Today we got on the train to Trivandrum to see my dad’s extended family. Public transport is really cheap
here and we thought we’d take our chances with $1.15 train tickets.
Apparently 4.5 hours in a slightly cramped, hot rail car gets pretty
uncomfortable. We’ll probably upgrade considering air-conditioned
cars with more room are only $11.50. First world problems. My parents
and grandparents and probably a few generations before them grew up
on these trains. My dad rode his first one 41 days after he was born.
Back then the coal-powered engines threw plumes of smoke into the
passenger cars in their wake. You wore your particularly shitty train
clothes for the ride cuz when you arrived, you and your clothes
emerged a few shades darker that when you hopped on. Things have
improved a lot since then… but I’ll still take the AC car. The
view was pretty nice though; the usual endless coconut trees but cut
short this time by the Kerala coastline in the distance.
When we arrived, we all piled in an
Innova, enjoyed the blast of cool air and headed to my Grandma’s
oldest brother’s house. The place was the archetype of a
traditional Indian home. Despite the brick and concrete structure the
home has an airy feel with doors and windows on every wall. There
aren’t really any doors, more just openings in the wall and the
windows are just large iron skeletons with no glass to stop the air
as it slowly lulls through the house. The rooms all fall around and
feed into one larger space at the heart of the home. It all came
complete with a cute grampa and grandma.
He may be cute and delicate now but my
grandma’s older brother was a handsome motherfucker back in the
day. The walls of the central room were adorned only with a few
ancient black and white framed photos. There was one picture of the
couple from each of the weddings in the family and graduation
pictures from those siblings that had went into higher studies.
Framing the doorway on each side were two imposing portraits of each
of my great-grandparents. If you couldn’t tell from the home
itself, the framed photographs made it clear that you wouldn’t find
a single album in the house. You probably wouldn’t even find
another photograph. It was so simple and so marvelous. And probably
left much greater an impression than the hundreds of photos on my
facebook page ever will.
The whole place was a bit of a step
into the past. After drinking a bit of salted buttermilk and
chatting, we walked around the land behind the home. Many of my dad’s
relatives live on relics of once large farms. Though few remain as
the vast plots they once were, each is almost sure to contain a great
assortment of plants we’ve eaten but never thought we would see. In
that home and the ones that followed, I came across papaya,
pineapple, tapioca, guava, turmeric, ginger, pepper, coffee and other
herbs in addition to the usual abundance of jackfruit, bananas and
coconuts. All just casually sitting behind homes amongst the rubber
trees and flowers. I probably even missed a few. I should make
particular note of the bananas. Every time I come to India I remember
that the banana world consists of far more than the usual single
option we find at the store. Here the word banana is almost as
ambiguous as pop. Every home we went to seemed to add another
“banana” to the endless listing of red, green, yellow, small,
large, varying textured fruits we through into a single category.
Each tastes the same fundamentally but differs in some subtle way
that’s worth trying, even the 20th time around. Moral of
the story is, bananas at home suck.
I got on a bit of a vegetation tangent
but most of the day was just spent roaming from house to house seeing
tons of relatives. Many don’t mean much to me but each is some
uncle, aunt or cousin of my dad’s and somehow he’s gone to war
and lost a limb with each and every one of them. The occasional
entertaining tidbit from 40 years ago was worth the day of mostly
just quietly listening and trying to understand hours of stories in
Malayalam. I did learn a lot about zoology from my 15 year old cousin
sister who’s obsessed with animals and in about the same boat I am
with these house-visits. That was my day and probably what tomorrow
will be like.
One more quick story. We drove by
Hanuman’s hill today. Probably the greatest story in Hindu
tradition is the Ramayana. Growing up you hear it a hundred times,
watch several TV adaptations of it and probably end up at some point
wishing you could be one of the characters. It’s a long story but
it all culminates with a battle with an evil demon king on Sri Lanka.
As valiant men fall including Rama’s brother, an herb that grows
only in the Himalayas becomes essential. The story goes that the
mythological hero Hanuman flew to the Himalayas, found the herb and
brought the whole hill he found it on back to Sri Lanka. Of course,
Rama goes on to win the battle and save his queen but the imperative
mountain, rumor has it, was dropped off by Hanuman along the Indian
coast in Kerala. Hopefully the tiny snippet and context can sort of
convey why a hill we drove by was so exciting and worth mentioning.
Kind of like passing by the pumpkin carriage that took Cinderella to
the ball. For a second, you wish all over again that you could’ve
been a part of the Ramayana.
Another day and a half left in
Trivandrum. A lot of family and fun to be expected.
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