Houseboat in Kumarakom, Kerala
A View from the Bridge
Early morning on the lagoon
Water lilies
Scarlet Ixora (Thetti) in the wild
Fields ready for planting paddy (rice)
Morning chores
Boatman on his rounds
Kerala is not only the most beautiful and peaceful place on earth, it is also the friendliest. We had come up to the village of Cheeppunkal, and there in the early morning light, against a backdrop of emerald green, was this splash of colorfully attired women weaving rope. We stopped. They welcomed us, not as tourists or intruders; tried to teach us how to make rope; gave us the baby to hold. A man shinnied up a coconut tree, tapped a palm and we drank fresh palm juice. (The same juice, fermented during the day, makes rather potent toddy by the evening.) They wouldn't take any money, just asked us to send them the pictures when we got back to America.
Cheeppunkal village, Kerala
Coir Rope Weavers' Cooperative, Cheepunkal, Kerala
Kerala is a strangely and wonderfully anomalous place even by the exotic standards of India. It has the highest literacy rate (91%) in the country; the most balanced religious demographics (60% Hindu; 20% Muslim; 20% Christian); has been governed by freely elected, horrors, Communists for most of the last fifty years.
The best introduction to Kerala may not be through guidebooks but the imaginations of the great writers who have written about it: Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things (Roy grew up in Kottayam, very close to Kumarakom); Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh; Amitav Ghosh's In an Antique Land. Kerala clearly captured their hearts, as it did ours.
Fishing nets in the Arabian Sea, Kochi (Cochin), Kerala
Om Shanti. Shanti. Shanti.
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Mary Smith
Dhee Katt
Kalpana Mohan
Traveller1
Rolling
denese
Salon.com
Comments
JRDOG: Great you made the connection to ecumenism. It is one of the things that so struck me about Kerala. It was one of the calmest places in India during the riots following the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992/1993, which I wrote about. The greatest thing is that the religious practices appear to be very syncretic -- one has to take one's shoes off to enter the synagogue Kalpana mentions as well as to go beyond the nave onto the chancel in the churches (which I'd seen practiced only in Indian temples and mosques before.) Have you kept in touch with Fr. Matthew?
Kalpana: Yes, we had a wonderful time exploring the old city. In fact, along the lines of the syncretism I mentioned above, I have some very nice (if I say so myself) pictures of churches, mosques and temples in Kerala (and the synagogue, of course) and how the statuary and religious iconography all seem to meld into one another.
a blonde: Lots of birds (added 31 to life list), otters, geckos. And yes, mosquitos. But no tigers, I'm sorry to say (they say there are some on a reservation in Thekkady nearby; we went, but didn't see or hear any). The uplands of Kerala, which were heavily forested, have been increasingly taken over by plantations (rubber, tea, coffee) from the days of the Raj, decimating the wildlife population.
Midwest: Glad you enjoyed the pictures. I have been a devoted follower of your photo essays from the beginning.
Altho, the flaw in this particular paradize is the indigenous hill people who harvest the tea who do not share in the benefits of the society and whose bodies contain 100 times the limit of pesticides (used a lot with tea) in their bodies.
Still, ah, to walk the beaches and paddle the lagoons...
thanks so much for this sharing.
I'm adding the link to my blog, so the safaris will all all be together!
O'Stephanie, you make some very good points:
(a)The "benefits" of the plantations have for the most part never "trickled down" to the workers (whether under the Raj, the communist government, or here in the US, for that matter). Rushdie actually has a very good take on this "uplands" culture in "The Moor's Last Sigh" including what I mention in (c) below.
(b) Not just education, the women do most of the work here and on the tea and coffee plantations. I purposely chose the shot of the coir worker's cooperative: all women. The men do the toddy-tapping and virtually all of the toddy drinking ;-).
(c) The indigenous tribal people, as you rightly point out, have been screwed here as everywhere else in India. I wrote about this earlier in Unshining India: Destroying the Adivasis, a Native People. Rushdie has thinly disguised the Birlas, real-life Indian oligarchs, and their depredations in Kerala in his book that I mentioned. Even as we speak, there is quite an agitation there, led by C.K. Janu - a woman - for Adivasi rights and land reform. Arundhati Roy has been a leading spokesperson for their cause. But all that would take up another post -- perhaps the other side of this picture postcard :-).
PS but tell me ... as interesting to a Botanist. Are you sure it was a coconut palm he shimmied up? Or was it a Date palm?
Now you've gone and made me "homesick"...
denese
The Kerala tourist board has nothing this good -- I checked! So I "Digged" this piece for you, maybe someone over there will see and buy it!! But you'd better put a copyright notice on your post or the pictures will be all over the web in a trice. Many, many woofs.
WOOF
I come from central Kerala, from the Palakkad district.
Great photos and I wish I had been the one to share them.
Mere dost Rolling mujhse na-khush hain. Lekin unki baat to thik hai. Main aajse hamare ajib bewaqoof sampadak daftarwale ke vishay khaamosh hain. Lekin, Inqilab Zindabad. Jama'at se karamat hai. Viva la Revolución. Old Commies never fade away ;-).
Hope they don't have multilingual translators in their daftar :-).
zuma, your post inspired me to put this together. Thanks.
denese, your Pondicherry post made me homesick. So turn about is fair play ;-).
Thank you always, Woofie. I put in a copyright notice, for whatever that's worth.
Moana, I feel terrible. First, my Jharkhand post, now this. I must be like an albatross around your OS neck :-). I'd actually thought of dedicating this to you and Kalpana. Then I thought of Rolling and Traveller and all my RL friends and ..... But I promise my next Kerala post will be dedicated to you.
Rama, that gnawing at the heart is so real. "O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain." And it doesn't matter which song: "Aaja re pardesi" or "Jiya beqaraar hai" or whatever, they all seem to be jis desh me Ganga behi hai speaking in Lata's voice (mostly) mere intezaar mein! What to do?
You may be right that that was a date palm (khejur). I blew up the tree on the right and there seem to be green coconuts on that one (you can sort of see them in the picture). But I bow to your expertise. The juice was great. Didn't try the toddy :-). Do you think the coir workers have a future? When I came back, I looked it up and apparently there is still quite a demand for the products in shipping etc. The story of the 17 tigers too funny!
SB, So we get another post sooner than usual now eh? How ong ago did you come to the US? Is it possible for you to write an account of what it was like back then? Thru your eyes - America of the eighties :) or was it earlier?
errr...what was the cause? R
The tigons and all came after my time. But went back to the zoo (for last time) in late 80's with daughter and saw them. The whole place looked really sad. But all zoos seem that way to me now.
Manchina manbona! hukumdari cholbena.
Shob hatao...
"Wall street, economists, pundits.. the lot..
Give us back the pride you bought "
true about the zoos. No place for our brothers and sisters of the animal kingdom. They did not even get a day in court and the ones who plead for them are not even heard... Inqualab jindabad!
Wow.
And Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things is one of the most beautiful and powerful novels I have ever read. I'll read it again, with these pictures in mind.
Unfortunately I was not able to visit Kerala but my son spent a considerable time here, and just like you, it won his heart.
I'm glad you posted this, because more people should know about Kerala. Yoru photos are wonderful.
Strangely enough, my post about the tigers I saw in Ranthambore on my trip to India (which I posted last November) is on the OS cover today too.
I also published a brief piece about India on Literary Mama, an online literary magazine. You can still read my piece "Varanasi" in the nonfiction archives on the Literary Mama website.
Faith, I'll have to visit your tiger piece as well as the article on Varanasi (have you seen Joel Suganth's incredible photo?). Growing up in Jharkhand when there were still tigers in the wild, especially in Palamau, it is a bit sad to contemplate their fate now.
Tanya, thank you, I'll check out Bill McKibben's book. Kerala indeed works on so many levels, we've fallen in love with both the place and the people, and it is now a mandatory stop on our visits back to India!
artsfish, you should definitely visit. My pictures hardly do Kerala justice; with your eye, you could make it part of your incomparable Wanderlust series.
Thank you all.
I am originally from Kerala born and brought up in Calcutta and currently working in Jharkhand .
Kerala no doubt has the highest litetacy rate in the country but it has also one of the highest unemployment rates
It has second highest per capita expenditure on alcohol( forgive me iam no prude )
It also has one of the highest suicide rates in the country
It has veritably no industries to boast of
And finally it has the maximum bandhs in the counrty . For those unfamiliar bandh is a strike and strikes are called in Kerala at the drop of a hat