The gorgeous blackwaters of Kerala

It was pitch dark at 4:30am. "Let us rob him," said Red Shirt. Green Shirt asked, "What if he fights back?" Red Shirt replied, "We will kill him." They were talking about me in Malayalam. I was alone in a remote boat jetty, trying to explore the lesser-known backwaters of northern Kerala.

More than ten years ago, I was in Alleppey. I was there to experience the famed backwaters of Kerala in southern India. Alleppey was the Mecca for all backwater related activities. There was a very popular cruise from Alleppey to Kollam. "I can book the ticket for you," said my hotel receptionist. The ticket was ₹400 ($6) for the 8-hour journey. I reached the boat jetty for the 10:30am boat. It was an old wooden boat with an aisle and wooden padded benches on either of the aisle. I took my seat on one of the benches in the front. There was nobody sitting next to me. There were about 70 to 80 passengers. There were people from all over the world - Europeans, Koreans, Japanese and Taiwanese. And a few Indians too. There were no locals on the boat.

The boat followed the main waterways of the backwaters. It did not traverse the smaller canals, missing the local life in the villages alongside the canals. Beer and snacks were available on the boat. So, there was a party going on. There was a toilet too at the back of the boat. The boat made two stops. The first stop was at Amritapuri, where there was an ashram (a hermitage) of the famous female guru Amma (Mother). She was also known as the 'Hugging Mother' because she hugs thousands of people in her darshans (audience) every night. Apparently, all your sins will be cleansed by her hug. Guidebooks suggest that you break your journey and spend a day or two there. So, a lot of foreign tourists got off the boat and an equal number of foreign tourists got onto the boat from there. 'Were all those people who got onto the boat, cleansed of all sins?' I wondered.

The second stop was for lunch. The boat stopped in a small island, where there were rows of wooden tables and plastic chairs. Lunch was a typical Kerala meal, served on a banana leaf. The first course was rice with meen kozhambu (fish in coconut gravy). The Asian tourists opted to eat from a bowl with their own chopsticks. The Indian tourists gaped at them. Most of the Indians were north Indians, and they asked for a spoon. I started eating the rice with my hand, as it is traditionally done in south India. All the Europeans gaped at me. They took my picture and some of them took videos of me eating with my hands. That's when I decided that this cruise was not for me. I wanted to explore the backwaters of Kerala, but I wanted to travel in a boat where locals travel. I wanted to travel where tourists don't gape at each other.

I came back home, researched and found out that the backwaters of northern Kerala are rarely visited by tourists. 'You are not likely to come across a single tourist', I read. That was the reason, a few years later, I was in Kannur airport. It was the grandest airport that I have seen in India. I checked the arrivals and departures board and saw that there was a flight to the middle-east, practically every 10 minutes. There were flights to Riyadh, Jeddah, Muscat, Kuwait and other places. Millions of people from northern Kerala work in the middle-east. Kannur town was full of five-star hotels and glitzy malls. Mercs' and BMWs plied the roads. The town was awash with 'oil money'. 

From Kannur, I took a bus to Payyanur. The local buses in Kerala do not have glass windows. They are open. The wind blows in and messes with you. The greenness of Kerala never ceases to amaze me. Next to the road is the light green of the grass. Then the darker green of the shrubs and bushes. And finally, the dark green of the coconut trees. As is typical of Kerala, the road was a single lane road, wide enough for one car. But two buses would hurtle along at death-defying speeds in opposite directions. I checked into my hotel in Payyanur and tried to find the timings for the local ferry. The hotel receptionist said that she did not know. Since it is a non-touristy place, there was very little information available. The guidebooks did not have the information. A blog that I read, mentioned that the ferry was at 5am. The Kerala State Water Transport Department website said that the ferry was at 10:30am, but mentioned that the timing was a '12.15 O CLOCK SCHEDULE'. I did not know what that meant.

I decided to go with the timing mentioned in the blog and take the 5am ferry. At 4am, I got an auto-rickshaw (tuk tuk) from my hotel and negotiated a fare to go to the boat jetty. The auto-rickshaw travelled for about 4km along tarred roads and then turned into a mud track. The track was through a forest and it kept getting narrower and narrower. We reached a point where we could no longer go forward. The auto-rickshaw driver said, "Walk along the track. You will reach the boat jetty." I walked along the dark track for about 5 minutes and I then heard the sound of water. I had reached the boat jetty. The boat jetty was just a 10" x 5" slab of concrete, by the water. There was a tall lamp post with what appeared to be a dim 10-Watt bulb hanging from it. I checked the time on my phone. It was 4:30am.

The power went off and even that light from the dim bulb got extinguished. I waited in the dark. After about 10 minutes, I heard the sound of men talking. The sound appeared to be coming from the water. Soon, I saw the outline of a small boat. Two men stepped out onto the jetty. One man was wearing a green shirt and the other man was wearing a red shirt. They saw me and Green Shirt asked in Malayalam, "What are you doing here?" I replied in Tamil, "I am waiting for the ferry." "Oh. Tamil! There is no ferry now. It's at 10:30am," said Green Shirt in Tamil. I can understand Malayalam but cannot speak it. 

By now, they had walked past me. I was now standing between them and the water. Green Shirt asked, "Where are you from?" I said, "Bangalore." "What do you do there?" he asked. I said, "I am an engineer." "Software engineer?" he enquired. I said, "Yes." We were conversing in Tamil. Red Shirt, who had been quiet till now, interjected. He told Green Shirt in Malayalam, "He is a software engineer from Bangalore. He must be rich." Green Shirt replied, "But he won't be carrying all his money and standing here." They had assumed that I knew only Tamil and could not understand Malayalam. Red Shirt said, "Let's find out." Green Shirt replied, "What do you want to do?" "Let us rob him," said Red Shirt. "What if he fights back?" asked Green Shirt. Red Shirt replied, "We will kill him." "What will you do with the body?" asked Green Shirt. "We will throw it in the water," replied Red Shirt. 'Has he done it before?' I wondered.

"What gives value to travel is fear," writes Albert Camus in Notebooks. When I was standing in the dark, in the boat jetty, I hadn't been scared of being robbed. I had been scared of dogs. Stray dogs. Twice I have been bitten by stray dogs in India. You need to take a Rabies injection within 24 hours of the bite. 'Would that be possible in Payyanur?' was my worry. After taking that first injection, you had to take three more shots within a period of one month, from the same vial. 'I would be stuck in Payyanur for one month' if I got bitten. The second time that I had been bitten, I had to cancel my flight tickets to the U.S. and lose money, since I had to stay in Bangalore for one month, to take all the four shots.

While the two men were talking, I had been evaluating my options. To the front of me, the two men were standing. To the back of me, there was water. On my right, there was a forest. On my left, there was a coconut grove. I had decided that I would scream and run into the coconut grove. There had to be a hut. There had to be someone who looked after that coconut grove. I decided that was the safest option. I also figured out that all three of us were around the same age. So, possibly I could run as fast as them. But they would be physically stronger than me. They were most probably fishermen.

Green Shirt said, "He will probably be carrying a few hundred rupees. That's all. He won't be carrying all his gold with him." "Let's find out," repeated Red Shirt. Green Shirt said, "He is not wearing any gold chain or gold ring. He is not even wearing a watch. Forget it." I think that was the tipping point - me not wearing any jewellery. Green Shirt then turned towards me and said in Tamil, "Come. Let's go and drink some tea." They walked along the forest path and I walked behind them. Five steps behind. We reached a tea shop in the middle of the forest. It's only in Kerala that you will find a tea shop that's open at 5am. I ordered a tea and told the owner that I needed to get back to my hotel. He pulled out his phone and called someone. I paid for the tea and Red Shirt's eyes were on my wallet, as I pulled it out of my pocket. After a few minutes, an auto-rickshaw arrived and I got a ride back to my hotel.

I came back to the boat jetty at 10:30am and got the local ferry. All the passengers were locals, except for a European backpacker. I asked her, "How did you know that the ferry is at 10:30am?" "Norwegian blog," she replied.

The incident took place in a matter of a few minutes. But while it was happening, it seemed like an eternity. This strange paradox of the passage of time is splendidly summarised by Doris Lessing in "Under My Skin": Once I was making a mental list of all the places I had lived in, having moved about so much, and soon concluded that the common-sense or factual approach leads to nothing but error. You may live in a place for months, even years, and it does not touch you, but a weekend or a night in another, and you feel as if your whole being has been sprayed with an equivalent of a cosmic wind.

Has the path less trodden ever been dangerous to you? If so, where?

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Have you read my previous blog? Click on this link to read, "Visas - the easiest and the toughest": http://kodavarthi.blogspot.com/2021/01/visas-easiest-and-toughest.html

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