A Belated Travelogue

I have never been very good at chronicling my life, despite being the proud owner of a diary!

Even as everyone I knew wrote about their new year revelries and produced photographic evidences of the same a fortnight ago , I lazed and sulked around in a mental mire.

The need to describe my year- end journey sprouted lately and I decided to lend life to it !

Travelling to Kerala is always an enriching experience – the bountiful beauty of the Western Ghats, its landscapes and waterscapes, its calmer lifestyles and cleaner surroundings can indeed be a balm to any wearied soul.

Outings were fun!

A trek was organized to explore the ill-explored regions of a near-by dam. It was infested with snakes -- we were warned-- but I had dealt with the deadlier, two-legged species earlier and on a comparative note these slithering creatures were slime-free. So we went, my cousins and I …..!

Then there was this unusual tryst with an assembly of pious and not-so-pious pachyderms-- a hair-raising experience, if any! It was both overwhelming and humbling at the same time!

Also went cruising on a lake up until a point where it met the sea. It was then that I felt that breath- taking beauty could sting…! There were shades of blue and velvety green all around . We stood out in our reds and blacks--- even wondered if we should be there..!

I was traversing a land where communism shakes hand with commercialism. There were ayurvedic resorts on small islands, where the rich and the famous could ease their worries and trim their waists by undergoing the pleasurable rigors of ayurveda.I was told it cost 17,000 rupees for a single day. …I swore I’l take to walking, and that too in right earnest!

Meeting relatives has always been a down- to- earth experience and I wished I could do it more often.

Good things come with a dead line and so it was with my vacation. I had to get back home- to Chennai.

Kerala was to me the land where my parents came from-- the land of my ancestors – and I always observed it through an alien’s eye. It was no different this time too.

I can, with ease, comprehend the angst of an ABCD, just that the latter’s confusion is compounded by geographical distance and cultural disconnect.

Strangely, this time, when I came back home , the sense of belonging was not palpable, although I wouldn’t say it was altogether missing.

Was it a kind of mental regression or is the COSMOS trying to tell me something…??

I’m yet to find out……