inside India’s Bloodiest Revenge Politics by Ullekh NP.
The first accomplice to books is my go-to answer for when the corporate interviewers have asked me for something outside my CV — Heritage Walks. My best-friend had mentioned to me that there was a Sunday Heritage Walk Group in Trivandrum which met around the old Fort area and spent an hour or two around a predetermined place of interest. This information was relegated to some corner of my brain until I was about to bid farewell to Trivandrum and in a rush of doing things that I wouldn’t be able to later, I woke up early on a Sunday and did this too. I think I was more happy about making myself show up than the event itself as the group had progressed to minutiae about the buildings and legends and I had only the prism of a couple of hour’s worth of reading of Travancore history from years ago to view it through. It was a good day however, having met interesting people and stopping by at Rajila’s Mutton for a hearty breakfast after it. This positive memory is what must have pushed me to forego sleep and attend one on another Sunday at Calicut, where I was living then to an even more engrossing walk. I then kept at it wherever I could while charting ones for my own when they weren’t readily available (or were too expensive) like through Al-Fahidi Street and the Souks at Dubai. My favorite from all I’ve attended has to be the one at Ho Chi Minh city by Adam, a British expat who currently lives there with his Vietnamese wife and their young son.
Rounding up the accomplice list is Social Media. The multitude of groups (mostly on Facebook), at least one in each city that I’ve lived in (Trivandrum, Bangalore) that feed you stories about the place and book suggestions. This congregation of curious kids coupled with the presence of historians on Twitter and their anonymous counterparts on subs such as r/AskHistorians is what keeps the ember burning and helps us escape even if only momentarily to the life and times of who we can’t meet in the present.
