Monday, January 24, 2011

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 resolves  and produced photographic evidences of the same  , I lazed around and sulked 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 was always an enriching experience – the bountiful beauty of the Western Ghats, its landscapes and waterscapes, its calmer lifestyles and cleaner surroundings can  be a  soul-soothing balm to any weary soul.

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



On the first day a trek was organized to  the ill-explored regions of a  dam nearby . It was infested with snakes -- we were warned -- but we had dealt with  creepier versions and s
o we went, my cousins and I …..!

The next day , a day trip  resulted in an  unusual tryst with an assembly of ' pious ' pachyderms--in an enclosure adjacent to a renowned temple.

In the afternoon, the sea faring and the sturdier amongst us set out on a  cruise   and soon we found ourselves drifting amidst mangroves towards the sea,  in an old fashioned boat called 'Thangamani' . It was then that catharsis set in  and I realized that breath- taking beauty could sting…! Shades of blue and green carpeted the horizon  while  we stood out in our reds and blacks. I began to  wonder if we really should be there..!

I was traversing a land where socialism 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’ll take to walking, and that too in right earnest!


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  of my ancestors – and I always watched the place  through an alien’s eye. 
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 detachment  or is the COSMOS trying to tell me something…??

I’m yet to find out……