Final Destination

Today I Feel Kerala and one day I will Live Kerala

I woke up feeling Kerala today and one day I am sure I will live Kerala. Kerala is an idea that has grown on me and is like that mysterious lady every guy is enamored with. Perfection is perhaps something that everyone admires but never falls in love with. And it is the lack of perfection that draws people towards it. Kerala in many ways epitomizes that.
By no means perfect, but romantic by all means. I have seen everything, I know it is a dangerous statement to make, but let me risk it, good people, bad people, festivals, big houses, small houses, good roads, bad roads, beaches, mountains, coconuts, bananas, movies - gross to masterpieces, intellectuals to people who never realized they existed, floods, droughts, walking to school in rains with books over the head, crossing canals over narrow coconut trunks, catching fresh fish in your own pond, growing your own vegetables, living without electricity to sleeping in air conditioned comfort, the list is endless. The vast canvas on which the vagaries can be fitted amazes me and makes me wonder about the things that could be hidden under it.
My dream has its roots in the village I grew up in. The vague, almost black and white memories of my village still surfaces in everything I do, think, and lives within me. Waking up within the wooden walls of my ancestral home, waiting for my black coffee in the smoke filled kitchen, watching mama steam idlis and grind coconut chutney is not a day, I know that I can live one more time. I wonder if I will ever get a chance to brush (or cleaning is a better word, because there was no brush!) my teeth with Ummikkari (the ash from burning rice husk) hung from the Uttaram (wooden cross beam supporting a tiled roof) of the Front Varandah. Walking all over the yard with Ummikkari in the left palm and cleaning the teeth with the right index finger and checking the well being of all the permanent inhabitants of the yard- dogs, a variety of birds, chickens, ducks, and even snakes!
The ancestral home used to be surrounded with paddy fields, and used to be lush green during the paddy season. The paddy seasons are busy times for the villagers. But as a kid I had no role to play in it apart from being an intrigued onlooker!! The harvesting activities, all manual, from assembling of the bundles of paddy, to separating the grains from the husk, used to be times of hectic activities and it would stretch into the night and to our delight give us a chance to keep awake late into the night and watch them work. The times used to be busy and stressful for everyone other than the younger ones in the family. This perhaps explains the fond memories I carry about those times!
This was the life in the village, but what made it memorable was the people. By no means different from people one will find anywhere else in the world, there too existed the tales of emotions, love, hatred, anger, jealousy, lust and everything that was as much a part of the daily routines as it would be anywhere else. But in the village everyone knew everyone else. And everyone was known by the family they belonged to. Family tree was a big thing in the village, something that I realized to my surprise, happiness and sadness during one of my few visits to the place I love so much. Few of the humble villagers came and waited to see me and parents, because we are a part of a family tree that was very well respected in the village. Sadness is slightly inexplicable, and primarily because of the longing for the place.
What used to bring structure to the bizarre collage was the temple, the yearly Utsavam, the various festivals Onam and Vishu in particular. The amount of eagerness for the events that was a routine and something that people probably have seen all their lives was a thing that one has to experience to understand. Yes, most people in the village were born and grew up at the same place. The temple, events surrounding the temple, the paddy fields, ownership of the fields, the family structure and familiarity with each other brought a certain amount of organization and sophistication to the village. And yes not to forget the schools that were again central to the scheme of things. Imagine 25 years back, in a far flung corner in Kerala, where Bollywood was virtually unknown and when Doordarshan was taking its first baby steps, they used to teach Hindi in the village!
This discussion cannot be complete without the mention of Onam, the harvest festival, in a place where the life of the people revolved around harvesting! At the mention of Onam, apart from the delicious Sadya (Kerala feast served on plantain leaves) that accompanies it, the word Oonjal (traditional Swing) is something that instantly comes to my mind. Somebody in the family would make sure that there are Oonjaals for everyone in the family, small ones for the little ones to long scary Oonjaals from the tallest tree in the yard for the grownups. But then, the 10 day event with the mythological backdrop of Mahabali and Vamana is too big to be described in few lines here and needs to be given its own share of the limelight. May be we will keep it for a later date.
Even with all its sophistication and organization, the village had its own rustic charm. Rustic as we all have seen on TV and heard from our grandparents, that of wandering gypsies coming to sell their wares to assembling in front of a stretched out white sheet on which a movie would be screened, to listening to aspiring crooners. Somewhere in the black and white images in my memory lies a bizarre auction on one such occasion, an auctioning of a liquor bottle that my father bid and won!
Where is this place? Is it imaginary, real or both? Perhaps the later! This village is Eara, a part of Kuttanad, the Rice Bowl of Kerala, part of Allapuzha district. The place germinated the idea called Kerala in me and grows within me. The ideas that I carry with me and grows within me, may be are just my imagination, it may not exist anymore. Times have changed and I am sure Eara too must have changed. But the idea continues to grow, the fond memories of my childhood and the desire to live that day one more time continues to grow stronger. Yes, today I woke up feeling Kerala and I am sure one day I will live Kerala!

First travelogue!

Every time someone talks about Orlando, I get reminded of a friend, a first timer to US, who landed in Orlando, while his original destination was Miami!!! That’s was his first reminder that it is a different country and not another place in India!!!

Hmmm….how did the Orlando plan begin? I think all the credit will have to be given to Vikram and Reeta who were keen and were keen to have me in tow. I had no hand in the planning, booking, logistics or anything other than going and coming! Infact I have not yet paid Reeta yet for the expenses incurred! Thanks guys, it is one of the most memorable trips I have ever had and the first theme park visit too. I made it a grand double with Magic Kingdom and Universal Studios!!!

It begun on a tough note for me. I had to wake up early to catch the bus to Orlando, and the prospect of missing the bus is unimaginable. Back home in India there is some hope always left in your mind that some way you will be able to make up, catch another bus, take a rick and chase the bus or something. But here, and I think that’s where the discipline sucks, you miss it and you miss it forever. So I was late to bed and I think I was convinced that I will not wake up at 4AM. So what did I do, set an alarm, only that this alarm was a little different, asked my mom in India to call me up at 4AM EST!!!

With great reluctance I woke up and called up Reeta and Vikram, then called a cabbie. I still remember the cabbie very well, for a change he was not a Latin American! At the hotel after these guys woke up we had a little round of photography, that was also the first time they were seeing my new camera, just to get the story line for the Orlando visit going.

The bus journey was nice. The bus was nice, comfortable and clean. They had aircraft like announcements, small LCD screens like in planes, announcements and even toilets. I did not venture into checking out the toilets though. And I guess men would have missed the airhostesses too J Midway through the journey, I had my first brush with a highway breakfast in the US. And I think for someone who grew up thinking the dictionaries should replace the word breakfast with idli and sambhar, it was one experience. It was burger king and there was nothing vegetarian on the menu, okay let me try non vegetarian….what? only beef and pork???? I was disappointed and finally did with a beef burger and some hash brownies. The rest of the journey was very peaceful, it was through a serene looking country side, greenery all around and all the hoardings screaming they had the cheapest tickets to all the theme parks in Orlando. The best part of the journey was the final announcement made by the driver….he said all those who are on package tours prepare to be received by the tour organizers as kings and princesses!!!!

The welcome was a pleasant one. They stopped by a motel, it looked to be one where only buses stopped, there was a restaurant, super market, souvenir shop, wine shop all rolled into one and plenty of parking place. We were received by a man, who spoke English with some degree of difficulty and were joined by three women, apparently the daughter, her daughter and mother who were also headed in the same direction. We went to Magic Kingdom and on the way seeing the road signs I realized I am in the capital of theme parks and I am just scratching the surface of it with Magic Kingdom and Universal. Between look here, look there, we caught our first glance of the entrance to Magic Kingdom. I was confused with my camera settings and hence quickly put it into point and shoot mode and complete the snap.

The driver, unfortunately I forgot his name, was very helpful, it is his profession, and explained what we need to do, what we should not do with clinical precision and then let us out into, what I will never forget, something I had never imagined, but explained to me at the first sight why people from all over the world thronged to Orlando. It is a dream, a real fantasy that was been sculpted into reality with meticulous precision. I had always noted the castle behind the Disney logo and had never bothered to find out what that is. And voila!! it was right there, the Cinderella castle in all its glory, in front of me. And we had the good fortune of being in front of it during the day and at night too when the fireworks lit up the sky. And to say that it looked beautiful it a huge huge understatement and doing the creation a lot of injustice.

The next 12 hours were the shortest of my life. We had a tough time picking up the right places to visit, making sure that we do not miss out on any of the important and most visited ones, and making sure that all the three of us had our dreams fulfilled. And that really is a challenge as all three of us came from different background, one a tamilian born and brought up in Chennai, a half tam half mallu (or so he claims J) born and brought up in Bangalore and the third one, that’s yours truly for you, a mallu with half the life spent in Kerala, a majority the remaining half in Maharashtra and the remaining fraction all over India. The only thing we had in common was that we all worked for the same company. But I guess that was enough as we smothered the challenge of having to fit in all the spots into the available time rather smoothly. The 12 hours took us through a house built on a tree (I later realized that the so nearly real looking tree was actually cement!), a ride over what was supposed to be Aladdin’s carpet, a ride supposed to simulate a space craft ride, I felt cheated at the end of it as I saw everyone else in the ride go above me L A ride through pirates of the Caribbean land, a ride through Winnie the Pooh. I think I am forgetting a lot of the fun we had there as it has been about few weeks since we completed the trip. And my unbeatable laziness kept me from putting down all the experience into words.

But I will not forget the boat ride through the Congo River. While I knew there is a river by the name Congo and using the knowledge that the two countries Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo both happen to in the Central to Western side of Africa, I inferred that this ride must be a mock ride through the rain forests of Africa. While we got into the boat we had no idea what we are going to be experiencing, the ride reinforced all the dormant memories of the African Rain Forests that probably crept into some corner of the brain while watching Nat Geo or Discovery. I think a little has to do with the Tintin comic strip too!!!! The ride was full of surprises, though there was nothing nasty. It was a boat with about 20 odd people captained by a crew who looked like they are on a real expedition through the Rain Forests, on either side the vegetation was dense and it almost gave the feeling of being a real dense forest where a leopard could take a leap at you any moment. Everything else that we saw on the way from the old dilapidated temple, the crocs rushing at you, the remnants of the crashed aircraft, the snake dangling from the tree, the African elephants, the Asian elephants (wonder what the Asian elephants were doing in an African Rain Forest!) made us duck for cover and forget the fact that we were in a fantasy park. The only difference was we knew they were fake and perhaps that made us stick to our seats. But the real fun part of the ride was our host and he does deserve a special mention and unfortunately I do not recollect his name L He, made fun of everything that came on the way, all the people in the boat including himself, kept talking nonstop for all the 30 mins, narrated incidents, most of them made on the spot! Without missing a breath. And he had this uncanny sense of humor, something that is so akin to what people say is my sense of humor!! And if I have to put it in Manoj, my friend’s words, it is a collection of unlaughable jokes. One of them he cracked deserves a mention here; he pointed his finger to a random direction and said that the flower there is Hibiscus. He did this with so much conviction that people who did not even see a leaf there nodded in agreement. And without flinching an eyelid comes his next line, what is the flower next to that? While people are still wondering where the other flower is (I am sure many of the others were still wondering where the first flower is), pat came the answer, from out guy of course….that is the Low biscus!!!! Well that’s sense of humor if you are still wondering what the joke is!!

Now this guy in my opinion has the toughest job in hand. I know how difficult it is to crack a joke when someone asks you to crack a joke. For him he does it every 30 minutes day in day out. And I am sure he is naturally skilled. One cannot follow a script for cracking jokes!!!

The other point to be mentioned here is all the boats had names of females. One of the first boats we noticed was named Amazon Annie! It sounded so much like the cabaret dancers of South Indian movies of yore like Silk Smitha and Disco Shanthi that we had a hearty laugh even before got into the ride.

Food is an important ingredient to making an occasion complete, and that really becomes a challenge when unseasoned people like me (and my friends) go to any place in the US. There was hardly anything that was made for an Indian palate. But not to take anything away from the place, there are plenty of eateries in there and plenty of choices. We found out a place….arrghhh….I lost the name of the restaurant….and had the omnipresent chicken wings and fries. One of the grossest delicacy that I saw people have was, can you imagine a feet long turkey thigh? Now imagine a grilled one, deep brown in color and served with tissue wrapped at the bone end of it and to be eaten just like that! It looked to me like a real Stone Age thing. But looking at the number of people who were having it, it really looked to be a fast moving consumer good!!

Can a visit to a Disney theme park be complete without a visit to a Mickey and Mini dens? Yeops….it is not. Can you imagine the Mickey and Mini household that we have seen umpteen no of times on TV in skin. If you can’t, and my bet is on that, come straight down to Magic Kingdom. See the entire setting of the cartoon strip recreated in cement, wood and plastic.

Phewww…..Need a break now!!!