Feb 27, 2008 09:46 AM
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(Updated Feb 27, 2008 10:45 AM)
Kerala has always been one of my fascinations from childhood but it always eluded me till a few days ago. I(along with my family) had a nice long vacation exploring most of the treasures it had to offer to a tourist.
Any tour to a new place is a discovery. I saw many fascinating things in Kerala. If one has to state five things which are most visible in Kerala, they gotta be coconut trees, banana trees, men in lungis, CPI(M) flags and posters of Mohanlal!. No place on earth I believe can boast that they have many of any of the above if they see Kerala.
Most of the residences are constructed in a typical style that is used by any child when asked to draw a house(You draw a triangle and a square beneath. You extend lines from this to give a body to the house). The roof tops are usually made of the red clay tiles(a bit of research told me they are also called Spanish Tiles). One feels the towns to be very homely as the streets are narrow(unlike the 4 laners), people are extremely friendly and there are no high-rise buildings as in the case of the cities.
Our trip also included a visit to Kanyakumari(‘1’) which falls in Tamil Nadu. For the first time in life, I had to wear a dhoti to enter into a temple(Suchindrum ‘2’)! This is the dress-code at the temple. I never had the foresight to carry this costume so had to purchase one there itself. Shirts & banians are also not allowed! Ladies, unjustly have no such dress-code and sarees were perfectly fine. If you are in a chudidaar, all you need to do is to rent one towel and wrap it on top of your dress. It was kind of amusing to walk in the public wearing a towel over my shoulders with a precarious dhoti below. Amusing for others, I mean. In a way, it’s good because you then tend to feel like a pure devotee;)
We visited Vivekananda Rock Memorial and Thiruvalluvar(‘3’) Statue which are on islands at Kanyakumari. One had to take a jetty to reach the places. The sight of the vast stretch of sea from atop these structures was gorgeous. Swami Vivekananda used to visit this rock to meditate and he was at this rock at the time of his demise. One should not miss the sun-set & sun-rise at Kanyakumari. It’s very rare that you can watch both, at any place, because the east and west wouldn’t be both sea-sides.
Trivandrum offers good beaches like the famous Kovalam(which is an international beach- where one can see the foreigners basking in sun), and Shanmugham. The Ananthapadmanabhaswamy temple here again gave me the experience of the dhoti-dresscode:O
The icing on the cake of a trip to Kerala is however a boat ride in the back-waters at Alleppy. I strongly recommend one to hire a ‘shikara’ boat and none other than this. This boat is a private boat just for your family and is small and low so that you can even put your legs inside the water. The 3 hour trip is amazing and after this I can call all other boat rides I had in my life as mere rides masquerading as boat rides. Alleppy is called the 'Venice of the East'. If one had seen Venice in any of the movies like the Italian Job etc, one must have come across water bodies on which boats can traverse with shops, houses, buildings etc on either sides. This was amongst my wish-list of places to be at and this trip at Alleppy gave me a similar experience with shops, houses and even coconut trees on either sides! William Wordsworth had spent most of his time with Daffodils…but if only he had seen these backwaters, we would have been reading poems about it!
Talking of sobriquets, Kerala also has Guruvayur which is called the'Dwaraka of the South'. It has the temple of Lord Krishna which again needless to say again required taking out the dhoti and donning it:O
No trip to Kerala is complete without visiting Munnar, which has got the highest point above sea-level in South India(Anamudi -2695m, Doddabetta comes second with 2623m). The home-made chocolates available at this place were delicious! One gets a chance to walk into the rubber plantations(where I collected some rubber from a tree which can actually rub away pencil marks! it smells weird though!) and tea-plantations. The scenic beauty of this place can only be paralled by perhaps Manali.
Kerala as they is God’s Own Country, a statement I will no longer contest:):)
Footnotes:
Kanyakumari - It is believed that the image of Kanyakumari was installed and worshipped by Parasurama, who is credited with reclaiming Kerala from the ocean, and building several shrines. Legend has it that the demon Baanaasuran wreaked havoc on the inhabitants of this world, and that Mahavishnu requested the Gods and the humans to request primeval energy Paraasakthi to vanquish the demon. Answering the prayers of the oppressed, Shakti appeared as a young virgin girl(Kanyakumari) and commenced penance with the desire of marrying Shiva at Suchindram.
Suchindrum- Suchindrum means the place where Indra attained ‘Suchi’ i.e., purification. The Sthalapurana has it that Indra suffered a curse from sage Gowthama, when he stealthily cast amorous glances at Ahalya the wife of Gowthama. Not able to suffer the mortification brought about by the curse. Indra had to seek immediate redemption. He came to ‘Gnana Aranya’ as this place was then called and offered worship to Lord Shiva. Relieving Indra of his curse, Lord Shiva granted him of his wish that the place where he attained purification should henceforth be called ‘Suchindrum’.
Thiruvalluvar: Thirukkural was written by Thiruvalluvar, who is believed to have born 30 years before Jesus Christ. The Tamil Calendar is dated from that period and referred as Thiruvalluvar Aandu(Year). Thirukkural is the masterpiece of Tamil literature.
Guruvayur: The most prominent legend regarding the temple's statuette('murthi' is preferred) relates to Guru Brihaspathi and Vayu, the Wind God. At the start of the current yuga, Brihaspathi found a floating statuette of Lord Krishna. He and Vayu installed the statuette in this temple to help mankind in this kal-yuga. This legend forms the basis for the names of both the statuette(Guruvayurappan) and the town.
