KOCHI: here in India would you find man-made waterways that existed a century before the Suez Canal? Which cosmopolitan port town was built even before erstwhile Bombay and Calcutta? The answers to these riddles lie in Alleppey, now known as Alappuzha — a town that once powered the Travancore kingdom’s global trade, long before backwaters and houseboats became its postcard identity.
That hidden legacy now resurfaces in ‘The Alleppey Story: The Architectural and Cultural Heritage of the Travancore Port Town’ — a sumptuous coffee table book brought out by Kochi-based design consultancy Thought Factory Design in collaboration with the Preserve Alleppey Society (PAS), an all-women collective of homemakers turned heritage crusaders.
“The question that this book seeks to answer,” says the foreword, “is not what makes Alleppey’s backwaters so famous, but what makes the town itself so important.” Across its 250-odd pages, the book brings to life an Alleppey few know — a town with 19th-century canals, a cosmopolitan grid of godowns, bungalows, iron piers and lighthouses, all designed to serve a roaring maritime economy. As historian Pius Malekandathil notes in its pages, “In the design and plan of the town, Alleppey had no precedent.”
A legacy of homemakers
The story of the book is, in fact, the story of PAS — which began more than two decades ago as a Lions Ladies Club. “Every year, we used to do a project,” recalls Rani John, one of the founders. “Then one of us visited Singapore, and I went to Kolkata — not the colonial part, but the native one. It was fascinating. The people who showed us around had such passion for their city. We thought, why not do that for Alappuzha, too?”
From that spark was born the idea for ‘Alleppey on Foot’ — guided heritage walks through the town’s maze of canals, bridges, and old trading houses. What began as a civic initiative soon turned into an enduring project born of enthusiasm.
The women — most of them homemakers who had settled in Alappuzha after marriage — became the town’s unofficial archivists.“We started garbage-collection drives in 2001, long before anyone talked about waste segregation,” Rani smiles. “We studied the history of the place, building by building. We wanted people to see the town they were living in.”
Walking the talk
By the mid-2010s, PAS had amassed a treasure trove of old photographs and documents — but no one knew how to turn it into a book. Enter Theresa J George, founder and creative director of Thought Factory Design. “Some years ago, PAS members approached us with the idea for a coffee table book about their heritage walks,” Theresa recalls.
“But I told them that before we design a book, we need to understand the context of Alleppey — its relevance beyond the walk.”
After months of research, Theresa’s team — three researchers and designers — joined hands with PAS. “What we discovered was stunning,” she says. “These women had unearthed stories that weren’t recorded anywhere — how each building came up, who built it, how it’s used today. They had lived this history.” The search for photographs was equally fascinating — and inventive. “We even found images of old Alleppey from people’s wedding albums,” Theresa laughs. “In the backdrop of photographs, you could see how the town looked — its verandas, godowns, the waterfront streets. Those became priceless visual clues.”
A town reborn in pages
The Alleppey Story is the outcome of that collaboration — four years of work distilled into a rich visual narrative. With its archival photographs, hand-drawn illustrations, and essays tracing the evolution of the port town, the book restores Alleppey’s rightful place in India’s urban history. “This is not a nostalgic album of ghosts,” the book declares. “We are still here — two million of us in this town alone, armed with stories from our ancestors.”
PAS may have disbanded two years ago — its founding members now in their 70s and 80s — but the book stands as their lasting legacy. “We thought we should leave something behind,” says Rani softly. “The book is our legacy. Our walks may have stopped, but our stories will live on.” For Theresa and her team, the project was more than design; it was rediscovery. “Even I didn’t know how layered Alleppey was until we began this journey,” she says. “The town, its canals, its people — they built something extraordinary. Through this book, we just helped bring it back to light.”
