In God's own country

Dear Sam,

I think I lost my “a materialist and a moralist too” mojo and go addicted to this place like any other tourists coming to India and spending weeks in the beaches. I barely believe that they’re in “love” with India (what they claim). I think they’re in love with the idea of being in India and still having everything for a waaayyy cheaper price than that they have back home…quasi, they are in love with the lifestyle! And I’m turning into one of them! Hilfe! I was supposed to be in Kochi today!

Went to the beach yesterday and got myself fried for 4 hours :-D. . The dinner with my Shiva Garden mates afterwards was simply great (heck I don’t blame the tourists being in love with the lifestyle :-P).

I went to Kollam for a canoe trip around the Munroe island and instead of going ahead to Alleppey, I came back to Varkala. Met a very in-a-funny-kind-of-weird German from Jena there in Kollam. He was in Sri Lanka and spotted not one, but FOUR blue whales there. Apparently you can do whale-spotting in Sri Lanka, now that the tension’s over.

We had a 30 minutes car ride through Kollam to the canoe. It was only then that I realized how red Kerala is! Chavez here, Chavez there! Thanks to Lonely Planet I knew that Kerala is the first example of electing a communist government democratically. Now they have elected a democratic government (United Democratic Front aka UDF) democratically. I also had an “idea” about democratic-socialist Kerala while reading “God of small things” in 2000. The whole Kollam town was covered in red flags and posters. May be they had a political meeting going on. It was nice to see the green village after the endlessly red town.

The canoe trip was really soothing … and fun? Roy was jumping so restlessly that I tough he’d swamp us. The whole canal around the island is man-made and man also made the small (and many many) hyphen like bridges between the shores. The hyphens were built high enough for canoes to pass and low enough to duck if you’re sitting on it (and if you are a good boy) or just stand up and walk over and get back to the canoe again (if you are a rowdy). Roy and me, it seemed as if we both are not the goody-goody kids :-D. . We even climbed up a coconut palm (I went first... muahahahaha).

Hey don’t be jealous! You are also having fun in your own way without m! I do wish you were here but it was you who told me “Alleine in Indien reisen, muss man gemacht haben”! And I thank you for that.

Apart from the fun, when the hyphens were not interfering, there was also more to it. The sun, hot as always; the humid vapors fuming out of the soil; the tangy stale air that you can smell AND taste; the trance and silence, occasionally paused by the fisherman’s boy rattling the scare-crow rope with bottles filled with pebbles… (the list would go on if I don’t stop) …But above all, it was the green that awed me. That continuous dark shade of palm-green in a patch! (I’ve seen something like that only in Bangladesh before… that continuous bright shade of paddy-green in a patch).

Green. If you want to see this color, stay in Germany. If you want to feel his color, come to God’s own country.

<3 - TZ
09.05.13