On the windward side

On Vypeen in Kerala, as the sea makes ingresses

I can still feel it in my bones the eerie feeling seeing photos of the ghost town of Dhanushkodi many years ago. A friend who visited the place somewhat romanticised the eeriness, which I could never relate to probably because I belong to an island.

Dhanushkodi was destroyed during the 1964 Rameswaram cyclone and has been uninhabited since then. Though the possibility of a similar devastation of Vypeen in Ernakulam of Kerala was far-fetched earlier, something stirred up a fear. As a child, I would hear the elders saying the island is a gift from the sea and one day, it will be taken back. During the monsoon, when the sea soars high, I fear that the water is coming for us. It didn’t then. But now, it seems possible.

This time, I visited my parents after a long while. The sea is only a few yards from my house, clear and distinct late in the night from the windows. One early morning, I walked down the street along with a friend and her children. I instinctively walked across the sludge and the dike with ease, while they struggled.

The islanders gather and hang around by the wayside or sit on the ledge by the grocery store, smile and shake their heads at whoever passes by, ask about their well being, sometimes seek a little too personal details, watch you walk down and sometimes assess you. Out of habit, I smile to everyone, people who I know and don’t know. Some are caught by surprise. Some have furrowed faces. The turreted small houses have been replaced by concrete dwellings.

Still, the landscape remains more or less unchanged.

Limpid morning sky spans across the shrimp farms that we call kettu, surrounded on all sides with wind-beaten sedges or firecracker plants.

The children complain of the stink. It’s the tang of the sea, a smell so natal that I am slightly annoyed with them.