Back from Paradise

‘I zink zis is paradise?’

It was a statement not a question but with a dare in it. Could I disagree? Sapena rested her bronzed arms on the edge of the pool. The water lapped luxuriously about her body as she contemplated the blue of the sky framed by the fresh green of the coconut and the darker fronds of the palm. A white-breasted fishing eagle wheeled high above. It was time for the fishermen on the sandbar to draw in the catch.


Paradise.

Poovar was truly a paradise nestling in God’s own land – Kerala. All thoughts of dry dusty Delhi with its garbage heaped along the roads had been driven away. I sank further into the silky water. A four- hour flight had brought us to the southern most part of India and the first realisation as we emerged from the aircraft was that it had been pouring until moments ago. A resort taxi had whisked us through the dark sleepy lanes of Trivandrum through little towns fast asleep. Old crooked men waited hunched over sticks, crones with dogs by their side sat just beyond the reach of the headlight beam. Eerie and mysterious they waited until we flashed past turning into benign walls or posts in the wink of an eye. The heart thudded and then quietened as a light appeared. In a little gazebo, dressed in white and pale blue, sat the Madonna smiling down at her infant. The fresh fragrance of the rain washed earth swirled deliciously around. An hour … it had seemed much longer … and we were climbing down a thickly forested path towards a light. There were steps but the guard ran down and firmly grasped my mother by the arm. We picked our way carefully down to the Neyyer River where a motorboat waited. The engine chugged to life and we were on our way through the pitch dark waters which turned a jade green along the sides of the boat. The dark curvy silhouettes of the coconut palms fringed the banks of backwater some tilted at almost impossible angles stretched flat along the surface of the water. A pale moon, round but not quite full, turned the tops silvery. A faint plop sounded. The gleam of a fish, or was it a frog, skipping along caught the eye. I stopped myself from reaching into the water. Did I hear the slap of a reptilian tail? Amitav Ghosh! Thank you very much.

The waterway widened. We had been travelling for over half-an-hour. The sea appeared to open up in front of us. There was an island in the distance. Nonchalantly I had turned to the boatman. ‘That is Poovar?’

‘No madam. To your left.’
Miraculously lights had appeared to the left. The shapes of the floating cottages could now be quite distinctly made out and bright lights shone in what appeared to be a jetty. A reception committee was waiting. In the arc of the light, straddled on a vessel of two coconut palm trunks held together with twine was a fisherman, his lungi bunched about his knees, examining his net. It was alive with silver.