Monsoon Histories I

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Photo by RD Gray on Unsplash

I came back to Kerala for a few days, and for once, it's been a trip I don't regret (so far). And honestly, I feel like at this point in India's political climate, this is the place I need to be in. A place where "meat puff" refers to beef. Seriously, chicken tastes disgusting in a "puff." 

Perhaps it's the incessant rains. Rains have a way of lifting my spirits. Of making everything feel less bleak. 

Perhaps it's the fact that, for once, travel did not prove to be an ordeal. I've been travelling constantly since Saturday, and it's all been pleasant, all the way. 

Well, there was that incident where a drunk dude kept trying to press his erection against me in the bus, but I was well armed - with a blue sketch pen. When he realized that I planned to mark up his white dhoti in blue every time the dhoti ventured close to me - incidentally marking the exact spot where his penis would be, he wandered off to find somebody else to sexually harass. 

Visiting my grandparents' house was also pleasant. It was just me, my grandparents, and three of my great aunts. And that house, so tranquilly situated in one of the greenest places I've ever seen. It was the most satisfying thing to just be there.

It's a little scary, a little haunting to remember that my grandparents and my aunts are all well into their seventies and eighties. That this could be the last time I see all of them, that perhaps the next time I go to Kerala, it will be to attend a funeral. It's a little scary to know that the people who remember my being born are slowly all going away. It feels like I'm losing a part of my history, memories and events I will never know about all gone with them.

(Continued here.)


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