The heat this year is unbelievable. Quite unlike mellow Kerala. Or should that be mellow Trivandrum? You see there are parts of the state Kerala that are warmer than others. For example, Palakkad, a land locked region away from the coast is definitely one step ahead of Trivandrum which is caressed by the sea.

I have spent summers in Palakkad almost three decades and more ago. Our house, by that I mean my parent’s house of course, where I was but a visitor. Anyways, the house faced rice fields. It was an old kind of house, double storied, with wooden ceiling and tiled roof. There was an enclosed verandah in the front, mango and coconut trees in the yard, a covered well, a pond with fish in it.

That house was where my parents moved to when my father retired. At the time I was pregnant with the First Born and staying with them because the L&M had been sent on a study course by the army. Our two dogs lived there with us too. One an Alsatian and Indie cross called Simi and the other a Pomeranian, Chinchu. I have written of them elsewhere. Unlike Luci, they were ‘outside’ dogs, tied up during the day and let loose at night.

I loved gazing out at the rice fields from the verandah of the house. In the distance, on the other side of the undulating fields, was my aunt’s house. In the summer the fields looked golden yellow at first, and later brown and barren. What I liked best though was when they were the lush green I so loved. The windows of my bedroom, to reach which I had to climb wooden stairs, unfortunately faced away from the fields. I could still see the mango trees and through their foliage, a glimpse of the house next door.

The First Born was born when summer was at our doorstep. The oil baths and the warm water baths the pregnant and post delivery women are subjected to as per the custom only made matters worse. What’s more, the power supply was too erratic. Add to it the fact that the son was a night person. He slept a lot during the day, but woke up frequently at night, crying, waking up even the neighbours who then came home with unsolicited advice. Ahh! Village life!

Those days, whenever I saw the temperature listing for Trivandrum in the newspapers, I used to wish to be magically transported there. But now it feels like Trivandrum has levelled up with Palakkad. The same dry heat, the same hot air rising off the land. Have they exchanged roles, or is Palakkad worse still than Trivandrum,? I can’t say because it’s been so long since I have set foot there.

©️ Shail Mohan 2024