Every household closer to the canals in Kuttanad own a private step to the waterbody. There was a time this seemed a luxury to the city dweller in me. Weeds that wade the canals have never been a botheration to my eyes until a few years ago. The realization that the water below the green carpet can’t move or breathe beyond a point turned me worried as I spent more time living there. It carry the fertilizers and pesticides from the farm land, the sewage from the shrines above the pampa river and the waste dumped from the God’s own land’s tourist boats. Yet the life line flows through the land and its people.
The discovery of Pongala nights occurred very late in my rational-irreligious life after all these years in Trivandrum. But it came with some surprises that I’m beginning to enjoy these nights beyond its religiosity.
All these days, women invade the public spaces with so much vigour that other wise seem extremely hostile in all our social discussions.
Its not that men are absent, but they just turn invisible in this massive flow of women from across the state. I feel to the extent that a temple is doing a magnificent job in providing a day out for these women which the secular state failed to achieve!
