Gods own Country
2 pm on wednesday we returned from kerala. Kerala is an outstanding place with an almost unbeleivable cleanliness. All the towns, villages and cities are situated along the national highway. You would never find a stretch of road with barren uncultivated land on either side. All the girls in kerala look similar with hair which looks like a spring out of shape who would have emptied a coconut oil bottle on their head and a clip just keeping the end of the hair together. Chili says they are the best looking people in India. I am sure he was looking at the other evident things just their hair and the hair clip..
Everytime you ask direction to a malayali he would say - ' nera poyi, leppta'. It would always be a left there. why? Because in kerala left is right :-).
The hotels in kerala are kind of weird. One, they serve hot water to drink. I heard that the govt fines the hotels if they serve cold water. If you manage to drink it, it is supposed to be hygienic. Two, when we decided to go to shabaraimalay, we are not supposed to eat onion, garlic and drumsticks (aphrodisiacs). You will not find a single hotel which serves food without garlic and drumsticks. How horny!! Then there is the boiler tea. Nair chaya, it is called. Simbly suberb. You would find a toddy shop in every 100 mts. Horny, drunk and people with a civic sense, they are the mallus.
Then there is the architecture in kerala. The single storied, slanted tiled roofs, huge houses so amazing. The temples and houses are built in similar fashion. Such roofs keep the inside of the house cool.
Kerala is so clean that we did not find a single pig in the whole of our journey till we trekked the 7 km to reach shabarimala temple. The religious significance of the temple aside, the temple is strikingly unhygienic. The garbage cans are emptied inside the campus on the temple, pigs digging their way through the empty tea cups and aluminum foils. I reasoned it out as, one, shabarimalay is one place in kerala where there are less of mallus and more of other state people. Two, that keralites are more used to self management than mass management. They are not used to the fact that people, in their 25 years or more of their life, have not cultivated the least civic sense. They do not know what to do. There were boards everywhere saying, ‘Be an eco-pilgrim’, an innovative catch phrase. May be that is not persuasive enough for the pilgrims to keep the place clean.
We were 4 kannisamys ( virgin swamis) traveling. With us there was a guruswamy who had come to show us the place and to tell us the procedures. How grateful are we to him! Hadn’t he been there, we would not have seen the neyi abhisheka( ghee abhisekam) and we would also not have known how many coconuts to break, where to shove the sphere that we collected at babar’s mosque. For all those who have not gone to shabarimalay, we break about 6 or 7 coconuts at various stages of the journey to shabarimalay and back and we collect a sphere at babar’s moque at erumeli.We had an amazing driver who drove us to kerala. ShivShankar. On the way back he drove for 15 hours with 2 breaks of about 20 mins each. On the way up to the the temple, there was a place that was announcing – Vedi Vezhi padu – and a fire cracker would be burst somewhere in the forest. GD came up with this fantastic logic that the crackers were being burst to keep the elephants off the trekking area. No idea how he thought about it, nonetheless very much possible. The fire crackers were actually being burst as an offering of prayer to the lord!! Vedi Vezhi Padu.
The 7 km trek up to the temple is really hard. The granites with sharp stones, the steep incline, and the irumudi to balance on out heads makes it very tough. Enduring the pain is a part of the austerity.
We had also been to the Guruvayoor temple. This is the temple to which jayalalitha had donated 2 elephants. To this manishankar iyer had said – ‘I would have donated jayalalitha instead!!’.
Of course, there are the backwaters in kerala. Everyone talks about ‘em. They are too good. You know it. Everyone knows it.
My next trip to kerala would be an exclusive one- sit by the back waters, drink toddy, relish the sea food and relaxxx…
Everytime you ask direction to a malayali he would say - ' nera poyi, leppta'. It would always be a left there. why? Because in kerala left is right :-).
The hotels in kerala are kind of weird. One, they serve hot water to drink. I heard that the govt fines the hotels if they serve cold water. If you manage to drink it, it is supposed to be hygienic. Two, when we decided to go to shabaraimalay, we are not supposed to eat onion, garlic and drumsticks (aphrodisiacs). You will not find a single hotel which serves food without garlic and drumsticks. How horny!! Then there is the boiler tea. Nair chaya, it is called. Simbly suberb. You would find a toddy shop in every 100 mts. Horny, drunk and people with a civic sense, they are the mallus.
Then there is the architecture in kerala. The single storied, slanted tiled roofs, huge houses so amazing. The temples and houses are built in similar fashion. Such roofs keep the inside of the house cool.
Kerala is so clean that we did not find a single pig in the whole of our journey till we trekked the 7 km to reach shabarimala temple. The religious significance of the temple aside, the temple is strikingly unhygienic. The garbage cans are emptied inside the campus on the temple, pigs digging their way through the empty tea cups and aluminum foils. I reasoned it out as, one, shabarimalay is one place in kerala where there are less of mallus and more of other state people. Two, that keralites are more used to self management than mass management. They are not used to the fact that people, in their 25 years or more of their life, have not cultivated the least civic sense. They do not know what to do. There were boards everywhere saying, ‘Be an eco-pilgrim’, an innovative catch phrase. May be that is not persuasive enough for the pilgrims to keep the place clean.
We were 4 kannisamys ( virgin swamis) traveling. With us there was a guruswamy who had come to show us the place and to tell us the procedures. How grateful are we to him! Hadn’t he been there, we would not have seen the neyi abhisheka( ghee abhisekam) and we would also not have known how many coconuts to break, where to shove the sphere that we collected at babar’s mosque. For all those who have not gone to shabarimalay, we break about 6 or 7 coconuts at various stages of the journey to shabarimalay and back and we collect a sphere at babar’s moque at erumeli.We had an amazing driver who drove us to kerala. ShivShankar. On the way back he drove for 15 hours with 2 breaks of about 20 mins each. On the way up to the the temple, there was a place that was announcing – Vedi Vezhi padu – and a fire cracker would be burst somewhere in the forest. GD came up with this fantastic logic that the crackers were being burst to keep the elephants off the trekking area. No idea how he thought about it, nonetheless very much possible. The fire crackers were actually being burst as an offering of prayer to the lord!! Vedi Vezhi Padu.
The 7 km trek up to the temple is really hard. The granites with sharp stones, the steep incline, and the irumudi to balance on out heads makes it very tough. Enduring the pain is a part of the austerity.
We had also been to the Guruvayoor temple. This is the temple to which jayalalitha had donated 2 elephants. To this manishankar iyer had said – ‘I would have donated jayalalitha instead!!’.
Of course, there are the backwaters in kerala. Everyone talks about ‘em. They are too good. You know it. Everyone knows it.
My next trip to kerala would be an exclusive one- sit by the back waters, drink toddy, relish the sea food and relaxxx…
posted by Avi at
5:31 AM
1 Comments:
pratish: your views r fm a tourists eye....hence so much praises for the state....live there for a month n u ll know the reality....
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Anonymous, at 6:35 PM
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