Skip to main content

Beyond seas and hills

On Kozhikode beach in early 1990s


The oceans and the mountains have their unique charms. The mystery of the mountains and the infinity of the oceans can hold us spellbound. Sometimes they invite us to meld into them and vanish altogether. The cliffs have often invited me to jump off them and the seas have stirred similar longings.
 
At Malampuzha Dam in late 1980s
There are other places too without seas and mountains but with a lot of charm and grace. They may be the trails through a village whose pristine beauty has not been swallowed by the octopus of development. Even a desert has its own music to entice us with.
 
Maggie melding into a shrine at Mahabalipuram in late 1990s
A year ago I visited Mango Meadows, world’s first agricultural theme park. It is in central Kerala, 30 acres of land tucked into typical Keralite villages. It has an amazing variety of plants which were once used in Kerala’s traditional medicines. Apart from them, there are also other trees and plants which are on the verge of vanishing from the face of the earth because of ‘development’.

I loved the place for its sheer natural beauty with all those plants and trees as well as the lake in which you can go boating. You can also go cycling on the narrow lanes within the park. I loved that too.

Here are some pictures from that visit.

A view of Mango Meadows

Even the art in the park is in tune with the park's theme

There's even a traditional rowboat!

I loved the cycling 

PS: Written for In[di]spire Edition 253: #Travel

Comments

  1. Bookish delight and joyDecember 21, 2018 at 7:35 PM

    Very interesting

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 21, 2018 at 11:30 PM

      You must have been surprised to see one of your old friends.

      Delete
  2. dee NambiarDecember 22, 2018 at 7:49 AM

    Mango Meadows sounds like an interesting place.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. dee NambiarDecember 22, 2018 at 7:54 AM

      I just looked up the site from the link in the post. Impressive! :)

      Delete
    2. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 22, 2018 at 8:47 AM

      I liked the place. It is quite unique as you must have understood from their site.

      Delete
  3. Neeraj KumarDecember 22, 2018 at 9:58 AM

    And I thought that it was only me who thought of diving into the seas and jumping off the cliff when encountering them. The Pics are really refreshing sir. And the first pic seems as if a still from a movies having all its heroes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 22, 2018 at 11:25 AM

      Glad to meet a kindred soul. 😃
      The first pic belongs to those wanton days of thoughtless youth.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Remedios the Beauty and Innocence

  Remedios the Beauty is a character in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude . Like most members of her family, she too belongs to solitude. But unlike others, she is very innocent too. Physically she is the most beautiful woman ever seen in Macondo, the place where the story of her family unfolds. Is that beauty a reflection of her innocence? Well, Marquez doesn’t suggest that explicitly. But there is an implication to that effect. Innocence does make people look charming. What else is the charm of children? Remedios’s beauty is dangerous, however. She is warned by her great grandmother, who is losing her eyesight, not to appear before men. The girl’s beauty coupled with her innocence will have disastrous effects on men. But Remedios is unaware of “her irreparable fate as a disturbing woman.” She is too innocent to know such things though she is an adult physically. Every time she appears before outsiders she causes a panic of exasperation. To make...
4 comments
Read more

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

Butterfly from Sambhal

“Weren’t you a worm till the other day?” The plant asks the butterfly. “That’s ancient history,” the butterfly answers. “Why don’t you look at the present reality which is much more beautiful?” “How can I forget that past?” The plant insists. “You ate almost all my leaves. Had not my constant gardener discovered your ravage in time and removed you from my frail limbs, I would have been dead long before you emerged from your contemplation with beautiful wings.” “I’m sorry, my dear Nandiarvattam ji. Did I have a choice? The only purpose of the existence of caterpillars is to eat leaves. Eat and eat. Until we get into the cocoon and wait for our wings to unfold. A new reality to unfold. It's a relentless hunger that creates butterflies.” “Your new reality is my painful old history. I still remember how I trembled foreseeing my death. Death by a worm!” “I wish I could heal you with my kisses.” “You’re doing that, thank you. But…” “I know. It hurts, the history thing. I’...
9 comments
Read more

The Death of Truth and a lot more

Susmesh Chandroth in his kitchen “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought,” Poet Shelley told us long ago. I was reading an interview with a prominent Malayalam writer, Susmesh Chandroth, this morning when Shelley returned to my memory. Chandroth says he left Kerala because the state had too much of affluence which is not conducive for the production of good art and literature. He chose to live in Kolkata where there is the agony of existence and hence also its ecstasies. He’s right about Kerala’s affluence. The state has eradicated poverty except in some small tribal pockets. Today almost every family in Kerala has at least one person working abroad and sending dollars home making the state’s economy far better than that of most of its counterparts. You will find palatial houses in Kerala with hardly anyone living in them. People who live in some distant foreign land get mansions constructed back home though they may never intend to come and live here. There are ...
10 comments
Read more

Silence and Redemption

This is a promotional post, let me be honest.  I've started a YouTube channel. A way to keep me busy and cheerful during the retirement that I'm opting for from March 2025. But teaching runs in my veins. So I will continue to teach for as long as I can.  My students have stopped listening in class saying that they can learn from YouTube. So I thought of shifting myself to YouTube. Let my students and anybody's students get better interpretations of lessons than what YouTube is currently providing. That's my intention.  Since students of today want everything in capsule form, I intend to present all the lessons in just ten minutes. My presentations are titled A Lesson In 10 Minutes . Above is my ten-minute lesson on the poem Keeping Quiet by Pablo Neruda. 
8 comments
Read more