Visiting Lakshadweep Part 3 - Kalpeni

Kalpeni - aaah, doesn't the sweet name conjure up a restful island with lovely beaches? The first thing we did on Kalpeni was to visit the Tip Beach. It's named thus because it is at the tip of the island, duh!!! It's a beach right out of an island paradise brochure...

Here we found dozens of hermit crabs scurrying about in their borrowed shells. And I wondered how like a human couple they are, beginning life in a "starter" home and then gradually upgrading to bigger dwellings as the family expands - unless of course it's a Malayali couple who will build the biggest mansion they cannot afford to have, pay off the loans all their lives, and then rattle about in the huge house like two dried nuts when the kids are all gone.

One would think the sea had SOMETHING better to do that draw wavy lines over parts of the beach???

And depositing all these weird-looking rocks for us to play with???

I could go on posting pictures of Tip Beach ad nauseam. If I had been left to my own devices, I would have spent the whole day wandering up and down the beach, meditated with the hermit crabs, spent time in the hut gazing out into the sea and waded over and over again in the shallow channel...

But bigger and better things were to come, so it was good that we did go to Koomel beach on the other end of the island. But not before DH delivered a personal Taj Mahal! 

Koomel beach too had ample space for rest and relaxation...

If one were so inclined... But we opted to take a small boat to the neighboring Pitti islet to indulge in water sports. We tried kayaking which was slightly difficult due to the pull of the tides. My arms ached with the unaccustomed exercise that evening. But it was a lot of fun! I had to double up with Ani and let me tell you it was slightly nerve-wracking to keep from being brained by his paddle and try to make us go in one direction.

But the best thing was snorkeling off Pitti islet. The shallow sea-floor right next to the island was a farm of sea cucumbers - no they are NOT plants. I thought they were some kind of rock and picked one of them up and dropped it back hurriedly as it felt limp like a rotten cucumber! But a little way from the shore, as we went into deeper waters, we found coral formations of the cutest kinds. I guess we could call them baby corals. Swimmers are required to wear a life vest at all times. This made it easier for to float face downwards just beneath the surface while breathing freely.

The cutest coral I saw looked like a purple brain around the size of two footballs. One part of the "brain" had delicate pink and white spiky coral around which a school of tiny fish were swimming with a larger one of the same kind. On the other side of the "brain", in a crevice near the floor, a tiger lobster's tentacles waved gently. I hope he wasn't planning to make a meal of the tiny fish circling above him!

As I stopped paddling and gently floated about, more and more fish of all hues and shapes appeared. A slight undulation along the sea-floor beneath me caught my eye. It turned out to be a lacy white fish that reminded me of a bride in her white gown and lacy veil. Its movements were so gentle and mincing that I followed it totally mesmerized. 

After almost an hour, I let the incoming tide nudge me back towards the island. As I was floating dreamily over the beginning of the sea-cucumber field, one of them raised itself partially off the sea-bed, enlarged one of the several dark holes on its body and spat something out. I hurriedly found my legs and stomped off as far as I could from that rude sea-cucumber! Huh!

Here we are rockin' the snorkels!

On our way back to the main island we saw two huge turtles swimming by. Judging by their size, DH commented that they could well be a hundred years old and have been here during the British occupation! I was glad that I had not encountered one of them while floating dreamily over the coral paradise. Kalpeni is said to have a better scuba-diving experience than Kavaratti as there are more varieties of live coral around the island. We decided to give it a miss as the snorkeling had been brilliant enough.

The afternoon saw us trundling off to a coconut mill and hosiery unit on the island and the tourist group as a whole did its best to boost the local economy. We came back to Koomel beach to laze in the shade and see this...

A couple of old-timers and a bunch of Gen Y'ers gathered to give us a rousing Parichamuttu performance. It was fun to watch the formations and hear the thud of the wooden swords and shields. The first few numbers were appreciated with lukewarm clapping. I was almost dropping off into a doze when a new number with familiar lyrics and faster tempo suddenly came on. It took me a few moments to realize that they had adapted a well-known Hindi movie song to their art form. This number was hugely appreciated by the largely North Indian tourist crowd and there was enthusiastic clapping along with the song as well as afterwards! 

I wondered about using the same technique to make Kathakali a little more palatable to the masses... then hastily banished the impious thought!

At the end of the day, we heartily welcomed the sight of our "mother ship" waiting for us...

 

Ithi Lakshadweepa savari: Kalpeni kandam samaaptham!

Visiting Lakshadweep Part 2 - Kavaratti!

Sorry for leaving y'all with the cliffhanger there, ha ha. That post was becoming too long and I needed to get dinner on the stove, so had to leave it there! 

So there we were, first in line to go to the shore when the first boatload of passengers from Kavaratti enroute to other islands arrived. Once they got off, we were handed into the boat...

This exchange happens in the open sea as the shallow lagoons of the islands bordered by coral structures do not allow the ship to get near the islands. Thankfully for us, the first day the sea was pretty calm and we could just step on board. Another day each passenger had to wait some time before the boat got close enough and at somewhat the same level to step on or off. Needless to say, things got exciting. But there was plenty of help to be had and even the very young, the elderly and even a couple of people with broken arms and sprained ankles got on and off without any problem on all 3 days.

Soon we were cutting across the deep blue sea and heading for the coconut-lined shores of Kavaratti.  

 And then, almost without our noticing it, the sea changed color to a deep aquamarine...

I assure you, it is not a trick of the sunlight. We were still wondering over the color change when we were dropped off at the jetty and made our way to the head quarters of the Union Territory of Lakshadweep...

 On the way to the resort, we caught a glimpse of one of the main occupations of the islanders. Curing...

 and drying fish...

We were welcomed with bright smiles, free passes for a glass-bottomed boat ride and tender coconut juice if our throats had been parched between breakfast and entrance to Kavaratti. We accepted all three with grace, of course. There were two large hall-like open huts and plenty of cane chairs etc. for those who wanted to take things slowly. But of course we were not of that group! We directed our steps to this place right next to the welcome hut...

...and signed up ourselves for the scuba diving ahead of most others while they were still inquiring about the available activities. Then as the others signed up and we were waiting to be briefed about scuba diving, we jumped right ahead and had some fun in the shallow sea and gentle waves. Here are the kiddos all rarin' to go

Understandably, after this, our camera took some well-deserved rest. Our swim was followed by a short lecture on scuba diving by the instructor Mr. Amaan (you can see him in Anarkali!) who gave us some basic info including the hand signals to use underwater. This was followed by a short training session where we queued up to use the equipment in shallow water to ensure that we had got our basics right. Let me reassure you that knowing how to swim is not a prerequisite for this experience. All you need is to be over 10 years old and preferably not have a head cold and be in good health. If you normally cannot see at all without your glasses, please wear contact lenses. One cannot wear eyeglasses underneath the mask. Each person gets a diving buddy who controls ascent, descent and underwater swimming. All we have to do is breathe through the mouth and see the sights. 

And finally, the time was upon us. The first batch of divers were ushered into a boat and were taken to a spot that was 10 metres deep. There, we climbed on to a floating jetty in groups of 5 and five divers took us down to see the treasures of the deep...

And treasures they were - a glimpse of which I can give you in this picture of our son taken down in the deep

For the first two minutes after I submerged and began breathing through my mouth, I was in panic mode, almost extending my thumb upwards in the signal to be taken back to the surface. And this is when I know swimming perfectly! But I managed to calm myself and answer my buddy's "Are you ok?" signal by putting my thumb and forefinger together in the ok sign. And then we were near the sea-bed and I totally got lost in watching the marvelous underwater life! 

I can't begin to describe what I saw underwater, there were huge brown coral structures as well as tiny new spiky ones on the floor. They came in all colors and shades. I don't know how they would appear in sunlight, but down there I saw coral in shades of blue, purple, green, yellow, pink and red. 

And if that was not enough, there were the fish. You can see the yellow and black ones in the photo above. The divers scatter breadcrumbs in the water so that they fish swarm near enough for one to touch them. It was a beautiful experience. I saw fish of such metallic blue that would put the proudest peacock to shame. 

Thanks to Finding Nemo, I recognized clown fish and puffer fish when I saw them. And the clown fish were playing about in flame-colored anemone just like we saw in the movie!!! My buddy asked me to put my finger among the delicate-looking anemone strands and I was surprised to feel their rubbery texture. 

My only grievance with the whole experience was that I couldn't talk. I wanted to scream, "Oh look at that!" each time I saw a new marvel (DH can tell you that I can be quite vocal in my appreciation and will jog his arm almost out of the socket if I'm really excited). During the dive I kept pointing to all the wonderful new things and kept giving the "Ok" sign to my buddy - he must've thought that I was demented!

My buddy drew me close to some coral that had beautiful spiky flowers in several colors blooming on them. At one snap of his fingers, they all disappeared like magic!! That is when I understood they hadn't been flowers at all!!! At that point I would have lost my breathing apparatus from my mouth if I hadn't been holding on to the hose with my right hand.

Soon my 15 minutes were over and my buddy gave me the thumbs up signal to show me that we were going up. Reluctantly, I made my way back up. When I was finally divested of my equipment and asked how it was, I mustered enough decorum not to scream, "Awesome!!!!" at him. But I did have the widest grin plastered on my face and I am sure that it had a reassuring effect on those who were waiting to get into the water after us!

After the dive, we went for a glass-bottomed boat ride over some deeper and more extensive coral structures where schools of huge fish hung out. When we scattered bread pieces by the side of the boat, they came up to snap them up. But the boatmen warned us against putting out our hands to touch them since they had razor-sharp fins. We followed this up with jet-ski rides that had us screaming as we jumped high over the cresting waves not unlike horses taking hurdles.

All in all, we were exhausted after our morning exertions and fell on lunch with an appetite. Post-lunch, we visited the marine life museum and took a short ride around the island. By that time, one of these began to look very inviting...

And so while the kiddos had a run-around and DH went hobnobbing with the dive instructors, I stretched out in one of these and contemplated the meaning of life... ahem... 

Soon it was teatime and we were regaled with a folk-music event 

This was followed by an Oppana performance with a medley of songs and a cutie pie selected from among the tourists as "bride"

To tell you the truth, I wished we had omitted this part of the program and gone sightseeing across the island on our own to visit the famous Ujra mosque and see a bit of local life. But after all the excitement of the morning and the beating down of the hot sun, we were too lazy to take the initiative.

Soon we donned our life jackets again and were ferried back to our waiting ship. I was glad to find that the ship's swaying no longer bothered me. We fell asleep quite quickly and dreamed about floating among fish in the coral reefs. At least, that is what I did!!!

Visiting "One hundred thousand islands"!

The luggage has been emptied and put away. The clothes are washed, folded and back in the cupboards. Karthi's floors have stopped undulating and threaten to pitch me over only when I bend down to clean them. My sunburnt arms have finally stopped itching. The skin on top of Ani's ears have started peeling off. Everyone at Karthi is sporting a tan that is several shades deeper than their normal complexions. And there are absolutely satisfied grins on every face that no amount of summer heat can erase. 

For we are just back from a glorious five-day cruise to one hundred thousand islands! Otherwise known as...

Almost half of the time I've known DH, I've heard this refrain, "I want to travel on a ship. I want to travel on a ship." Well, I am the kind of person who has boat sickness for two days if I travel on one for more than half an hour. So you can guess why I was not very enthusiastic about the idea. But ever since we watched the movie "Mosayile Kuthirameenukal" and recently, "Anarkali", DH put his vague murmurings into overdrive and finally unearthed a way to fulfill his dream. My help was mainly confined to reluctantly supportive nodding and trying not to think how my seaworthiness would be tested! 

Thus on the 9th of this month, here we were at near the Lakshadweep wharf on Willingdon Island, Kochi.

After baggage screening, we were whisked off to the Mattanchery wharf where this beautiful lady was waiting for us!

That is MV Kavaratti, named after the head quarters of Lakshadweep. She is the biggest passenger vessel in India with a capacity of 700 passengers + 100 crew. She has five decks and we happily settled ourselves in a four-berth cabin. 

After stowing away our luggage and checking out our berths for comfort, we set out to explore the ship. Of course, first we had to find out where our meals were coming from!!!

Kavaratti is not a cruise ship, so the entertainment facilities are very limited. But since our package did not entail spending whole days on the ship, that was not a problem. The boys had a whole ship to explore and I had my pick of books in my bag! 

We got as near the bow as we could get when the ship set sail from Kochi...

In the evening, after a good lunch and lots of climbing steps to explore the whole ship, we ended up on the top deck to enjoy the sunset. We all took advantage of the proffered tour of the bridge and learned a lot of maritime facts. But to tell you the truth, I liked the view the best!

By dusk, I had increasing nausea and happily, my homeo doctor had prescribed me a number of medications to take according to the intensity of my discomfort. I took the medications as did Kunjunni who began feeling unwell by dinner time. We both hit our bunks right after dinner.  Ani and DH proved themselves the better sailors in our family! 

By the next morning, we were feeling pretty good. Did I get to lie in because it was vacation? No sireee! Breakfast was scheduled for 7 am and the first boats to Kavaratti were scheduled for 730. So I was up at 5 and getting ready as usual! Only Ani needed some persuasion to get going...

 

Not unusually, we found ourselves to be the first ones to disembark! 

Let me leave you at this point for a while, because the islands need a whole post for themselves... :)

Ask and be told....

Karthi is officially into summer hols from today. Oh yes, the kids' exams were over by mid-March and they have been completely immersed in activities of their own choice for the past two weeks. But it is not really summer vacation without the whole gang of neighboring kids finishing their exams and joining up, is it? 

Meanwhile their sly Momma has been using them to help finish reorganizing our home. We just had not realized till we called in the painters last December that Karthi was harboring a lot of junk. This time we were only getting our downstairs portion painted. So we had to shift everything except the heavy furniture upstairs where we set up "camp". In the process, cupboards after cupboards brought out so many things we had stashed away without thought. Our peripatetic way of life went on hiatus 5 years ago, and we never had to face all the accumulation of our belongings all at once like this. By the time we had to move things back, I was paralyzed by the thought!!! I would have taken a picture of the chaos that was the upstairs hall which was stacked on all sides with various things with only a narrow path left in the middle to walk through... only I was sure it would give me nightmares to look at it later, so I desisted :D

I have this strong belief that we get guidance to solve our problems before or as we are facing them. For me this usually comes in the form of - what else? - books! Last June, I got to read this fabulous book by Marie Kondo

I am and always have been very interested in organizing books and Marie's KonMari method has really helped me. DH and I decided that we will move down ONLY that which we use and love downstairs and would bag up the recyclable items for our dealer as we moved through the things we needed. That way, the recyclables didn't even come into our newly emptied space. 

I took this opportunity to dump a lot of stuff I was holding on to in the name of sentiment - which included old clothes, books that I never enjoyed any more, etc. As the kids and I went through the items, I appointed Kunjunni to ask me if I really was going to keep certain dubious items. He performed the role very well and prised out more useless items out of my grasping clutches and dumped them in the recycling sack. I only hope I will not take to raiding the sack which is currently awaiting the recycling guy now. Wasn't it really forward-thinking of me to appoint a supervisor over me? Knowing oneself is the greatest achievement one can attain you know! 

I applied the KonMari principle to getting the kids' clothes organized too. Every year our kids get clothes as gifts. While Kunjunni will happily wear anything that fits, Ani is very choosy and will not deign to wear something that he has taken a dislike to at first sight. Their clothes were arranged in stacks to which the laundered ones were added on top after each wash and they pulled off the ones on top the next time they got dressed. Which meant that on most weekends they would be wearing the same outfit! 

So we pulled out all their clothes and first I asked them to choose the ones that they loved and fit them. I stopped myself from persuading Ani to keep things that still fit, but that he didn't like. But I did snatch an old t-shirt from Kunjunni that had tattered ends and huge holes in the armpits! Gee, I think he is more like me than I thought I was!!! Then I helped them learn the KonMari method of folding their outfits to make them stand properly in the drawers. So now they get to wear what they love and can see all their choices properly! 

Now all that are left upstairs to be organized are our framed pictures and files and folders of every year from 2007. I am absolutely reluctant to drill holes in our pristine walls (just like guys with new cars are wary of each scratch!) and I think most of the files and folders need careful revisiting and decluttering. 

Speaking of help arriving in the form of books: I have to tell you about three books that came my way after I lost my mother. I chose them all for different reasons, but unknown to me, all dealt with mother-daughter relationships and helped me clarify my feelings and grieve properly. 

The first book is written by Brooke Shields:

This book of course jumped out at me because of the subtitle. Although my Mom was nothing like hers, I could relate to the death scene and acknowledge me feelings of being a witness to my my mother's passing.

I love reading the stories of crafters about how they evolved through their craft. So my next pick was Rachael Herron's book:

As I read through her stories, I found most of them related to her mother and I started remembering the days when Ma used to stitch dresses for me on her old Singer, the very one on which I cut my teeth, even before learning hand-sewing... 

This was feeling a little weird. Whatever I read ended up being about mothers! So next I chose one purely for the title without looking at the blurb. The title said "Glitter and Glue"... but the cover should have tipped me off???

Turns out Kelly Corrigan's father was the glitter and her mother was the glue. And if her relationship with her own mother wasn't enough, there was material about a family in which she au-paired where a mother had died of cancer and left a family bereft....

All these books helped me into coming to terms with my loss. Which is why I believe in guardian angels and divine guidance....

In Memoriam...

My mother lost her battle with cancer barely 8 days into the new year. We are still struggling to come to terms with the aftermath. My writer mind has been struggling to find the perfect words to remember my mother... but I have finally given up. I don't think any child can write a befitting memoir of a parent, especially a mother who performs an extremely complex role in a daughter's life. I would have to write a book to encompass it all...

So here are a few vignettes of my mother, gleaned from an old album and a few of her last pictures. She held my hand as she brought me into this life. I was privileged to hold her hand as she went out of hers. For this and all the myriad blessings that was embodied in my mother, I bow in profound gratitude to the Almighty. 

Ma on her wedding day.

A demure newlywed...

With her younger sister, my beloved aunt. The bond between the sisters was one of the strongest in her life...

With her firstborn...yes, me.

On my wedding day...

With all her children and grandchildren...

On the occasion of her surprise 40th wedding anniversary party, with her sister and sister-in-law... three bosom companions... My aunts who are also my surrogate mothers are the sole reason that I don't feel completely bereft of a mother now...

The last family celebration she attended... Vishu with us in 2015. 

One of her last pictures. Her smile still in place...

A horde of memories come stampeding in and no words can do them full justice. So let me stop here for the time being. 

Thamarasseri Churam - yethu!

All our Kochi friends always have this complaint about our capital city - Thiruvananthapuram doesn't have many signature restaurants... and then they go on to enumerate their hometown's signature restaurants like Kayees, Dhe Puttu etc., leaving us all with enough water in the mouth among us to float an armada if need be. Of course you can get decent meals at many restaurants and there is a veritable smorgasbord (pun intended!) of all-you-can-eat buffets all over the city, but very few places where eating is actually fun and you can remember a few dishes as your favorites.

Well, I for one think that this scenario is changing, slowly but surely - perhaps due to the influx of North Malayalis in great numbers who all must be complaining about the same. No doubt stodgy Thiruvananthapuram people are also reveling in this welcome change.

In the months of April and May this year, our regular FM stations were airing the ads of a very curiously named restaurant serving Malabari dishes. "Thamarassery Churam". This, as any Malayalam movie buff knows, is the phrase immortalized by the road-roller mechanic played by Pappu in Vellanakalude Naadu. Would that pique the interest of the denizens of Karthi? You bet!!

So we drove there one day in time for lunch, with my vegetarian DH who doesn't take well to biriyani either griping all the way about whether he would get a decent veggie meal. (You should know that this is the guy who went to visit several cities in the US - ONLY after checking and marking the nearest Indian restaurants in the area. As a family, we are very gastronomically handicapped!) Whether the food would be good or not, we were sure of some entertainment as soon as we saw this sign above the restaurant door...

And then came the menu...

I won't include the whole menu here, why endanger your keyboard with floods? And while we were waiting for our orders to arrive, we had this to look at...

No, not the couple... the wall behind them! We had a lot of fun guessing and arguing about the movies the quotes came from. And of course, DH got every one of them right as usual - and I really hoped the fun we were having would put him in a good mood when the food arrived! I will not put the whole wall pic here because you would like to try your hand at guessing them if you ever go there.

Soon our food arrived and the dark color itself was enticing to say the least...

At Karthi, we like our food really hot and spicy... so when we see pale curries, half the fun goes away. Ani who complains a lot when I make a spicy veggie dish was asking for more lamb curry even as he was gasping from its fiery taste. And - this happens very rarely - DH gave his seal of approval for the vegetarian meal! Yaay, that's all ticks in our book!

And if we got bored with the quote selection on the wall, there were cryptic puzzles elsewhere, like this...

And when it was time to pay...

As I understand, the spiciness factor can be varied according to taste. The service was prompt and courteous and the restaurant was spick n' span. All in all, we had fun. We've already marked down what dishes we would like to try the next time. And the kids go, "When are we going back to Thamarasseri Churam?" Such demand for a non-fast food place? We are happy!

For those who would like to try this restaurant for themselves, click on  the directions.

Disclaimer: This review is not sponsored by the restaurant and is based on just one lunch with a limited number of dishes... so please don't hold me responsible for something you don't like there! :D