It was a pleasant change waking up to sounds of nature. The bustling city of Trivandrum woke me up with the rude double-honks of cars communicating and navigating the reckless streets and the stuttering purr of the small, noisy Rick-Shaw engines starting up for early fares. But out here in Kumarakom, it was the quaint sounds of nature: nasally caws, high-pitched tweets, seesawing whistles, lulling palm leaves and rippling waters.
Suddenly, a motorboat plowed into view, a whitewash wake forking behind it as it swerved carelessly to the screaming enjoyment of its passengers. Something seemingly trivial, but it struck a chord with me. Perhaps it was a sign of something much greater, a transition in Kerala, or maybe the more operative word would be an 'invasion.' An invasion of Western ideals, of capitalism, of neo-liberalism taking hold in this distant east land: the growth of a wealthier class slowly emerging from the masses.
As the sun broke through the hazed horizon, new sounds began to take hold. The vrooming purr of motorboats and houseboats faded out nature’s morning calls as the paddy field tours began. Their passengers weren’t Westerners, but Indians, from Punjab and other richer Northern states. They had travelled down to visit what was remaining of India’s natural beauty and untainted wilderness. To witness communities still living with nature, still washing their clothes by beating them on stones by the river, still building their homes from felled trees nearby, still growing food and livelihoods from the soil of the small plots allotted to them. But these new sounds, the purring engines, they were sounds of change: the sounds of a world of less, slowly, but surely, transforming into a world of excess.
I slid the door out onto the balcony of our hotel room and heavy air immediately sagged my shirt as I gazed out at another musky morning. I begged for a cooling breeze as I scanned the early-morning horizon, the sun still hidden behind a humid haze. “This is the India I came to see,” I thought as I stared out over the lake. A slender, shirtless man propelled a small skid through the water with a long bamboo pole, his white, wispy beard trailing in the wind. I thought of Hemmingway’s Old Man At Sea as the scrawny man propelled the boat with ease, lifting and switching the bamboo to hold a straightened course.
As the sun broke through the hazed horizon, new sounds began to take hold. The vrooming purr of motorboats and houseboats faded out nature’s morning calls as the paddy field tours began. Their passengers weren’t Westerners, but Indians, from Punjab and other richer Northern states. They had travelled down to visit what was remaining of India’s natural beauty and untainted wilderness. To witness communities still living with nature, still washing their clothes by beating them on stones by the river, still building their homes from felled trees nearby, still growing food and livelihoods from the soil of the small plots allotted to them. But these new sounds, the purring engines, they were sounds of change: the sounds of a world of less, slowly, but surely, transforming into a world of excess.
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