Kannur :

Policing the tourist spots, that too with some historic significance, is not a small deal, because there you have to be a historian, a tourist guide, and a scholar apart from being a tough but amiable policeman.

It is the merger of all these qualities that makes C Sathyan, the ASI with the Tourism police in Kannur, a different personality, which has also won him the best tourism police award instituted by the Department of Tourism in the state for the fifth time this year.

“Of course, it is a recognition for the police department as a whole, because I got the chance to study the history of the places around after I was posted as the tourism police at Fort St Angelo here in 2002, as a civil police officer,” says Sathyan who is the author of two books and also a communicative English instructor.

It was in the early years at the Fort, where he often doubled himself as a tourist guide, that Sathyan, who writes in the pen name Sathyan Edakkad, started studying deeply about Fort St Angelo’s history, and also wrote the book, ‘Vasco Da Gamayum Charithrathile Kanappurangalum’. It was later translated into English in the title, ‘Vasco Da Gama and the Unknown Facts of History’. Also he penned another book, ‘Kannur: Kaanaan Ariyaan’, which is probably the only book on important destinations in the district.

“When I started studying history, I realized what we have been taught is incomplete, and this prompted me to collect whatever documents were available,” says Sathyan. “Interestingly the facts I learned were totally different from what we heard till a few years back, thus making me think of writing this book,” he said.

As the name suggests, ‘Vasco Da Gama and the Unknown Facts of History’ is about the unseen facts of history. Though the popular belief is that Gama set his foot in Kappad in 1498, it is wrong, says the researcher in khakhi.

“Vasco Da Gama’s ship was merely anchored in the sea near Kappad and a slave and a messenger were sent to visit Zamorin. As guided by the messenger of Zamorin, Gama and his men landed at Panthalayani, but still we teach wrong history to our children,” says Sathyan.

Similarly, the real story behind a stone slab with a Dutch inscription at the fort was also cracked by Sathyan only. Till a few years back it was believed that the stone with a strange script was an indicator of some hidden treasure. But with the help of some Dutch travellers he read the inscription in Old Dutch language and it was found that the slab was actually the tombstone of Susanna Godefridus, the wife of Godefridus Weverman, the commandant who was in charge of the fort from 1745 to 1755. She died on March 28, 1745, at the time of delivery and she was hardly 17 years old at that time, says Sathyan, again pointing towards the child marriage prevalent among the Europeans too.

After studying a lot on the fort, and the spice trade that India had with the foreign countries, Sathyan pampers a dream that is yet to come true – a voyage through the routes that Vasco Da Gama visited India. But without any sponsorship it is difficult to realize it, he knows.

“I don’t have any racket to operate. Still I am hopeful, one day the sea routes will open for me,” he says

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Thiruvananthapuram / by P. Sudhakaran, TNN / June 22nd, 2014