We stayed at a family farm, Philipkutty's Farm, on a manmade island in the district of Kottyam, an hour and a half south of Kochi. Kerala is muggier and warmer right now than Bangalore, and we nearly fried as we were taken to the farm on a canoe-like boat whose captain punted us across the canal with a bamboo pole.
The place feels like a dream, now that I'm back in Bangalore. I slid into a happy listlessness, where nothing really mattered except for my immediate sensory surroundings. It was hypnotic, puncuated by chirps, caws, croaks, trills, barks, laughter, and the rapping of a machete on wood.
The days kind of went like this for our three days at our waterfront cottage: get up. masala chai on the veranda. breakfast under the thatched dining area. read. watch Kingfishers and egrets and other impossible-to-identify birds swoop over invasive clusters of African water hyacinth. read more. watch the villagers on the other side of the water go about their daily tasks (okay, some of that included men taking off their longyis and bathing. ahem.). listen and try to identify insanely beautiful birdsongs. eat lunch, careful to drink large quantities of ginger-lime juice. sit in chair on veranda, pretending to read, but counting rice barges returning from their day cruises instead. read until it's too dark to read any more. apply bug spray. take numerous photographs of the same thing every day because it looks different and even more amazing every day. strain to hear phrases of devotional music coming across the canal. settle into bed with your trusty mosquito net covering you. sink into your mattress. sit up, startled because it's 1) a monsoon-like thunderstorm or 2) a village Easter celebration with endless firecrackers going off....
I could go on. I might, in fact, later in this same post. But time stopped for us here, stagnated completely in the soft, frangiapani-scented air.
We went to church on Easter, at St. Mary's, a parish that dates back to the 16th century when the Portuguese infiltrated south India. We were again ferried across at the ungodly hour of 7am, along with Anu, the farm's owner, and another family of three from Dubai. I felt completely underdressed, and I guess you could say I was: I felt very self-conscious in my wraparound skirt and exposed knees, no scarf or ornament around my neck, and tried to hide my outsider-ness in a sea of slightly disapproving veiled heads and their accompanying rainbow of saris. Instead of pews, we stood up, except when called upon to kneel or sit on the hard marble floor. The men were on the left side of the aisle, mostly dressed in white longyis and button-down shirts, and the women and small babies were on the right. The priest came around to each person to give us the host, and no wine was ever offered. At the end of the mass, which I could barely follow because it was in the local language, Malayam, the congregation rushed a statue of the baby Jesus near the altar and touched his feet. It was like a mosh pit. No eggs or bunnies or chicks, but the somehow fitting symbiosis between India and Catholicism---symbolic and musical and with plenty of icons to worship and touch.
That said, the Easter Bunny did visit: He left malted milk eggs and a small stuffed likeness of himself!
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