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By David B. Goldman
Copley News Service
Early one morning I put on a mundu – the skirt like
garment that is the closest I got to going native in India
without feeling like a fool – and went out on deck to
watch the sun rise over the rice paddies We were anchored
in midstream and a long low dugout canoe slice across our
bow through the still glassy water The lone peddler
wearing a mundu and a hot pink turban stood with a
net in his hand turned slightly and then flung the net in
a wide arc.
The swirl of the net hitting
the water was just one of the early morning sounds in o in
this rural tropical water land. A radio program probably
out of the station in Alleppey the nearest town came from
a small tin roofed house on the east bank and the kids
were shouting as they jumped into the warm shallow water
for their morning bath.
Smoke from coconut husk
cooking fires drifted toward us Rughu our captain and
major domo was just stirring It was Raghu’s job first
thing every morning, even before burner stove in his tiny
deck. Kitchen, to survey the water level to see if it had
changed during the night and whether or not the paddies
would flood.
Years ago, when I was about
10, my parents had taken a trip into India The one thing I
remember from their stories was the days on the water in
the Vale of Kashmir luxuriating on a house boat. In that
northern India Shangri- La they had servants at their beck
and call and they walked on rich hand woven Indian rugs.
They ate strange and
wonderful new dishes bought exotic fruits from small
boats, which pulled alongside and watched the light change
on the Himalayas peaks.
These days Kashmir is in the
newspaper headlines. The border wars between India and
Pakistan have made that region pretty iffy for foreign
travelers.
But it was those stories,
those images, that after all these years led me to my own
Indian houseboat, although it was decades later and this
one was in southern Kerala, at the opposite end of the
subcontinent on the southwest coast off the Lakshadweep
Sea.
It’s always hot this close to
the equator, but my wife and I had waited until October,
after the southwest monsoon, when the torrential rains and
the winds and heavy waves had passed and the water lands
of rice and coconuts that they call the Backwaters [down
there it’s spelled with a capital “B”] had been nourished.
At this time of the year,
before the northeast monsoon blows in, the water can
become very still. The palm fronds hang limply and the
clouds are reflected sharply in the quiet water. It’s
slow, almost lackadaisical world. When we pulled up our
anchor each morning the prow of our converted rice boat
moved gently through blooms of purple water hyacinths and
white lilies, the yellow-tinted rice paddies stretching
into the distance.
House boating on the
traditional black hulls of the region’s Kettuvallom
[converted rice boats], has only been going on in the
Backwaters for half a dozen years, but it’s been a real
boost to the local economy. It wasn’t many years ago that
the Backwaters’ commerce was rice and coconuts in this
moist, low-lying area of dikes, wet fields and shallow
lakes where the rivers coming out of the Western Ghats
flow into the sea.
For decades the rice and
coconuts were ferried out by boat, but as roads were
developed, the transport system changed. A few
adventurous souls converted the classic wooden boats-
particularly distinctive because their muted,
charcoal-black sheen is rubbed with cashew oil- into
accommodations for visitors. They built graceful,
butterfly- like cabins on the hull, made of split bamboo
and coconut twine.
Our vessel, old as it was,
turned out to be one of the best conversions on the water
. The 75-foot Sauvarnigam,”House in the Water,” was at
least as comfortable as a good hotel room and had a lot
more character. Its two bedrooms were fan-cooled, the
plumbing and hot water clean and functioning, even the
reading lights worked.
That’s not necessarily true
of all the other boats. Some are much more Third World
style, without cooling and with borderline toilet
facilities. These, our crew said ,are for “North Indian
businessmen,” who are “rich,.” But not as rich,
apparently, as visiting foreigners.
Everything in this region is
geared to the meeting of fresh and salt water. The
topography is controlled by rock-walled dikes supporting
the riverbanks, somewhat like Holland, with pumping
systems. The rice crop at this season lies five or six
feet below the dike level. During the monsoons the houses
scattered along the wide dikes, covering the steps leading
to the water and inundating the mélange of mango and
banana trees, hibiscus, ginger and coconut palms, which
border the paddies.
Overhead, the air was flecked
with flashes of feathered color. Flocks of white
parakeets swirled by, nearly merging with white and gold
Brahminic kites, sacred to Hindus. Also there were the
turquoise iridescence of the king-fisher, the red-crested
woodpecker with a cry sounding like a cell phone,
red-necked Indian rollers and even the house crow.
As the morning went on,
children appeared, washed and scrubbed, walking along the
dikes to their “bus stops,” where blue-trimmed waterbuses
hauled them to school in a nearby village. A grizzled,
dark mustached man walked slowly along a dike leading a
cow and carrying a milk can. From the paddies came the
quiet voices of women pulling weeds, the low of a cow and
the tinkle of a bell from a water buffalo across the river
But in this rural land of
occasional villages and scattered houses with walls of
palm frond or brick and roofed with thatch or tin, nearly
everyone seems to have a television set. Kerala boasts
one of the highest standards of living in India, with a
literacy rate of more than 90 per cent. Even in the
Backwaters, electricity has arrived, although most cooking
is still done on coconut or wood fires, and washing
machines have not made it here- the women spend much of
their days on the river’s edge, gossiping as they beat
their clothes on the rocks. Contd… |
