Calicut is ancient — an entrepôt for as long as there have been maps. The Malabar Manual (a colonial administrator’s guide to the region) says that we have a certain mercantile hardiness; we were shipbuilders and traders; stubborn realists. On Beach Road, you can still trace where the Portuguese and the French trading posts used to be. Calicut makes practically nothing of value today, but it has transitioned into being a sleepy city of world literature and literary criticism. Every year, you can come here to see Pamuk and Chomsky and Duflo and Guha and Mukundan and Claudel and everyone else you can think of. You can be poor here without being impoverished.
It is a tiny city; on a good day, it is only a fifteen-minute drive from the beach to the last bit of built-up area. It has some of the best food in the world, by any measure. There’s barely any traffic, most of the time, and the roads are wonderful if you like driving fast. There are beautiful beaches, and rivers and marshes you can boat through.
Today, there are barely any jobs, so the city is full of the young and the old, students and retirees. As a result, there is a strangely wholesome nightlife, because the days are hot and humid. At 3AM, families are talking on the beach, the Latin American cafés that serve steak and salads are still open, and anyone can walk through any part of the city. There are two or three small, nice bars where the doorman will make sure to remember your name. You can go running at 2:30am and not have a care in the world. I loved being young here, despite all the other neuroses of being in a small town, because you could smoke a cigarette and drink a beer on the beach where the trees and the sand dune grass met the rocks and the sea.