Some places retain their pristine beauty in spite of human presence. Ezhattumukham is one such place just 12 km from Cochin International Airport. Literally the name of the place means the mouth of seven rivers. Maybe in the heyday of Kerala's monsoon, one could see those seven debouches clearly. What I saw the other day, when I landed there rather by chance along with Maggie, is an elaborate spread of granite boulders and chains of rocks with puddles of water in between. Of course, the river is dammed up keeping all the water on the other side and channeling part of it for irrigation.
The place has a quaint charm even with all those rocks and boulders. As Alice Walker said, in nature nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Even the contorted trees with all their bizarre bends and twists have a perfection that arrests your attention. Those contortions can tell you stories. Some of those stories will resonate with your own inner distortions.
A hanging bridge connects the opposite banks of the river. Like a poem that stretches beneath your feet with an inhuman humility. It struggles to suppress its shakes and tremors as footfalls span its constriction.
From the bridge you can see the dam across the river. Well, it's not a dam in the sense you are familiar with. A chain of rocks has been converted into a barrage to direct the water into two irrigation canals, one on each side of the river.
You land from the hanging bridge into an elegant park that has quite many bowers for young lovers. You can see romance blossoming there as you move along the tessellated walkways by the side of one of the irrigation canals.
Though there were quite many visitors the day I landed in this place, the absence of man-made filth was conspicuous. You won't find plastic bottles and food wraps and aluminum foils and cigarette packs and beer cans and even spittle blotches. Humanity isn't as filthy as you thought!
We are capable of preserving paradises too! The realisation consoled me with a feeling of redemption. Ezhattumukham is infinitely more ennobling than churches and temples with all their gods and divine battalions.
PS. This post is part of Blogchatter's CauseAChatter
Absolutely! I have found the silence of nature a whole lot more relaxing than any temple.
ReplyDeleteNowadays places of worship are places of wars! Nature still has some sanctity,mercifully.
DeleteWelcome to God's own country. God's own Paradise is lost to India anyway.
ReplyDeleteLooks like a lovely serene place to visit.
ReplyDeleteIt is.
DeleteNice to know about Ezhattumugham. I love what I see in the first picture. Rocky places have a beauty of their own. :)
ReplyDeleteEspecially when there's water around!
DeleteI was happy to read that there was no garbage left behind, too often our pristine places are defiled by those humans who think the whole wide world is a garbage dump!
ReplyDeleteOne good thing I notice as I travel in Kerala is precisely this civic sense that is conspicuous here.
DeleteIt is rare to find such places of untouched beauty. Lovely pictures!
ReplyDeleteIt's indeed a great place. Something out of the way.
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