Juggling pins flung through the hands of the others, and I spotted a unicycle propped against some suitcase of tricks. Lorena waltzed down the steps, took charge of a friend’s poi, and performed a few sequences, glowing, back in her natural habitat. Drums lined the steps, violinists and guitarists sprung up spontaneously, and Lorena gyrated through the motions of Flamenco.
Cochin, Kerala
The train rattled along, inducing in me the sluggish fatigue of rock-rocking train travel and blanketing heat. I sat atop a wooden luggage rack in third class, legs crossed, ankles pressed into the hard wood, to prevent my mosquito bitten feet from dangling in the faces of the people below. The man beside me sat hugging his knees. He wore a mint green handkerchief, folded into a triangle, over his mouth and nose, to prevent the dark coating of fine dust in his nostrils that was ordinary after an Indian train journey.
Out of the window, in a luscious landscape of immodestly green fields, palm trees stretched their necks in the sun. Waterlogged rice paddies reflected the sunlight; a mirror of still silver water and green stalks. A lazy stream wound itself between the green, and as the train curved, we rode alongside the ocean, grey and choppy. Kerala owes its fertility to 900km of waterways. Some flow far inland, but all have mouths opening into the tide’s ebb and flow. They are Kerala’s backwaters, and are a substantial part of the state’s appeal. Continue reading Cochin, Kerala>>
