Skip to main content

In Search Of A Village


(Photographs By Minu Ittyipe)

For quite a while, an unknown malady has raged through my bones and clogged my throat. Any doctor worth his stet would have dismissed it as the evils of excessive work, but that was not the case with me coz for a long time now I have not wholly committed myself to the masochistic pleasures of wearing myself thin. And yet the fever raged on. After much medication I arrived at a diagnosis: it was the habitat, the caged atmosphere that drove me to the stage of rancid comatose. I had to get out of the urban confines and find a bit of breath air. Fresh air. Fast.

So I set out in search of a village, where I can spot a cow instead of the snorting vehicles or I could get to hear a hen announcing that she has laid a nice warm egg. When was the last time you heard a delighted clucking of the hen? Perhaps, you’ve never heard that one before. It’s the kind of music you will not hear in the city. And that is an urban fact. In the urbanscape, I find that I forget to listen to the whisper of the wind or call of the bird. And now I must go in search, like a sleuth, hunt down, track down, those earthy pleasures and my very own nature that I have lost.

Ponds and streams in the Kallanchery Retreat

But I am most often a sloppy sleuth, so I decided on the closest village, the Kumblangi Village that was hardly 20 minutes from Cochin. And I arrived at the village, where the green spell was still in place and the housing sector had not yet gone high rise. Where the fantasies of the village life was not a dream but a living reality.

Lucky Ducky and Gang, Kumbalangi Village

The ducks in the ponds, the hens worrying the worms, the cows mooing to glory and not a sound of the vehicular traffic to sully the air. The Kallanchery Retreat at Kumblangi village was just the place I needed to slip into a hammock and get my breath back.

Everything on the menu

We ordered lunch, everything seafood on the menu (how I love anything from the sea). Eat your vegetables is a nagging reminder, okay so a few plates of that too. The fare is simple and home cooked.

A Fishing I must go.....

Siddharth, a guest caught a fish and shows off. “Last time I caught three.” He said. He is one small veteran in this area.

Then I lay in a hammock in the retreat’s coconut grove and surveyed the stillness of the backwaters that seemed to extend in silvery tones to the right and to the left of the grove. What else was there to do in such a dreamy state except to enjoy the rice, curry and seafood and read awhile.

With no interest in conversation, I just lay back and took it all in: a slice of paradise.

Contact: P. R. Lawrence

Kalancherry Retreat, Kumblangi village

Phone: 0484- 2240564

E-mail: mail@kallancheryretreat.com

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: An Autobiography Of A Sex Worker by Nalini Jameela

I am 51 years old. And I would like to continue to be a sex worker.” This is how the candid and defiant opening statement in Nalini Jameela’s autobiography in Malayalam, Oru Lymgika-thozhilaliyude Atmakadha, goes. It at once throws a challenge at society’s double standards — harsh on prostitutes and soft on the clients. Nalini Jameela, who is the coordinator of the Kerala Sex Workers’ Forum, reveals her sordid story with no trace of compunction. Nalini was a 24-year-old widow when she entered the profession to feed her two children. At that time she did not think about the repercussions of her act. She writes, “I was earning Rs 4.50 at a tile factory near Trissur. My mother-in-law served me with an ultimatum to either give her five rupees a day to look after my children or leave the house. I recounted my woes to a friend, who introduced me to Rosechechi. Rosechechi promised me Rs 50 if I spent time with a man. The first thought that came to my mind was that my children would be looked...

SnooTea: Just My Style

(Photographs by Minu Ittyipe) It began on a lark to spiff up my morning cuppa. Oh well, I just wanted a change from what I had been drinking all my life. I am not complaining about the faithful brew that I stir up with tea dust, it does merrily improve with two extra spoonfuls of sugar but I was just plain bored with the regular. My concept of a cup of tea was corralled in the traditional Indian style- coppery coloured liquid topped with plenty of milk and sugar but now there was in me this undeniable thirst for a more delicate bouquet. Tranquilitea, Coonoor Curiously, though grown in our own backyard, few of us have heard of the orthodox leaf tea, forget the Silver Tips, Golden Tips and the White Tea etc.. that quietly find their way to the export market. To make a foray into this relatively unknown terrain, I headed for Tranquilitea, a tea lounge in the Nilgiris, for a cup of “Tippy” tea. On a sober note, you are cautioned not to confuse “Tippy” with the more commonplace “Tipsy” for...

At 17, V S Achuthanandan joined the Communist Party

Born on October 20, 1923, VS Achuthanandan joined the Communist Party in 1940 when he was just 17 years old. Abject poverty and deprivation were the only things that flourished in Punnapra, Kerala, in those days. My father had a grocery shop close to our house so we did not suffer too badly when we were young. He was a social activist and a SNDP Yogam leader and respected by all.  He had leased some land from the landlords in Vendhalathara and cultivated it. He built a house there too. In this way, along with the grocery store, we could make ends meet. Punnapra school had only up to class three, so I joined Kalarkode school to do class four. It was in an area where the upper caste lived and one had to walk past the temple to go to school. The elite would ridicule the less fortunate, beat and chase them away. Many children discontinued their studies. I was once attacked by the well-to-do students and they asked me. “Who are you to walk this way to school?” I tried to st...