Wild Quilon: How animals put the southern Kerala town on the world map

Kollam is one of the most ancient settlements in the Indian subcontinent. In its glory days as a trading hub, the city played host to Phoenicians, Africans, Arabs, Chinese, and various other groups of travellers and traders. By the early 20th century, however, its best days as an international port were long gone, and it was nothing more than an important administrative centre of the princely state of Travancore, officially called Quilon.

In the 1930s, it was home to international missionaries, some of whom ran schools for the underprivileged. These people, who were mainly from Western Europe, lived rather normal and uneventful lives, albeit under challenging circumstances. The missionary press wrote about their successes, but mainstream newspapers deemed them newsworthy only under extraordinary circumstances.

Swiss nuns from the Sisters of the Holy Cross in Menzingen, who ran a boys' orphanage and a small school in Kottiyam (just outside Kollam city), made international headlines in 1932.

"Experiencing difficulty in making the organ produce its usual sweet tones, a missionary sister in the Diocese of Quilon, India, discovered a snake when she investigated the cause of the trouble," a wired article by the NCWC news service said.

It added, "One of the sisters had started playing the harmonium for the Sunday Benediction when she noticed that something was wrong. She lifted the cover, and to her horror, she saw a big cobra crawling about inside."

When she raised an alarm, some of the boys ran and got sticks and hit the serpent. "A blow on its back made it harmless as the spine was broken," the article said.

It also mentioned another incident involving a church worker and a cobra. "A young missionary, retiring for the night, found a cobra curled up under his nightclothes," the article said. "Ordinarily, a cobra strikes first and investigates later, but on this occasion the snake sought first its own safety, and the missionary was unharmed."

The anonymous writer said that such incidents happened every day in that part of India, claiming that "no missionary is ever bitten by snakes or wild animals." While there's no doubt that the two particular people mentioned in the wire report may have had good fortune on their side, snakes and other wild animals do not particularly care about their victims' religion.

Nonetheless, one has to appreciate the dedication of those who worked for the underprivileged in Kerala. The dangers to life and limb did not just come from venomous serpents and beasts.

The missionary press of the time reported that nuns were suffering from mosquito-borne illnesses. In 1930, 84-year-old Sister Mary Gertude died after working for 54 years in Kollam. She had suffered for a few years from elephantiasis, a disfiguring disease caused by parasitic worms transmitted through mosquito bites. The disease causes the enlargement and hardening of limbs or other body parts due to tissue swelling. Malaria was also a major health crisis in this period.

The same year the cobra in the church organ made headlines, another animal from Kollam became a household name. "Daisy," a large temple elephant, apparently killed her 21st mahout! "It appears that the elephant, upon disobeying her mahout, was struck by the latter with a stone," the Associated Press (AP) said. "The incensed 'Daisy' picked the man up, and throwing him in a short distance, trampled upon his head."

It's hard to believe that what was presumably a temple elephant in Kollam was named Daisy out of all things! The AP reporter may have heard another name that sounded similar, or the name may have been used just for the sake of sensationalism.

"A particular feature in the life of the mahout is that, just as soon as one is killed, there are scores of applicants for his post, fear being almost unknown among these sturdy elephant attendants," the report added. Given how the Western press of the time wasted no opportunity to make Indians look as bad as possible, these tiny words of admiration for the mahouts really stand out.

With its natural beauty and multiple layers of hidden history (including of later periods), many of Kollam's stories are still waiting to be told.