This summer of hot, heat, warmth and a Kochi trip

There is a different summer that emerges when you are not scrambling for visa appointments, googling ‘a thousand places to visit in a day’ and ticking and crossing packing lists that start a winter earlier!It's a summer where the weather, social calendar, and mood (swings) determine your itinerary.

The spoilt 'bratish' heat of Kerala was as spoilt as spoilt could be..relentless and sometimes cruel in its onslaught but yet we summered and vacationed a small trip...a ‘lets go to Fort Kochi’ mumble was heard somewhere and before we know it, we were on our way to Fort Kochi – agenda-less, expectation-less and hearts full of abandon – to just let the old town ‘surprise’ us and carry us into the floaty tales of the Arabian sea..

But to get to this ‘queen of Arabian sea’ as it is called, you have to navigate through the ‘other Kochi’ - the one that tries to boast of IT parks, multi cuisine restaurants, gigantic malls – trying to be yet another ‘booming metro’ where all the city vices greet you- a choc-a-bloc of upcoming apartments, traffic snarls, barricades & metro works..But once you cross the bridge, the streets are narrower, the vehicles limited, the people no longer ‘hurried’, and that’s when you know you have arrived at Fort Kochi..

I was smitten and scorched by the experience that awaited..a rainbow of colourful mansions, churches, synagogues, tiny shops that try to commercialize Kochi’s history into fancy cafes, stay options and a variety of knick knacks that are priced and catered to the European explorers who still visit the shores of Kochi for the spices, sun and culture.. Fort Kochi uncorks an abundance of history, influences - you can witness the streets, churches and architecture sometimes whispering Dutch conquests and sometimes of Portuguese explorers .. the old ‘Bazaar’ street buzzing with tiny establishments that stand as a proud testimony of the spice merchants and the trade routes with Arab and Chinese lands.. the Pardesi Synagogue a reminiscence of the huge Jewish settlement that dwindled over the years..

I must say that even as a Keralite I was totally lost in the vibrant haven.. photo-opps at every corner of the streets, cafés transforming me into a sloth and what could be better than a ‘water metro’ that you can hop on/off coupled with dolphin-spotting in the sparkling sea ……And so I learnt my own history, touristing in my own state and forgetting that I am one amongst them.

And as I sipped my last coffee and slowly wove out of the old town - a few farewell tears of rain slowly tricked down and there she sat..the queen of the Arabian sea.. telling tales of the past, distant from the modern IT park urban jungle that is growing a few metres away, showing us artifacts of the past – the Chinese nets, the Jewish crochet works, the Kippah….like she has nothing to do with the urbanization exploding in the Cochi central district.. but the screaming honks of city traffic brought me back to the urban reality called Kochi that is young, throbbing and waiting to explode into the global scene.

And the summer slowly started slipping through my fingers… packing, unpacking, buses, trains, drives…a festival here, a wedding there,  a burst of people …and then came the lull of just being home…home to the mangoes, to tulsi teas and chats that dissolve into the twilight of amma’s porch..

 

Let me be

A woman of butterfly dreams
Fluttering in a thousand shades and prints

A woman of childish whims and fantasies
Invigorating and ebbing like ocean tides

A woman of shea butter self-love
Waxing the milky vanity and goodness

A woman of firefly fury
Burning injustice and blasting irrational expectations

A woman of ghoulish solitude

Silencing howls of societal jackals

A woman of “mundaned” nothingness
Couch 'potatoing' to pulp and gluttoning indulgence

A woman of parachuting explorations
Leaving behind strings and landing into unknowns

Let me be
Break out or shut down the emotional drama
Scream or silence the bedraggled thoughts
Carve out of accumulate the resentments
Smile or drown in the tears of self-pity

I choose the verb, the noun and the adjective
I choose to be
One heartbeat here, one 'womanday' there
 
 
 

Dosa, coffee and the gopurams

 I found my ambrosia in Tamil Nadu…drinking like the gods, into the cultural and historic splendors of Tamil Nadu…indulging and getting drunk on the experiences that Thanjavur and Chettinad regions of Tamil Nadu threw up for me in the my recent trip.

The short but eventful trip started on a good note at the Thamayur fort overlooking the lush greenery and straight charcoal roads of Tamilnadu that slice through the symetrical patches of agricultural spaces. And then into the Athangudi region; famous for its floral and colourful tiles that adorn the athangudi mansion and beautify its floors and open courtyards. The wooden pillars, open coutryards and colourful array of ceilings and floors do release a whiff of history and you could almost imagine a motley of cousins playing hide-and-seek in that large space of peace, history and love.

The next stop was the heritage streets of Chettinad – yet another aesthetic corner of the country where colours, weaves, pillars and mansions will greet you at every corner of every street in this heritage village. I ticked all the boxes including exploring Chettinad mansions, shopping for Chettinad weaves and sinking my teeth into Chettinad cuisine and yet I felt like there was more than what I experienced. Like a coil of unexplored history, untold tales lay there at some corner of the street, like the corridors wanted to whisper more stories of yonder and as if the streets wanted to speak out..but I moved ahead promising to return for more exploration..

The journey continued as it took me to the monument that I was eagerly waiting for – the magnetic pull of the “Periya Kovil” in Thanjavur. Literaly meaning the “Big Temple”, there can never be a more apt name for a monument…it was monumental and gigantic in all senses – the façade, the gopurams, the designs, the expanse of space and the grandeur of the idols and carvings aplenty!

For the “hardly religious” me, the first sight of the imposing façade of the temple ramparts took me to a step closer to humility, towards subservience and a perhaps to the true sense of “godliness”. For what can explain the sheer size, skill and the marvels that was built thousand years back and still stand tall and strong despite the attacks and natural events of the centuries that the temple has witnessed?

I was almost cockeyed in the mission to take in every carving, every sculpture, trying to size, capture, imagine and admire all in that few hours at the temple. That little morning was perhaps as close to divinity as I could ever get – the breeze nestling into my hair, the silence cleansing me and this godmotherly structure towering and soothing me into an era of monarchs, perhaps gods and marvelous cratfmanship..

Unchartered walks through Thanjavur city was next on the agenda – where the delicious food of Ariya Bhavan (since 1964 said the board proudly) and the must-have coffee fueled me onwards..Of course I had to pick up the nimble wobbly Thanjavur doll to add to my menagerie and dig into my  “Chennai Tamil” with the autodrivers. And finally the triumph of getting into a local bus and getting a free ride (being a woman has perks in Tamil Nadu I guessed) was one of the many treasured moments that I would take home from Thanjavur!

I was not yet ready to bid goodbye and so there was yet another trip back to the temple but at dusk when the city twinkled and the temple shone bright and beautiful..some more walks and some more peace and I refused to let the trip end ..so we headed back to the little “square” and yet again indulged in the “dosa coffee” routine before heading back home…the last image of the magnificent gopuram blurring into the rearview mirror staying with me as the picture of Thanjavur…my heart richer and my mind calmer – the  magic of dosa, coffee and gopurams!

Aroha for the mountains

 Let the mountains happen

Responsibilities and liabilities of housekeeping

Disappear in the mist that engulfs

Drumming noise of mundane chores

Dissolves in the silence of the mountains

Potpourri of things to do and achieve

Drowns in the saphire blue of the lake

Stink of urban callousness

Swept away by the aroma of the meadows

Confusion of myriad thoughts

Escape into the blue expanse of the sky

Seriousness of urban life

Mocked away by carefree sparrows aplenty

Complexity of adulthood

Simplified by rules of farm living

Life is slow

Life is good

Just let the mountains happen to you

 

 

The independence we love

The independence that we celebrate

Not the half-price sale in the consumer kingdom

Not the white and saffron kurtas that tumbles out the closet

Not the long-weekend frenzy on the highways

Not the lip-service speeches of a long-forgotten history

The past that broke us free from slavery

The memory of queens that ruled and reigned sans reservation

The rationality and literature that filled our conversations

The decisions where logic and information was the foundation

Not the price tag of a silky tricolor flag

Not the one-day honor for our cape-less heroes

Not the pride of a miniscule billionaire club

Not the desperation to divide and sub-divide

The unity that transcended beyond the lines drawn

The diversity that came with actions not words

The equality that was equal at home and beyond the courtyard

The country that we inherited free, strong and forward!

Just another day

 Just another day

To the women who slog, smile and shine

To the fathers who brought us up to keep our head high and leveled

To the mothers who silently infused strength into our conscience

To the sisters who cuddled and crushed our adolescent fears

To the aunts who guided and built our ‘acne-hit’ confidence

To the girl gangs who shared a tear, a laugh and the cheesecake with love

To the boy gangs who helped shed our inhibitions and take on life

To the partners who gave us space to grow and expand into shapes of choice

To the children who ironed out our rough edges and let us exhale simple love

To us for the struggles we stomp at our feet everyday

To us for the joys that we search and find in our journeys

To us for the success we define 

To us for the version of us that we adore

Reflections

Reflections

It is the time

 

When the factory winds down

Shifts shorter and sweat dwindling

Output lesser and the smoke less toxic

 

The year that was regurgitates

 

You produced a lot all blood and sweat

You utilized resources to full capacity

You broke even on some capitalist measures

You indulged in the sweet sound of money making

 

But consumed more than you can regenerate

But worked your machinery to breakdowns

But depreciated your best assets

But let off fury and short fuses into the environment

 

Polluting some good times

Breaking into some good moments

 

So when you discharge your batteries

 

You see the big hole within

The edges that roughed out

The sediments of impurity within

The backs broken with hard work

 

But the clouds of impurity clear away

‘Humdum’ of the machinery less noisy

Whirring of the brain less prevalent

 

That’s when you start to sense

 

Ambitions bowing down to peace

Money settling into the bylanes

Love and you on the highway for a bit

 

A time to savour, oil your machinery

Straighten your bends, clear the soot within

 

The new year is here