Tranquebar: A Season in South India

Georgina Harding spent a single day in Tranquebar in 1980. The memory of it haunted her and ten years later she went to live there for a season, accompanied by her small son. The history of Tranquebar is a microcosm of that of south India. It was a fishing villiage on the Coromandel coast, a roadstead port for first Tamil and later Moslem traders. Around 1620 an envoy of the King of Denmark acquired it as one of a handful of Danish colonies on the spice route, and 200 years later the Danes abandoned it to Britain and to India. The Danish interlude left a couple of streets in colonial style, a baroque gate, a fort on the beach and a Protestant mission. For the rest, Tranquebar is just a coastal village. The locals call it by its Tamil name, Tarangambadi, meaning "song of the waves". The main business is fishing, the majority of the population Hindu, the Moslem men trading still, or working in Europe or the Gulf. It is a community where everyone knows everyone, where brothers feud and where families rise and decline. Or rather, since this is India, it is at least three interlocking communities: Hindu, Moslem and Christian. Living close beside families of all religions, Georgina Harding was able to observe the fine details of their existance, both mundane and spititual. The women's routine, the children's play and the gossip run alongside the business ventures, the funerals and the interventions of devils.