There’s a poem in Malayalam that describes the serene beauty of Kerala. It roughly translates as: ’She has her head resting on the lush green pillows of the Sahyadris and her feet dangling in the deep blue waters of the Arabian Sea; and her immaculate body is adorned with the ornaments of the backwaters.’
These ornaments crisscross the entire stretch of the state from Thiruvananthapuram to Kasargod, and measures over 900 kilometres in its undulating length. It is a blue-green labyrinth made of canals, lakes and rivers. The most picturesque of them is in the southern part of Kerala and spreads over four districts: Ernakulam, Alappuzha, Kottayam and Kollam. It comprises five large lakes interlinked by canals, and breastfed by 38 rivers.
Says Manu Menon, a naturalist and wildlife photographer based in Kerala, ’Due to the dynamic nature of these waterbodies where sea water and sweet water continuously intermingle with each other, a unique ecosystem is created. Here a wide spectrum of flora and fauna, of both the sea and the sweet water variety, have been living in perfect harmony for millennia’.
Adjoining these backwaters is another habitat called Kol wetlands that’s unique to Kerala. The major ones being in Parappur, Vembanad and Ashtamudi. Much like it happens in Kachchh in Gujarat, large swathes of land near the backwaters get completely submerged in water during the monsoon creating innumerable islands. When the water drains off from here after the rains, they once again become flatlands where paddy is cultivated from October to March. As many as four species of migratory fish have been recorded in the Kol wetlands, and they have been declared as a Ramsar site for their international ecological significance.
Just as there are National Highways in the rest of India, there are National Waterways in Kerala. The longest of them is National Waterway No.3 that runs from Kollam to Kottappuram for a marathon distance of 205 kms.
I had done the highway four years ago. We had stayed on a kettuvallam or a houseboat for a night and two days at the ever-popular Kumarakom. I still remember sleeping on the deck under a canopy of twinkling stars. Much before that I had spent a night at deep sea, near Bhayander in Mumbai. And the difference between the two nights was dramatic. Though it’s the same canopy of stars that you sleep under in the deep sea, the wobbly fishing boat makes you feel insecure, and with no land in sight anywhere you feel like a lonely speck in the infinite universe. But in a houseboat in the backwaters, you are the centre of the universe, safely cocooned in the orchards of swaying coconut palms.
This time I decided to stay away from the National Waterways and take a small bylane instead. My search for uncharted waters took me to the backwaters of Murinjapuzha, which literally means the Sliced River. A tributary of Moovattupuzha, it is 25 kms long as the duck swims.
At the ’tea shaap’, as I was sipping tea and nibbling at a parippu vada (or dal vada for the uninitiated), the President of the local Panchayat told me, ’Saar, what you have done is right. It is high time tourists leave Kumarakom and Alappuzha, and explore these virgin waterways instead.’ And true to his words, in the amazing waterways of Murinjapuzha there were no traffic jams of houseboats. The channel was being criss-crossed only by small country boats and smaller canoes.
This island is just one of the hundred islands that dot these untested backwaters spread over 20 square kilometres. The smallest of them is just a few acres and uninhabited; and the largest is around 3 square kilometres with over 1700 houses, churches, temples, schools and hospitals.
It’s a world interconnected only with waterways, and a boat is the only mode of transport. So you go to school by boat, you go to work by boat, you go to the market by boat, and of course you visit your neighbour’s house by boat. So each house has a parking lot for the boats, and everyone in the house - men, women and children - are adept at rowing to their destination.
Anju Jose was the man who introduced me to this amazing waterworld. Unlike the huge, luxurious kettuvallams or houseboats that can be moored only in deep water, and are therefore kept at a respectable distance from the shores, Anju’s boat could approach the land at will. Whenever the water became shallow, he would quietly dismantle the motor and fish out the huge bamboo pole for rowing closer to the land.
Thus we touched base at many places in the three large islands of Poothotta, Chempu and Murinjapuzha, and many more tiny ones.
In all the smaller islands, there was a peculiar problem: ’Water, water, everywhere; not a drop to drink.’ Though surrounded by an abundant quantity of brackish water, there are no sweet-water sources on these islands. So the water available on the islands is used only for bathing, washing vessels and washing clothes. And in one of these islands, I saw the paradoxical sight of water being transported on water.
There was a whole new world out there waiting to be explored. And standing on the hull of the boat, I felt the same thrill as Ibn Batuta the Chinese traveller, and Marco Polo the legendary explorer, both of whom had been here many centuries ago. First there was the Magic Island, which even the smallest canoe could not approach as the water was only one foot deep all around for a radius of half a kilometre. So you had to wade through knee-deep water for 25 minutes to reach there. Then there was this necklace of islands each of which had its chosen occupation. So there were islands that had poultry farms, duck farms, banana plantations, prawn farms, Chinese fishing nets, toddy-tapping, sand-dredging, shell-meat collection, lime production, coir-making etc.
I met an old lady on Chempu island who was weaving magic. Using a small wooden contraption, she was getting unruly strands of coconut fibre to form a small rope, and was then getting two such small ropes to merge into one just like two entwined serpents.
As our country boat took a U-turn on the waterway, I saw the high tide coming in. And I fervently hoped that it only was the usual high tide, and not the rising sea water caused by global warming as recently reported in the newspapers. When that eventual deluge happens, many of these tiny islands will face a watery death and the beautiful waterscapes of Kerala would then change forever. See them while they are still there.
