The day before, we went to a new beach. Well, the beach is not new in that sense. Truth be told, it has been around since ages and ages. It was just new to me because I was going there for the first time. I’d been seeing pictures of the place, and the huge statue of Lord Shiva that I thought a visit was warranted. Since the sister, yes the same one who bit me when she was two, and family were here, we decided to drive down.

It was a short forty-five minute drive to the place and we reached there in no time with the help of Mother Google. Imagine our surprise on reaching the place and seeing a long queue of cars! That’s when the truth dawned on us. It was a Sunday. It looked like a sizeable portion of the residents of Trivandrum had chosen the same day to be there.

We were going downhill when the policeman on duty waved us to a stop. They were regulating the number of vehicles going down. It wasn’t a long wait though and within ten minutes we were on the move again.

The beach was lovely though I did not wet my feet. The humidity was bad enough, I did not want the salty sea water to compound the sticky factor. Some of the area was cordoned off as being dangerous. In the other areas people were letting the sea kiss their feet.

I saw a cute dog sitting by some rocks. Then there were a couple of egrets doing a dance. The pond heron did what pond herons do best, flew in stood unmoving, looking for fish to eat. There were lot many black kites flying up in the sky, some of them swooping down low. And the squirrels! They were running all over the rocks and also on the huge statue.

The statue of Lord Shiva wasn’t as big as I had imagined it to be from the pictures. Not that it mattered. It looked majestic against the sunset sky. On our way home, I mused on the reason/desire of humans everywhere to make bigger and bigger statues and monuments to the gods they worshipped.

Here are some pictures:

©️ Shail Mohan 2024