Kerala Children Smile at Satyan’s Camera

1980

T.S. Satyan, Indian, 1923-2009

Kerala Children

Why do I find it so hard to believe that these children are just walking around Calicut (as mentioned in the extended caption) dressed like this, with this umbrella, in 1980? Maybe these children were dressed for a play, or for a school ‘fancy dress’ competition. But why am I suspicious? Can there not have been a child actually owning and walking around with this umbrella in 1980? Well, no, I can’t prove that there weren’t any. But the photo doesn’t register itself as a normal moment in Kerala to me either. It’s too Kerala, if you know what I mean. Its too clearly a photograph that’s doing the thing where it shows you a ‘place’ and its ‘people’.

Let’s look at my theory of a school ‘fancy dress’/play more closely.

The child with the umbrella has her(?) head covered with a cotton wrap. Is that a little flower hanging from her ear?

The umbrella is of significance. Up until the early 20th century these umbrellas were actually ubiquitous in the Kerala landscape. This is true. However, even the anthropologist Edgar Thurston noted that they were being gradually replaced by cheaper European umbrellas in his infamous 1909 multivolume tome, The Castes and Tribes of Southern India. By 1980 these umbrellas were largely relegated to storerooms and were brought out only for special occasions, or - as a prop for theatre or fancy dress competitions. You see, the umbrella provides an easy metaphor, for an upper caste man or woman - particularly a Brahmin, or for someone of high status. A good costume.

T.S. Satyan took the picture from the inside of a car. Was he arriving, or leaving? So many children, could this have been a school? :) We know that he worked extensively as a photojournalist, travelling on assignment for prominent 20th-century publications and NGOs, we can perhaps assume that he went to a school as part of a story on Kerala.

So, I don’t trust this photo. I don’t believe it!

But, is that on the photo or the photographer? I can’t pin it on either fairly. The caption doesn’t say anything about what these children are wearing, or whether they are authentic in their appearance.

This photo doesn’t owe me the truth. And yet I feel cheated.

Here’s a brilliant essay on the umbrella, written by a Malayali man who lives in North Carolina.

The older boys all seem largely disinterested in the photographer. (of course).

The only adult in the frame looks at T.S. Satyan, and looks at us. We remotely acknowledge each other across the dense photograph. The man holds a modern umbrella.

The smiling little girl’s head is draped in a light veil, and her earrings remind me of a variety of traditional Malayali Muslim women’s jewellery, more apparent in the ears of the girls next to her. Three young Muslim girls, next to a young Hindu girl potentially? Or even four Muslim girls perhaps.