Today, the first and longest leg of my vacation, that is, my four week long stay in Kerala comes to an end. Tonight, approximately at 18:30Hrs I’ll board a train (If it is on time) to Chennai. And as it always is, this is just the right time to recall and retrospect on my little sojourn.
First and foremost, it does seem like I have hit the wall with my blog writing. I have skipped two weeks of blogging during this vacation, when I am actually supposed to be freer to do more of it. However, I like to maintain that I have been taken busy during the last four weeks. I have been working around my new house; visiting places; reconnecting with my family and relatives; enjoying siestas; hogging, boozing away and adding adipose to my waistline.
In the last four weeks, I have had almost all the keralite goddies that I can fathom of. My MIL kicked off the hogging season serving me a heavy platter of sumptuous mallu lunch. Since then I have not looked back. After 28 days of gobbling up every bit of what was being served, which comprised of my Mom’s, MIL’s and many relative’s ‘salkaram’; an Onam Sadya; a Birthday Party; Iftar Parties; the world’s best Chicken Biryani from Paragon; Scotch Whiskey, Local Brandy, Military Rum and; many many many more portions of Chicken Biryani from here and there, I have added up 5 kilos and around 1½ inch to my waistline.
Alongside having all this food, I have been reconnecting with my family and relatives. My eldest sister, Caroline came down from Thiruvanathapuram to celebrate Onam and brought along with her, Kevin’s best friend and cousin brother Austin. After many years, she tied me a rakhi and her daughter Angelina, tied the first rakhis to Kevin and Yohan. Almost twice a week my dad’s gang of retired cronies would come down for their day long sessions of Rummy and I would join them, not to win or lose, but just to live our family’s good old rummy tradition and be a part of it.
While at Trissur, we drove down some 65kms, where my boys had a great time at the Silver Storm Water Park, located next to the famed Waterfalls at Athirapally. Later on, while travelling from Trissur to Kannur, we stopped by at my favorite Paragon Restaurant at Kozikkode. At Kannur, we made most of the beaches, visiting firstly our very own Baby Beach and then later the more famous one at Payambalam. Just yesterday we drove down to the Mahe Church and on our way back drove alongside the Muzhappilangad Drive-In Beach, where some infrastructure development work was in progress, and which, my Project Monitoring sense says, should be ready for tourists within another four months time. But yes, don’t expect that structure to last long enough as I didn’t see enough vibro-rollers compacting the base fill for the interlock track. Well, but that’s how construction works in India.
Amidst all the eating, reconnecting and sightseeing, I was working around this new house setting it up. Albeit most of my time was spent shopping for furniture and various wares/fixtures, I did manage to find time to fix some Photo Frames, some mirror lights, a ceiling fan and some hooks in the laundry to hang some cleaning aids. As usual, after all the running around and setting up, there’s still a lot to be done and no time left. Anyways, that again is a Home Improvement thingy. It never ends.
And then, there was a ‘Lesson Learnt’ too. Few days after landing into Kannur, I got myself an Airtel prepaid SIM. A little bit of naughtiness coupled with Curiosity pushed my bawdy side into enrolling for something called as ‘AL Friendz Chat’. I called my first ‘Airtel Female Chat friend’ and lo, there was this Call Center Type Biharin female with an ex-Bar Girl like lingo trying to turn me on. I was so distraught with disappointment that I went straight to my wife and confessed. This one was certainly not a secret worth keeping. Furthermore, everyday my inbox is now full with desperate messages. So, here I am advising all my male friends soon to hit the naughty forties – Keep your hands off these Mobile Chat Femmes. They are not worth it.
Although it doesn’t sound very exciting, my days in Kerala were pretty engrossing and in many ways very enriching too. So much, that my activities kept me away from FB in general and pushed me into skipping my blogging ritual twice.
Well, that’s it and nothing else. Just these are the few things that I did in the last four weeks.
