I’d been visiting Palakkad every year for close to 25 years. I knew my way around the main streets and knew all the major landmarks. At least, I thought I did. I shifted to the town about four years ago, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and the facility to work from home. My retirement was also just around the corner. Settling in Palakkad was a conscious choice to phase down from a chaotic city life and move to a quieter town that was greener, relatively pollution-free, and where things moved to a much slower rhythm.

The transition was necessarily marked by other changes, in my routine and in my outlook. I’d never been much of a walker before, although I’ve done more than my share of treks in the Western Ghats and the Himalaya. But the forced isolation, the doomsday zeitgeist prevailing then, and the fact that I didn’t have to commute gave my days much more breathing space and saw me going for long early-morning walks.

Moreover, I was a birder, and a butterfly and a dragonfly enthusiast, and it was a treat to immerse myself in the sights and sounds of a landscape that was relatively new to me. The camera was my constant companion on these jaunts (if it was not on social media, it didn’t happen).

One day, after walking some of the trails around Palakkad, I was exploring a new one. It went along the Malampuzha canal, through a long, extended thicket of trees that became the very definition of green during the monsoon. And as I suddenly came upon a clearing, there stretched out before me what I believed was an aqueduct and a bridge, running parallel to each other within the same structure. I had never seen an aqueduct before, at least not of this scale. It was a magnificent structure across the Bharathapuzha river, rising at least 50 feet above the bed.

After I came back and enquired about it, I learnt that Palakkadans called it the Kanal Palam (canal bridge), or, alternatively, the British Palam (British bridge). I was quite piqued as I was hearing about it for the first time. But practically no one knew any other details about the structure, including its history.

So I did some digging of my own on the Net. There were, of course, plenty of vlogs with selfies taken on the bridge and wildly varying accounts about when it was constructed. The District Tourism Promotion Councils’ brochure on Palakkad, while mentioning the bridge as an important landmark, didn’t give any information about its date or its architect. Some said it was constructed in 1852 during the time of A.B. Robinson, the then Collector of Malabar.

Palakkad's historical importance

It turned out that Robinson did indeed build a bridge in 1852, but it was across a tributary of the Bharathapuzha, at a place called Parali. Interestingly, that bridge is still in use, although not for vehicular traffic. Some said that the British Palam was constructed in 1941. I consulted a friend in the Palakkad chapter of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage, and he confirmed it was of pre-Independence vintage, built by the British. It certainly looked British, constructed as it was with heavy Victorian-style arches.

I did, of course, know that long before our airways opened up, Palakkad served as a commercial gateway between Kerala and Tamil Nadu (it still does), through what is called the Palakkad Gap, a low-lying mountain pass in the Western Ghats, with the Nilgiris in the north and the Anaimalai in the south. What I didn’t quite realise was the extent of the British connection to Palakkad. They were keen to acquire control of the Palakkad Gap, as it practically meant controlling the trade.

Of course, before the British there was Tipu Sultan. It was his father, Hyder Ali, who constructed the now-famous Palakkad Fort when he conquered the town in 1766. The British gained control of the Malabar region, including Palakkad, after Tipu Sultan surrendered in the Third Anglo-Mysore War (1790-92), resulting in the signing of the Treaty of Seringapatam (Srirangapatna).

To come back to our story, after the British acquired Palakkad, they proceeded to leave their stamp on the town. They extensively remodelled the Palakkad Fort, made the town a municipality (one of the earliest in Kerala), connected it to the railway network, constructed the Palakkad railway station, and established the Government Victoria College in 1866. And, most importantly for our story, constructed a Victorian-styled arched bridge across the Bharathapuzha in 1883. They named it the Victoria Jubilee Bridge (Queen Victoria celebrated her golden jubilee in 1887). I had a feeling that it was the same bridge over which I was taking my early morning walks more than 140 years later.

Of course, history helps to add context and gravitas to your everyday, maybe even insignificant, routine. But I wouldn’t be taking the walks if the experience itself was not rewarding. Believe me, the views from the bridge can take your breath away on some days. And that makes it all worthwhile.

Subash Jeyan, based in Palakkad, is a translator, birder, and biker.

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