Memories of Kerala

MISTY MORNING IN WAYNAD

BROKEN DOWN

BACK WATERS or POLLUTED BLACK WATERS?

TRY IT ON AS YOUR BACKGROUND IMAGE

LONELY ANTHURIUM (MOM LOVES THIS FLOWER)

BEAUTIFUL!

LATE MORNING

EVENING!

SHIVANNA AND OUR GROUP (I AM TAKING THE PICTURE)

P.S : All the photos were taken by me using my mobile camera. Now I think I am ready for a professional camera, what say?

The philosophical me in Kerala

Trip to Kerala was totally out of my league. It was something I thought was not possible till that point of time I sat in the bus. I wont go about explaining the details of the trip here. Its really redundant as i am not good at making the reader weave a web of imagination that would teleport them to the world I am describing. It was a 5 night and 4 and 1/2 days of traveling, yelling, sleeping, playing, laughing, singing, dancing and doing other weird stuff that you wouldn’t normally do. It was like a small life out there with every sort of moments; happy, sad, scary, frustrating, painful, etc. Similar to my previous post, I maintain that these trips really help you to rethink about your life. It gives you time away from work and other daily routines and let you think in a more philosophical way about YOU. Its not a selfish thing as you are not thinking about yourself as an isolated case but, you are trying to workout how you fit in this world.

We visited the all sort of places there, from the lowest point to the highest point. Particularly when we were traversing the devious curves on the mountain my friend said, “I pray to god that if this bus falls, I just want to be dead. I hope I will not be alive to live an amputee’s life”. I looked at him with a raised brow and smiled, “We wont fall!” I said with such confidence that even I was shocked! Anyways, the first day in the morning the bus broke down. It was a 6 hour long wait on the foot of the mountain. Though the scene was not a good one, there was a canal that helped us pass the time and get cleaned up. Most of them were scared of water snakes which, by the way, are not poisonous!! That led me to think, if this was what was meant to be? Hmm…

Six hours of nomad’s life and I literally mean it. Everything was trivial from input to output! Completely down to the basics of survival :D. It was fun doing it though; fun exploring places and trying to have fun in the given situation! Me and a friend of mine had a competition of pelting small stones to a near by pole. We gave up when I reached 50 and he reached 26. Were we again those kids that did not need sophisticated things to entertain them? I guess we were! And let me tell you one thing, we still had it in us 😛

Thereafter, it was a sleepy trip to a Guruvayur. A temple where you need to remove your shirt and wear a “Panche” or “Dhotra“. It also has a tradition where they do not let anyone inside who do not not follow Hinduism. Hypocrisy at its heights! This depicts the image of intolerant people still living within this land that is sworn to equality. Debate did happen on this topic but it only gave the age old conclusion; ‘its their perspective, we cant do anything about it‘. I would bleed to death before I accept this conclusion. On the outside everything is nice and good but, it really is not so. On that sad note I accompanied others to Alapi. We spent the night in the beach resort and in the morning we were out to smell the fresh breeze blowing over the sea shore. Exhilarating, euphoric, free and many more adjectives that may complete this series. It was just pure fun there and nothing else that would make you think. Of course one might argue that the vastness of the ocean would be an ideal turn on for a philosophical mind, but I say it must be accompanied by good amount of time too. And that is exactly what we lacked. I only spotted the dolphins further up the shore when one of my friend told me. Lost we were in our own world, clinging to that moment of happiness that we had been longing from the start of the trip. Finally we had it and nothing else mattered to us.

Next place we visited was Munnar. It is a hill station and a beautiful one at that. I like hill stations as a rule. I generally like cold weather and I dint know if its a characteristic of a romantic! Even in that way, its advantageous :D. The mountains looked beautiful and harmless. But a closer look made me realise that they were dangerous too. The scene was breathtaking and heavenly to say the least. Perfectness as I would term it. As I stood near one of the cliff and spread my arms and closed my eyes, I felt the peace inside that we long for all the time. It was right up there on every corner and every rock. I could have lived there for ever if I could! Anyways, one of my friend was bargaining for a hat in a small roadside shop. I always feel that the roadside shops should be spared of bargaining and its the bigger shops that needs to be targeted really. So as I was saying, the hat’s price was 50 and they were trying to get it for 35. After several attempts as they were about to give in for 40, another friend of mine came and took the 35 rupees from my hand and put a hand on the shopkeeper’s shoulder and smiled at him and put the money in his hand. He told something in Tamil that I did not understand, but the deal was sealed. As we walked I asked him how he did it, he answered with a wicked grin, “Personal touch”. We still are animals, no matter how civilised right?

Ideally it must have been the trip of my life, but something somewhere was stopping it to be that. I was wondering about that as I started my journey back and also about how it would be to return to the routine. It was after that chat I had with a friend of mine that I realised what it was. We went in a big group which meant limited space to spread my wings. We did a lot of things together as a group, but I missed out on things that I really wanted to do. Things that would contend me rather than the group. Is that selfish? May be, but wasnt the trip for me too? Or was it just for the “group”?

P.S : Some of the photos coming up soon 🙂