The arrival of a long-term foreign influence on the shores of a country is often defined as invasion. History is replete with chronologies of battles lost and won, as it ought to. But the complexities of everyday interaction between the foreigners and locals are more layered and less black-and-white than what documentation accounts for, which also runs the risk of systemic cleansing from time to time.

An example of one such layered exchange between the Portuguese missionaries and the fisherfolk of Kerala in the 16th century manifests to this date in Chavittunatakam, said to be the only existing maritime theatre tradition in the world.