“These rubber trees have sucked the land dry,” the old
woman lamented. Maggie and I were standing on the veranda of her house which
exuded an air of wellbeing if not affluence. A younger woman, who must have
been the daughter-in-law of the house, had invited us there to have some
drinking water.
We were at a place called
Kochareekal, about 20 km from our home. The distances from Kochi and Kottayam
are 40 and 50 kilometres respectively. It is supposed to be a tourist
attraction, according to Google Map.
There are days when I get up with an
impulse to go for a drive. Then I type out ‘tourist places near me’ on Google
Map and select one of the places presented. This time I opted for one that’s
not too far because the temperature outside was threatening to cross 40 degrees
Celsius.
Kochareekal Caves was the choice this
time. A few caves and a small waterfall. Plenty of trees around to give us
shade. Maggie nodded her assent. We had visited Areekal, just 3 km from
Kochareekal [Kochareekal literally means ‘Small Areekal’]. That was in
September 2021 when the monsoon-supplied waters were still running in the
hill-brooks. Read about that trip of ours here.
“Areekal has gone dry too,” the old
woman said to me with a trace of sadness on her face. She blamed the rubber
trees again. Rubber trees had brought a lot of money to Kerala earlier. Now
they are quite useless since synthetic rubber is available from China or
wherever at far cheaper rates. Rubber trees, the erstwhile cynosure of Kerala,
are now the fossils of a bygone era of prosperity.
I’m pretty sure that Areekal and
Kochareekal were both forests until a few decades back. Kochareekal doesn’t
have proper road-accessibility even now. The last stretch of our drive was over
rocks and rugged mud-paths. And then rather abruptly a signboard appears: Pay
& Park – Kochareekal Caves. Ours was the first vehicle to enter that
parking lot that morning.
As we walked ahead, having parked our
car, we saw another parking lot that was free to use. A couple of cars and half
a dozen bikes were parked there. As we descended the steps to the caves, we saw
a few tourists mostly young pairs of boys and girls. Maggie and I felt like
undesirable intruders in their paradise. However, we found a place to sit and
enjoy the beauty of the landscape, especially the mammoth trees that towered
sky-high.
There was no waterfall. A small
puddle of water lay stagnant below the caves. Even the caves weren’t any
attraction because you could only see the entrance from below.
The place was a letdown. But the
drive was quite interesting. Our Maruti Alto limping over pebbles and rocks. A
lot of greenery on both sides should have been a consolation. Will some wild
elephant suddenly appear before us on the road? I wondered aloud. It alarmed Maggie
a little. These days the Malayalam TV news channels always bring us news about
all varieties of wild animals choosing to visit human habitats and carrying
away domestic animals. We have encroached their spaces and they are coming back
to claim them.
India lost a lot of forests from 2016
to 2023. A lot of forests in North India including Chhattisgarh’s pristine
Hasdeo Arand forests were handed over on a platter to Gautam Adani and a few
such individuals in these years. But what happened in Kerala? Kerala’s forests
were snatched from the wildlife long before 2014. It takes time for the wild
animals to come back claiming what belongs to them. Adani and his benefactors
in the government will have much to answer for in the due course of time.
Maybe, their descendants will be the ones to do the answering. The sourness of
metaphorical grapes eaten by parents is the bitter legacy of the offspring.
I don’t know when Areekal and
Kochareekal lost their forests. The old woman of the house where Maggie and I
now stood said, “Those gigantic trees, they were there as huge as they are now
even when I came here as a young girl.” Did she belong to a family of
trespassers?
No one other than the two women was
visible anywhere. The men of the family might have gone to work in the town.
Kerala’s villages are economically unviable now. The truth is that the
bottomless Malayali greed ravaged the villages. It is a complex history that implicates
the policy makers (politicians and bureaucrats), religious leaders and the
ordinary people.
The women of the house wanted to earn
a little money from the tourists by selling beverages. Lemon-soda, mineral
water, Sprint, tea… The younger woman offered us the options. She went inside
the house to prepare the lemon drink that we chose.
“There was a temple here,” the old
woman said pointing to the parking space from which she and her daughter-in-law
(or daughter, I really don’t know) were collecting Rs 20 each from the
vehicles. In the rainy season, the free parking spaces will be full too soon. I
thanked her for giving us an entire ground for parking our little car and then
asked what had happened to the temple.
“The Pentecost people came and bought
up all the lands here and they destroyed the temple. We bought this plot from
them recently and converted it into parking space.”
I had parked my car on a piece of holy land,
in short, a land on which had stood a temple. The word used by the old woman
was ‘kavu.’ Kavu is not a temple in the ordinary sense. Kavu, a feature
unique to Kerala, was a verdant patch of land considered sacred and left
untouched by humans. It homed all sorts of herbs, plants and trees as well as
animals preserving a special gene pool. There would be a shrine too somewhere
in it dedicated to a local deity. In short, there would be some patch of forest
in many parts of the villages in Kerala.
They disappeared when progress
marched in. Development. Vikas.
“The old people used to say that
there was a passage from this cave here to Areekal,” the old woman continued
while Maggie and I sipped the aerated and salted lemon water. “But it doesn’t
exist anymore. Landslide and other natural changes destroyed it. The only
attraction that was left was the waterfall. And now that’s gone too.”
“What about Areekal?” I asked. “Is
there water there?” I remembered the charming waterfall that Maggie and I had
stood before there a little more than two years ago.
“Not now. Only the rains can
rejuvenate that waterfall now. The springs are all dead.”
I paid the bill for the drinks and
the parking charge which the younger woman received with both hands cupped
together, a gesture that had become obsolete in Kerala long ago when the caste
system was abolished. A smile beamed on her face. “Come again in the monsoon
season,” she said. “Sure,” I answered.
“Will we return in monsoon?” Maggie
asked when we were on our way back.
“We made two women happy today,” I
said thinking of the dead springs of Kochareekal and the dying springs of
Areekal.
Below are a few pics
from the place.
The video shows the path that the water took once upon a time.
It's nice to get out and see places you haven't visited before. But it sounds like a sad little place.
ReplyDeleteSad little place indeed, but it evoked a lot of emotions in me.
DeleteHari Om
ReplyDeleteA rewarding outing - if not, perhaps, in the way you expected. Do return in monsoon - you may be happier with it then too! YAM xx
But the road is very forbidding. It will be almost intractable in monsoon.
DeleteWonderful travelogue, insightful.
ReplyDeleteOne can feel the gloom that surrounds this place.
ReplyDeleteGloom, yes, that's the word.
DeleteEnvironmental degradation of Kerala is really sad. Like you said it has such far reaching impact even on our culture. Hopefully we are able to reverse it sooner than later.
ReplyDeleteSome old practices, which would seem superstitious at the surface, had certain environmental roots.
Delete