"Iron bars – a lifelong choice" or wisdom in advertising from Kerala

The breeze coming through the open

Houseboat in semi dry dock

windows of a battered, red Kerala transit bus cools and dries the sweat on my face, hair and clothes, enhancing the pleasure of being in motion again. The side windows have practical metal shutters instead of glass and in case of wind or precipitation, the shutters will be lowered to lock you in a dark, heaving, rolling tin box. Otherwise they stay up, letting the air flow through all the sitting and standing human bodies, pressed together and getting jostled along in the tropical humidity.

Waterway traffic includes many tourist and utility craft

I shared the bench with an older couple and later a mother with her two children. The ubiquitous regional buses of Kerala are typically dented and run down, but the speeds are negligible and sudden stops indicate the brakes are well maintained. The clearly designated emergency exit in the rear of the bus must have been designed in another climate for it is covered in glass.

“Iron bars – a lifelong choice”, a sign warned as we roared past. Did it mean one should constantly be vigilant, in order to recognize and break down the cages one automatically constructs around ones’ self? Or that we should use bars made by the sign owners to construct our cages?

After a long stretch of contract work, being a

full time employee is a big change. While I find the control factor of clocking in and out via fingerprint scan a little eerie, taking my first paid vacation since 2005 is a novelty I can thoroughly enjoy. Maybe the sign meant that whether or not you feel caged is a matter of choice?

I booked a boat tour in Kerala with Mr. Pushparajan, to whom I paid a mint, but it was that kind of market, being Christmas day and me without a reservation, as per usual. In fact, an auto rickshaw driver brokered the deal, further indication the arranged price would be high, however, I liked the captain from the start and just wanting to get out on the water, I accepted his offered rate.

A smaller canal in the Kerala Backwaters

Pushparajan is 56 and father to a son and a daughter. The son is studying to be an electrician. “That’s a good job.”, I remarked, referring to it's perception as a well paid trade in both Canada and Germany. According to data on http://www.payscale.com/ an electrician in India in 2014 earns an average annual salary of 142,000 Indian Rupees (approximately 1,800 Euros or 2,600 Canadian Dollars).  The rate of a recent proposal for a national minimum wage in India for all jobs is 15,000 IDR per month which works out to an annual salary of 180,000 IDR.

Pushparajan tours from Alappuzha: +91-9288839231

India's economy has developed rapidly in decades past, but there are still many people
trapped in poverty who can take little comfort from it's growth.

15 years ago Pushparajan switched from rice farming to giving boat tours to tourists. Among the benefits were better money and fitness. He was emphatic in his preference for the latter occupation, asking me which I would enjoy more. I said I would have chosen paddling too. Later, on my request, he found a stretch of canal without too much traffic and let me paddle his boat for a bit. It was hard work but I imagine it was not as hard as urging a pair of bullocks through a rice paddy from sunrise until sunset.

Communist state politics within federal republic of India

Kerala is one of India’s richest states and also staunchly politically left. A unique feature of Kerala is the presence of CPI(M) (Communist Party of India (Marxist)) graffiti, posters and hammer and sickle flags. While currently not in the ruling coalition, the CPI(M) leads the LDF alliance, one of two main political alliances in Kerala, which, in 1957, was one of the first states worldwide to elect a Communist government. Whether it's the political climate or the climate, Kerala seems to move at a more relaxed pace than other Indian states I've visited.

The Kerala Backwaters are a sweet-water

The lush rice paddies are irrigated from the backwaters

system of lakes and slow moving rivers laced with myriad canals in the lowlands before the west coast of southern India. Pushparajan paddled us in his canopied canoe through the canal system, past dike-contained rice paddies and farming and fishing villages. The paddies are approximately one meter below water level, according to Pushparajan.

The tour took around 6 and a half hours, including an excellent extended lunch of a magically shrinking fish, which, despite appearing to lose some of its’ length between my choosing it and its’ arrival at my table, was the second best fish I’ve had in my life, the best being a fish barbequed over coconut shells at a roadside shack in Flores Indonesia between Moni and Maumere.



Pushparajan dropped me off at one end of a village and indicated I should take a stroll through to the other end where he would pick me up. He carried on with the boat for a few hundred meters and put his feet up for a rest.

Kerala - keeping the canoe tracking.

I felt really foolish carrying my ostentatiously large, heavy camera past the concrete houses built in a row along the narrow strip between the canal and the rice paddy. The villagers, including a group of children, paid me no attention, going about their days as if I wasn’t there. I wished there was a store so I could buy something to somehow justify my presence. The kids didn’t ask for money or pens or for me to take their picture. They just kept on playing cricket with a soccer ball. I snapped a quick shot but it was out of focus. I went to shoot again but, reconsidering, I stopped and put the camera away.