Prologue – Me & Kerala
My love affair with Kerala began in late 2017 when I made my first Malayali friend in Kalgha, Himachal Pradesh.
I met Sabu Sir at Lost & Found and he promptly won my heart by gifting me a bottle of a funky smelling Ayurvedic Hair Oil (Bhringamalakadi?) and a Dairy Milk chocolate.
We met again in Delhi, Dwarka and he won my heart again by making me Puttu at 2 AM as we also did some lines of M. This was the first time I was encountering Puttu and boy I was floored. Then we went out and I rode his Bullet for the first time.
Later, I made other friends from Kerala and the people of Kerala struck me as incredibly warm-hearted and kind.
I missed Sabu Sir’s wedding, which he invited me to in Kerala. Then, when Shai asked me to his wedding in Kerala in 2023, I said yes immediately. Now was the time to make my pilgrimage to Kerala.
Part – 1 Life in Allepey
I arrived in Allepey from Kochi, a day after my birthday.
Alleppey, or Alappuzha, struck me as a quaint, sleepy, laid-back town that was exceedingly pretty.
At Allepey, I was living in a hostel on the second floor, which was run by a meticulous uncle who had very little space to let out for the hostel, but was running a good show and was mostly full.
He had a typical Goan/South Indian house, and part of the top floor was converted to a hostel with lounge chairs outside each room.
For some reason, the second floor was covered with an iron framework over the original cement. The stairs and bunk beds were made of the same material.
There were signs and a water faucet for cleaning your sand-laden slippers from beach excursions.
I would make my coffee in the kitchen on the first floor. If I am not wrong, I was travelling with my Moka pot and Pourover during that time.
I would sit on the lounge chairs outside to attend my office meetings. The place was so cramped that on Zoom, someone would have guessed that I was sitting somewhere in West Delhi from my background.
My favourite memory from Allepey is sitting on a nice beachside cafe there which was right next to the beach and doing my office meetings from there.
I also visited a lot of toddy parlours while I was in Allepey.
Once I turned up around 12 pm at a toddy parlour to attend our daily huddle.
A full bottle costs ₹140. I think I didn’t finish it all and gave half back to them. In the end, they charged me only for half a bottle.
I think I loved toddy so much because it was very sweet and tasty and the buzz was very sprightly like that of wine. It was also ridiculously cheap.
I befriended a man from Karnataka who worked in IT. The guy was thoroughly cringe and shallow, the way some South Indian guys are. I rented a scooter and we went to a few places together.
Later, we had a small argument over some petty money as we parted our ways.
Part 2 – At Cliff & Coral in Varkala & the interesting people I met there
I arrived at Cliff & Coral after looking for cheap hostels on the Booking(dot)com app. It was around INR 400 for an AC dorm.
I arrived on 3rd Jan 2024 at Cliff & Coral. It was an easy-going, relaxed beach hostel and was just a few meters from the beach.
At that time, there was a Tech dudebro from Bangalore living there. I am guessing he had mild social anxiety because he was always in front of his laptop. I kid you not. Later, we would go to the beach around 9-10 pm, and he would be on his small laptop the entire time we were there.
He was a Kannadiga, and he told me his father owned mines, but one of their mines had recently failed. He was working for a medical startup on a device that enabled patients to monitor themselves from home.
He was coding using ChatGPT, and he used the premium version. He showed me how to upload all my writings to ChatGPT in the Settings, if I had a premium version, and then ChatGPT would write exactly as I did, mimicking my tone.
There was a beautiful Spanish girl at the hostel, but she was not my type. She was running out of money while in Varkala, and the hostel manager allowed her to volunteer by painting in exchange for a place to stay.
In an impish bit of matchmaking, I told her that the Dudebro had a lot of money, and maybe they could travel together. I told her how some of my exes supported me while we were travelling together.
At the hostel, I also met S for the first time. We vibed a lot the first time we met. She also turned out to be a seasoned traveller and ran a boutique travel company which organised solo group travel for busy working professionals.
Our conversation turned to Parvati Valley, and I let it slip that I had gone all the way to Mantalai in 2019. She was taken aback. She literally said, “How could you’ve gone all the way to Mantalai? I could never go there.” I laughed and said something to the tune of, “It is a free world, anyone can go to Mantalai.”
She was slightly jelly but in good spirits.
S was actually reeling over from an untoward incident that happened to her at a Cliff & Coral party a few nights ago.
A drunk creep from Hyderabad who said he was an IITian kept pestering her at the party. S was a warm-blooded North Indian to the core, and she staved him off. Things escalated, and the word reached the owner of C&C.
I also met R.W. with S, who turned out to be a guy who was actually too good to be true. But actually, he was a legit good guy. Just a bit too unbelievably good Christian.
However, the coolest guy I met at the hostel was an (Icelandic?) guy who was incredibly open and cool. He had a heavily slurred speech, and he walked with a limp. He told me that he had fallen from a cliff in some Southeast Asian country and almost died. He was in the ICU for more than 30 days in a coma, if I am not wrong. Apart from this, he also had a major surfing accident. I joked about how he managed to fall off a cliff in every country he went to.
Right now, he was going to support his rockstar friends who were doing a concert, and he told me to book an Uber for him from my Uber account, which I did.
He also offered to pay me for a tiny espresso from my small moka pot, which I was carrying. I made one for him in the outdoor kitchen at the hostel and offered it to him in the hostel’s small cutting glass. He asked me how much I wanted for the tiny espresso. I told him that he could pay me whatever he wanted. He promptly pulled a crisp blue hundred-rupee note and gave it to me.
On my last day at the hostel, I met another new entrant to the hostel from LA, and she was surely my type. We definitely had chemistry; however, I was packing my bags and getting ready to move out.
Part 3 – The epiphany at Papanasam beach
Coming back to the second day at Cliff & Coral.
After what felt like a whole week indoors, cabin fever began to take hold of me. I longed to be free of the sheltered and indoor life I was leading.
Actually, in Varkala, I had been indoors for just one day, but the confined outdoor seating really took its toll on me.
In the night, the Dudebro and I decided to head to the beach.
We reached the beach around 9:30 pm through a small lane from Cliff & Coral. The beach was pitch dark. I think you couldn’t see beyond 10 metres.
The Dudebro propped against a boat on his small-ish laptop, and started doing his work while listening to music.
I took off all my clothes save for my underwear.
Not knowing how to swim, I scaredly entered the dark waters.
For miles ahead, there was just the dark Arabian Sea.
I have always enjoyed dips in the sea. This was probably my first time being alone in the sea at night.
I could feel a lot of fear holding me back. But it was also really pleasurable, and it thrilled me to the very core of my being.
It was then that it struck me that mother sentient beings were as limitless as this sea I was swimming in.
This insight struck me with great force and brought me a lot of joy.
And then another insight hit me, and then another.
In this way, insights kept coming to me one after another.
I was overjoyed.
From the house in front of the beach, someone shone a flashlight at the sea.
The flashlight kept coming back at me at intervals.
Turned out it was the night watch by the fishermen at the beach.
Apparently a drunk guy drowned a few weeks back in the sea. So it could’ve been related to that.
The insights kept coming back to me one after another.
They were mostly Buddhist, and centering around love and compassion.
Although, it was stuff that I had heard or read in teachings.
But now it was all coming together, strung together, vivid, and imposing.
I was possessed. I frolicked in the sea, afraid of the tall waves which consumed me and excited by the teachings which were coming to me, one after the other.
I didn’t dissect this experience enough. Probably because it was easily explainable psychologically without attributing it to anything supernatural or spiritual.
In a short while, R.W. came to the beach. This was the moment I first met him in Varkala. I shared the insights with him that were bursting in my head.
At that time, he was collecting ordinary sayings of ordinary people.
I think I must’ve looked like a possessed fanatic as I approached R.W. on the beach completely naked save for my blue underwear and told him about countless mother sentient beings that were like an ocean.
I told him that everyone we knew was struggling with one thing or the other.
Perhaps, these are simple things but at the time they seemed really important to me for some reason.
R.W. told me that this beach was sacred according to the locals and they called it Papanasam beach. Papanasam means ‘destroyer of sins’ alluding to the curative properties of the beach.
After a while R.W. left.
I frolicked for so long in the sea that my blood sugar became extremely low(I am a T1 diabetic).
Finally it was time to leave.
As me and Dudebro went back to Cliff & Coral I was blacking out and falling and tripping over because of hypoglycemia.
So much so that Dudebro actually noticed I was not well and asked me if I was okay.
Thankfully, we reached our hostel safely and I climbed my bunk bed and started eating a tangy candy I had to restore my blood glucose levels.