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Published: January 14th 2012
Look out Dad
The tour guide moves in for the kill...Namaskaram!!
Re-visiting Kerala was, for lack of better descriptors (can someone please forward me some new adjectives other than amazing and incredible? I use these words far too often when I blog!), amazing and comforting. As I mentioned in the last posting, Kerala is really home-y to me and it was nice going back to a couple places that I had been before and sharing them with Mom. We went immediately from Kannur to Fort Cochin, an old colonial-ish town on the coast that I went to once when I was here last time. It's pretty un-India in that there is less traffic and noise than usual and there are lots of old churches and Dutch and Portugese buildings instead of temples. I left Mom to sightsee on her own for the first day since I had pretty much seen everything and I took the day to work on a correspondence course that I'm taking while here (this was a terrible idea on my part – but one that I am resignedly sticking to!). The following day we went on a backwaters boat tour to see some of the countryside that Kerala is famous for.
Toddy!
"Don't worry, it tastes better than it smells!" The tour was admittedly touristy, but we had a great guide who was really funny and kept hitting on my mom all day – and I kept telling him that I was going to tell my dad about it but the guide just laughed. He is also apparently an Ayurvedic (traditional Indian medicine) doctor so he was taking everyone's pulse and telling them about their health. We took a boat and cruised around the backwaters, these long, interconnecting rivers that function as watery highways that people still use for commerce and for getting around in the remote parts of the state. We also got to drink toddy, which is a local moonshine brew made from the sap of coconut flowers, and smells really bad but tastes good! It ferments throughout the day so that at night when I went to have a little nightcap I loosened the lid of my bottle, the cap shot off and hit the ceiling of my room! I ended up not drinking the rest...
Then came the part of this trip that I have been most looking forward to – visiting Thiruvalla, the village where I volunteered the first time I came
to India, and Santha, my “Indian Mum”, who is hands-down the strongest woman I know. Those of you who read my blogs from last time I was here will know the story (hahaha but you can always go back and re-read it if you need refreshing!), but the short version of it is that Santha is married to an abusive husband but can't get out of the marriage and in trying to help other women and serve as an example she is working for the women's organization, Sevika Sanghom, that I volunteered with last time I was here.
The whole train ride to Thiruvalla my stomach was doing flips, partly because I was excited but also partly that Santha had only gotten the email that we were coming the day before and I didn't want to be a burden on her or interrupt her weekend. The second we saw each other on the train platform though, we broke out into huge smiles and ran towards each other, me dropping my bags all over the place, and just gave each other the hugest hugs, laughing and crying at the same time. It was amazing to me that, 2
Indian Mum
Reunited with Santha! years (almost to the day) that I had first arrived in Thiruvalla and met Santha, I was able to come back and visit her again. It also meant the world to me that I was able to introduce my mom and Santha to each other, both of my Moms, living half a world away from each other. It turned out that she had declined going to her cousin's wedding and picking her husband (who is a monster) up from the hospital so that she could come meet our train, but it didn't matter to her because, in her words, “It feels like my daughter is coming home”. Yup, the tears were really going at that point!
We spent the afternoon visiting and getting caught up on all of our news – she showed me pictures of her new granddaughter, I showed her photos of my family, we went for lunch and tea, and we visited a bunch of the places I worked at, in particular the old age home where, astonishingly, a few of the older ladies remembered me and even knew my NAME (I basically did not stop crying the entire time I was there hahaha!!),
Varkala
Let's talk about how painful it was to walk back UP the cliff after a day in 40-degree heat!! and visiting the home for special-needs girls where I worked, as well as the girls' orphanage. I was really excited to hear that some of the girls are off doing higher education, one of them, Asha, is at school for fashion design and another, Manju, is at teacher training school, and it made me so happy to know that they are getting the chance to do what they might not have been able to do if they hadn't come into the organization.
Mom and I stayed at the volunteers' flat and cooked a delicious dinner (well I cooked) of dhal, chappati, bhindi masala and kozhukattai (which is a rice dumpling stuffed with coconut and jaggery and I am sure I have mentioned it before because it is pretty much the best dessert I have ever had), and Santha complimented me on my cooking and how good it was which made me happy since she was the one who taught me and it was good to know that I still remember everything! It was a really short visit, just overnight, but it was still so special. It felt amazing to go back and visit the vegetable market, the
Barry and Kelly
As you can tell from Barry's tears, we made quite an impact on them! Awesome couple to hang out with. temple, even just the internet cafe, the places that were a part of my daily life for 2 months while I was going through a period of really intense personal growth and exploration, and being in Thiruvalla brought back so many happy memories of learning how to do the simple things, like laundry by hand every night and cooking from scratch every evening and getting water from the well and all these things that I had to do while I lived there that I had never done before, but that taught me a lot of patience (ahem, a trait that I am still working on and probably still will be working on for the rest of my life!). Seeing Santha was also really special, this woman who is my role-model and someone whose spirit is so strong and so unable to be dominated by her horrific husband, who unfortunately she is still living with but who still continues to threaten to kill her and who continues to have affairs with other women, right in the house. She has not and will not stop fighting against the hand that she was dealt in life and it was so comforting to see
Kanyakumari
Most beautiful sunrise, ever. that, 2 years later, she is still dreaming big about starting up a little farm and community for women where they can escape and live in peace away from abusive marriages.
After visiting Thiruvalla we went to Varkala, a reeeeeeeeeeally touristy beach resort that, again, I had already been to but that was awesome to see again. Our room had a big balcony with a hammock (Pashu, if you are reading this one, the hammock was much MUCH stronger than that in Kudle (plus I was in it by myself) so it didn't break, but even if it had there was a railing on the balcony so I couldn't have fallen off) and a BATHTUB, which I hadn't even seen since I left Canada, and I was reminded and thankful again for the perks of travelling with Mom, who I have decided is no longer allowed to go out shopping on her own because she has no bargaining skills whatsoever and paid way too much money for a purse and shirt. So now shopping is supervised 😊 . We spent the majority of our time in Varkala on the beach with a nice couple we'd met in Fort Cochin
on the boat tour, Barry and Kelly, who were hilarious, doing a lot of swimming and reading and walking on the beach, and of course having one terrifically epic dance party that featured a middle aged Indian guy doing the splits on the dance floor! It was a very relaxing 2 days but I was getting antsy eating non-spicy food (one of the downers of hanging around in major tourist hotspots) and so we left for Kanyakumari after 3 days.
Kanyakumari is on the tip of India, where the Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean, and Bay of Bengal all meet and where a ton of spiritual stuff has happened, making it both a pilgrimmage spot and a tourist destination for Indians. It was a weird blend of this very holy temple to the goddess Devi Kumari, who from what I gather was a virgin who seduced Shiva by dancing or something like that (I may be getting this mixed up with Meenakshi, whose temple in Madurai we visited yesterday, who was born with 3 breasts but an astrologer told her father that upon meeting her husband the 3
rd breast would disappear; she fought a big war against Shiva's
The usual.
These kids were actually REALLY sweet, but we realized that if we stood in one place for too long we risked never being able to leave due to the sheer number of pictures being taken! army in the north of India and when Shiva himself came down to see who this goddess was who had beaten back all of his soldiers, her 3
rd breast disappeared and they got married), mixed with a bunch of souvenir shops selling mobiles made out of shells that really could have been equally as at home in south Florida. I loved it though, there was something really powerful about being at the end of the country, looking out at the sun rising in the east, with absolutely nothing but open, wildly crashing ocean before you (I'm sure no one will be surprised when I said it brought tears to my eyes, followed quickly by lots of laughter as about 35 people wanted to take their photos individually with me). We also went out to the Devi temple on the ocean, where her footsteps from her dance are said to be, and I can honestly say that there was something REALLY moving about that place, too – when I visited the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem and the spot where Jesus was said to have ascended into heaven, I felt some really powerful energy there too and it was similar to
Pretty wind turbines!
Am I a total loser if I find wind turbines beautiful? Hahahahaha! what I felt at the temple in Kanyakumari – whether or not a goddess really did dance there and whether or not there really was a Jesus who went up into heaven, I can't say, but I do know that I was hit with the same feeling of the place being really, really sacred and special.
We went by train to Madurai, where there is, as I mentioned above, a huge and gorgeous temple to the goddess Meenakshi and the god Shiva, and it is on this train that I saw thousands upon thousands of wind turbines, looking like big white birds spinning in the sky, and that made me so happy, and also made the single. lone wind turbing at Toronto's waterfront look pathetic by comparison! As usual the train was a full-sensory experience. South India in particular is absolutely gorgeous, with the palms, rice paddies, mountains in the distance, and it is just so lush and verdant and fertile that it fills you up with so much positive energy. Travelling by train right now is also a unique experience due to the sheer number of pilgrims going to Sabarimala, which is a holy place in
Madurai gopura
The unbelievably intricate and gorgeous statues on the entranceway to the Madurai temple. Kerala that is worshipped by devotees of Ayappa, the son of, incidentally, a gay union between Shiva and Vishnu (well, sort of – the gods wanted to test Shiva to see how good he was at resisting temptation, so Vishnu got all dressed up like a beautiful woman and went to seduce Shiva. The plan backfired though, because apparently Shiva is NOT good at resisting temptation, and a son was born of their get-together, Ayappa) (please also note that my re-telling of the Hindu stories, legends and history is approximate and subject to my own interpretation of things – I told the story of Kali to Chris, a British friend of mine who really IS well-versed in Hindu philosophy, and he burst out laughing at what I had come up with). Sabarimala time sees millions of men dressed in black, barefoot and carrying packs of food, clothes and blankets on their heads, walking and taking the train to the temple that apparently gets almost as many visitors as Mecca!
So the trains are crowded but no less fun and intense, the food is still as spicy as ever and we are leaving tomorrow for Mumbai, where I
Dance off!
My favourite statues in the Madurai temple for sure: Shiva and Meenakshi having a dance-off! fully intend on finding a role in Bollywood that is a step up from my last role in a commercial with Deepika Padukone and where my mom can make a little pilgrimmage of her own to some of the places mentioned in the book Son of the Circus by John Irving (another excellent read).
Spicy love from Hindustan!
XO Shannon
p.s. I have had numerous hilarious exchanges with rickshaw drivers wanting to take us to a place where they get a cut from bringing business to a hotel. It is of course frustrating, but always makes me laugh because of the absurdity of conversations I wind up having. A typical exchange with a commission-seeking rickshaw driver looks like this:
Me: “We would like to go to the New College Guesthouse”
Driver: “Sree Devi Guesthouse?”
Me: “No, New College Guesthouse.”
Driver: “OK, Sree Devi Guesthouse.”
Me: “No, we want to go to New College Guesthouse. No Sree Devi.”
Driver: “Madam, Sree Devi Guesthouse is very good price. We go there.”
Me: sigh....
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Thomas Nietmann
non-member comment
Hi Shannon; Bright and beautifully written! It was such a joy to read your entry this dark and cold morning. Thank you for sharing your travels and experiences. I am inspired. Thomas