The Non-Resident Cartoonist Draws a Blank

E.P.Unny at Ente Naadu. – A Kerala Tourism Initiative.
December 23, 2008, Kochi.

The welcome couldn’t have been better. After the mandatory mess at the registration desk when I step in, the first sight at the opening session is a neat spread of mineral water bottles. Everybody is grabbing a 200ml safe drink or two. Who wouldn’t, given the visible waste that litters the populous state?

I take one too and I get a bonus. My first barb for the day. For a professional faultfinder, the unintended message is loud and clear: ‘In a coastal, rain soaked landmass that floats in backwaters and lagoons, not a drop of risk-free potable water. You are promoting tourism here! And where on earth will you dump those plastic bottles?’ A pretty obvious one but then the day has only begun.

The next couple of hours however have me worried. Am I losing my touch? Can’t find many more faults. Except that there are 32 speeches through a mere forenoon. Ironically this problem of plenty makes the average speech length rather bearable. Even so, speaker after speaker is dutifully voicing known tourism concerns, hopes, goals, objectives and the road map… ‘Some road map when you can’t get a city map in this super-branded tourist destination!’ My second barb for the day doesn’t get as much as a telepathic nod. No, nobody’s nodding off. When I look around, I can’t see a single encouraging yawn. No fretting either. You can’t get much sarcastic in such splendid isolation.

People are actually sitting through. Even listening! The speakers on their part aren’t scoring points against one another. In fact the Opposition Leader and the Tourism Minister sound like developmental cousins. No hope left in the first session. The next one is post-prandial. The sumptuous buffet should work one way or the other. Nourishment could either pep up Malayali’s famously cynical cyber cell or induce soporific disinterest.

The post-lunch interactive session turns out to be actually participative. Led by tourism veteran Amitabh Kant, the panel seems to have not only the answers; it provokes more questions from a band of evidently keen participants. This lot looks even more cohesive than the forenoon audience. ‘No wonder. Some smart cookie has brought a huge curtain down and cut the venue by half.’ I have barely twisted this into my next meager barb for the day, when I am stunned by the look on the face of a policeman standing next to me.

The young man in uniform who has come to guard the VIPs is staring in awe at a London-based NRK holding forth in clipped English. If you know your Kerala you’ll realize how extraordinary this is. The customary police sneer in this part of the country turns into outright scorn if you utter a word in any lingo other than Malayalam. Even the neighbouring Tamil invites little empathy. And here’s a cop hanging from a Londoner’s lips. He surely has sensed how English English sounds, thanks perhaps to a child back home who surfs TV channels. The kid could well be going to an English medium school as well. With all its regression, Kerala’s parental aspiration has come out of the closet and seems ready to do a flag march out here.

By now I have almost given up. Almost, because there is still an evening session left where some 60 business proposals are to be presented. Surely the businessman would be less gung-ho about the future than the policeman, with a global downturn kicking in. All I see around are threesomes and foursomes sitting across little tables and looking very businesslike. Purse strings may not loosen in a hurry but resistance has.

The strangest of it all is the deafening silence of the ubiquitous mobile phone through an entire day. In these parts this should be a record-setting maun vrat. Along with its much touted quality of life indices, Kerala can pride in a high per capita talk time. Yet more are sneaking out of the sessions to pull out their cigarette packs than cell phones. Even these new social outcastes are talking shop while puffing away. One is waxing eloquent on how cost-effectively he can filter out a room-full of smoke. Nanotech, he says, is the answer and he wants it as badly as his nicotine.

There is nothing much one can do. By sundown comes the last nail. Like the auditorium being halved by the midway curtain, the two day sessions have been shrunk into one. There isn’t a tomorrow for nitpicking. The organizers aren’t pushing their luck. They don’t want to oblige you with half empty halls and fidgety dispirited audiences on Christmas Eve.

At the end of the day, clearly not the cartoonist’s, one thought stays. Having caught the traveler’s eye, is Kerala Tourism beginning to get the investor’s ears? If so, it’s quite something for a place where gatherings have for long seen a rising attention deficit. Predictable stuff is routinely mouthed and equally predictably applauded or attacked, almost in anticipation. This tourism event didn’t showcase this very ethnic Malayali ritual.