Hard to believe that this time last week, I was in Kerala on a rice boat, researching Book Four. This week, I'm gritting paths and putting out bird seed in Wales where four inches of snow fell last night, and the woods and the fields near the Wye are covered. The dogs think it a tremendous lark and have been playing in it for hours, their paw prints make neat lino cuts in the virgin snow.
But back to Kerala , it's warmth, it's bright colours seem, even after a week back, like a seductive dream.
After one night in Fort Kochi -where the Art Biennale is on, and where someone had transformed the branches of a huge Banyan tree into a snakes and dragons tree - I based myself at Olavipe, a Homestay ( the Indian name for a B and B), belonging to the Tharakan family.
Although the Tharakans are one of the oldest Syrian Catholic families in Kerala, there is nothing grand or intimidating about the atmosphere here. The house, with its spacious verandahs, its cool whitewashed rooms, its rosewood four posters and its antique furniture, is as beautiful as it is welcoming. Its grounds - 60 acres of farmland, surrounded by lagoons, farmland and rice paddies, are yours to wander through for as long as you stay.
The food was fabulous, often served on banana leaves or in simple bowls laid out on the long table for you to help yourself . Guests are invited to wander into the kitchen, or explore the house, make tea. What I liked was the sense you have of having your own set of rooms within the house. The rooms , every bit as big as you'd get in a luxury hotel , were scrupulously clean and quiet. You have the option of using a servant to make your bed, but I chose not to for the pleasure of imagining that this house was my home, I settled in so thoroughly that I actually had to warn Anto and Rema that adoption papers would follow.
The farm is plentifully supplied with its own fresh fish, and organic chickens and vegetables and I constantly marvelled at the skill and delicacy with which fresh vegetables, cabbage, beans, are turned with a pinch of cardoman and cinnamon and mustard seed into something genuinely exotic. I'll get Rema to send on some of the recipes so I can post them.
Here you eat with the family and a floating population of guests ( during my stay: the English publisher of '
Curious Incident of Dog at Night Time', his 22 year old son, a magazine editor; two delightful women from Oxford; an American Aids worker from Africa, and an English carpenter). The conversation was lively and interesting, but one was left in peace when you wanted to be.
Anto, and Rema, are the most relaxed and generous of hosts, answered endless questions and, because I was interested in life in Cochin in the forties, took me to meet Rema's mother, Amma, (86) and godmother , Lily (94).
Lily and Amma live in their own separate but close houses in a quiet close in a temple town called Trissur . They share servants, meals, and when their large extended family comes, the pleasures and the work of seeing cousins aunts, siblings, sitting around Lily's long dining room table.
In their graceful saris, and with grey hair knotted at the nape of their necks, they looked so elegant, so serene, and yet neither had ever been to either a hairdresser or a beauty salon . Food for thought about the frantic efforts we're encouraged to make in the West to stave off old age. When I got back - even my pared down travel make up bag with its age activated serum , its creams, the mascara, the velcro rollers the lipstick, looked bizarrely complicated. Doesn't mean I'm going to step out now in a white sari and Rhett Butler moustache, but does make you think. The only beauty routine they followed apart from baths and hair washing was a weekly scrub with vetiver, and the soft bark of a tree to exfoliate, followed by the application of coconut oil for hair and skin.
Both reminded me too that a well stocked mind is another useful attribute in old age. Amma was reading a long and fascinating book on Indian history, 'Gem in the Lotus' written by Abraham Eraly, her nephew , and both agreed that one of the best time of their lives had been when they'd both left home, aged 18 and gone to live in a hostel in Madras in order to study for university degrees.
From Olavipe, I went to on to Alleppey , and two days on my own on a rice boat
If you're ever in Kerala, trust me, take one . What I loved was the perfect peace of it. From a comfortably shaded wicker chair I gazed out at a party of school children rowing themselves back from school across the river; a woman washing her curry pots in the stream; an egret sitting on a grazing bullock's back; fishermen palm trees, sunsets. Fresh fish and more delicious vegetables were served on that table on the left hand side of the photo, and at night, Mathu, the cook, lit a candle on the deck,and I sat and listened to the birds, and the chanting from a nearby Hindu temple.
Heaven, and now, back to reality. Where was that snow shovel ?
olavipe.com/homestay.html
olavipe.com/homestay.html
