There are numerous churches in Kerala with bright, colorful murals and glass paintings of an armoured man on horseback holding an unsheathed sword aloft. (I believe he was one St. George of Norfolk.) On the day before I left Thekkady for Cochin, I decided to visit one of them. Everyone inside the church was barefoot. A candelabrum stood next to a metallic oil lamp suspended from the ceiling, cotton wicks dimly glowing around the rim of the oil cusp. Over time, lower castes Hindus here had been converting to Christianity by the hordes to deliver themselves from social stigma and hardship. It had created an overlap of the practices of two religions very different in their nature and beliefs. A garland of marigolds placed around the arms of the Cross was a common sight. An oil lamp I had spotted in the precincts of a church en route to Cochin was a spectacular sixty feet high.
Through my travels I was struck as much by the apparent prosperity of the place as by its natural bounty. A gigantic satellite dish was propped up on a solitary house in the midst of endless plantations. From the arterial roads of Cochin to the hair-pin bends of the Western Ghats, the most ubiquitous billboards were those of jewellery. Womenfolk walked in wedding processions jangling with flashy yellow gold. At the very least, no one here was unlettered. And despite that, perhaps the strongest impression I took back with me was that of the kindness and the hospitality of the people. My co-passenger all the way from Mumbai and his family, all of them natives of the state, waving to me from the departing train till they went out of sight. The keeper of the menagerie of the hotel in Cochin animatedly telling me an anecdote about his mountain goat, when he figured out I loved animals. The concierge of the resort in Munnar showing me places in the sprawling estate, when I was no special guest. The bus driver and his assistant engaging in bits of small talk, asking me what I did, if I liked Kerala, urging me to make haste lest the queues at the Periyar got longer. The restaurant owner in Cochin rushing to get me rasam when I demanded it over sambar; elaborating on the local savouries in his kiosk before I left.
Laden with goodies from Kerala and a silent wish to return and see more of the place, I boarded a train for Mumbai, curtains of green darting across the window.
Kerala Trip - III
Kerala Trip - II
Kerala Trip - I
Photo credits: Namrata Baranwal
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| Captured on the the way from Thekkady to Cochin |
5 comments:
Every place is more friendly than Mumbai darling. You guys act like its illegal to talk to strangers :p *hides*
*scowl*
:p
And you know what? Keralites always feel too proud of what they are and their state and all it has to do with Kerala. I am struggling to control my anxious-excited emotion now! :D Gr8 travelogue. You can read an article i wrote about Kerala - http://bit.ly/dnvf3b
And rightly so. They have a lot of things to be proud about. Thanks for your words of appreciation.
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Thanks for tarrying here, fellow-wayfarer.