The history house is a place that is supposed to be representative of Kerala in order to inform tourists and natives alike about the history and culture of the Indian state. However, the allusion to Joseph Conrad's novel, Heart of Darkness, shows that the history house truly functions in order to please the tourists. The natives of Kerala do not think very highly of these tourists as they often assume that they are unintelligent. The narrator even goes as far as to compare them to rats, "The rats racing across the ruined landscape with dollar signs in their eyes. The world crashing around them" (223). When the tourists visit the history house they learn about the best parts of the state. They neglect to see the problems in the country and by doing this they make it so that the natives cannot enjoy the best parts of their own country. When telling historical stories it was mentioned that the natives felt, "trapped in the bog of a story that was and wasn't theirs" (224). Not only does the history house give out a false sense of culture in Kerala to the tourists, but it also impacts the natives, because after telling a watered down version of a historical story for so long, the meaning of the story begins to change. The historical stories became partially owned by the tourists since details were changed to make it seem less foreign, and these changes left the natives dissatisfied. Despite the name, the history house seems to be not where Indian history is embraced, but rather where Indian history goes to die.
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