Malabar Musing and Mosquito


Kerala never fails to enchant, same case this time. This trip was special, and didn’t disappoint. A honeymoon in Kerala conjures up exciting images for most. Fed by scenes of coconut trees, boat races, backwaters, kathakali and karimeen, Incredible India is initiated in these popular iridescent images.
For me, this trip was a homecoming of sorts. Born a Malayali, and a true one at heart, it was time to shed the Mumbaikar sheen and smell the land. We did four destinations and each sparkled in its own glory, juxtaposing different facets of the same Gods creation to exhibit different flavours of God’s own country. We saw a silent backwater holding its own against a roaring sea front at Poovar. We saw nature at peace with itself, disturbed only by humans at Kumarakom. We were closest to the heavens in Munnar, sometimes within touching distance. And at Cherai, we signed off an idyllic end to a trip of alifetime. As we touched down in Mumbai, a rather bumpy one in the state airline, it was a rude return to reality from a ravishing escape.
After the eulogy, the reality. Kerala is the neatest, cleanest place that one can ever visit. Hygiene and cleanliness begins at home and even the rarely found beggar has neat clothes on. Its surprising then, in the wake of such personal hygiene, to see the incidence of Chikungunya and other diseases, again. The conclusion is simple and quite a hard slap on the state machinery. The civic systems are not good enough to take care of locally generated waste. Every house being kept clean means that there’s a lot of garbage out there, especially in a state with a very high density of population. What makes matters worse is that it rains a lot and hence chances of water getting accumulated and hence contaminated also are high. Add to that, a host of backwater fed districts, which is incidentally where the epidemic is most prevalent.
Recently, the state Govt. did a wise thing by demolishing a host of illegal structures at Munnar. The current chief minister is a man of principles and could be the best bet that the state has in addressing problems in healthcare and basic amenities. If only he got his priorities right, lest God’s Own Country gets labeled Perpetually Prone Country

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