Tuesday, May 08, 2012

A Rocking Home

We all crave a bit of land, four walls and maybe a tiny garden to fence it all in and call it home.. The traveller in me was always fascinated by homes people make in unconventional places..

In school, I remember feeling this intense desire to meet an Eskimo so that I could wangle an invitation to his home and check for myself if he actually had carved his home out of blocks of ice. Now, when I was asked to make an igloo's replica, it's another thing that the Mallu kid chose to make it out a scraped out coconut shell and smother the woody igloo in cotton to get make-believe ice.

That I guess was my first brush with unique houses...After my igloo-fascination days came my days of love for house-boats....and did it have anything to do with a demure Sharmila Tagore doing a Kashmir ki Kali on Chitrahaar?? In retrospect, it did have a lot to do with it. Imagine sitting in front of a television as a wide-mouthed young girl in sweltering and humid Kochi, watching a pretty woman rowing a boat filled with flowers on a lake close to snowy mountains. If that wasn't pretty enough, then there were those elaborate boats carved out of wood, that looked the ultimate in glamorous lifestyle.

Ooohh by the way, it is important to know here that just because I am a Malayali, I wasn't born on a houseboat and I haven't lived on one. Somehow I get this feeling that most people planning a trip to Kerala and seeking my advice expected me to be a veteran of houseboats - the kettuvallam kinds!

Imagine my glee watching houses on the waterways of Amsterdam and then my amazement to learn that these floating houses were as expensive or in some cases more than buying property on the land! Now I knew no one who lived on a houseboat, or I would have fancied spending a night in one of them.

Sadly, even though I did manage to travel to Kashmir and enjoy Kashmiri hospitality, it wasn't on a houseboat....I peeked into a few as I took liesurely rides on the shikaara....and it is not like gardens can only be grown if you have a patch of land! Some innovation, a bit of ingenuity and imagination - and home can be on watery foundation but then imagine investing in shikaras or boats like gondolas to get around instead of mooning over a Porsche or a Ferrari?!!


14 comments:

  1. There are plenty of similar houseboats in backwaters of Trivandrum now minus the snow n mountains, Deepthy:)

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    1. Sirji, Kindly to be noting the paragraph bang in the middle of the piece that does mention the Kerala backwaters and the houseboats there! Just that hamesha ghar ki murgi daal barabar hoti hai :-D

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    2. It is the 'ghar ki murgi wali baat...' I had noted what you wrote that is why i mentioned, minus snow clad mountains!Just like igloos of coconut shells:)

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    3. I plead guilty to that...I have been on kettuvallom rides from Kochi to Alappuzha etc, but haven't spent a day living on it..more like when you have a 'room on land' why live on water kind of question arises! The bane of not being a tourist in a tourist's paradise.

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  2. hey! kirti here. I loved your blog and are in great awe for your style of writing . Needless to say I am now following you .On yr previous posts though I wanted to comment couldn't figure out how.
    looking forward to many many more intereting stuff.
    apropos yr this post , yup even i was fascinated by igloos as a school kid and now am looking forward to see floating market in thailand.

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    1. I am yet to make my way to Thailand, but I have heard the floating market is a major fascination. I have seen a lot of Travel and Living documentaries on it! :) Welcome to my blog Kirti and I hope you find interesting stuff whenever you stop by!

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  3. I find I enjoy peeking into people's gardens. They fascinate me more than homes.

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    1. My Amma is a lot like that, she constantly peeks into gardens - someone's home or no, to compare the new exotic varieties they have there as compared to her own..She is very garden proud, though all she has is a very tiny strip of land around our house to do as she wishes..:) And Lord Forbid, I admire a plant somewhere that I didnt know existed in her garden. She would remember it till my next visit home, however many months later it be, and point the plant out! :) You started me off on a nostalgia trip with that comment...:D

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  4. I think we are definitely kumbh mein bichide hue...I always wanted to meet an eskimo so that I could look inside an igloo...still havent got a chance :) *not that I am expecting in this janam*

    loved the pictures :)

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    1. See Rs mom, there are two ways to look at it..you look at it the good way, Kumbh mein Bichde Hue, the alternate theory is all our thoughts have already been thought by someone else too..we might just be the ones penning it first!! SO much for original, painstakingly thought thoughts!!!! ;)

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  5. I prefer to be on terra firma. Imagine sleepwalking and landing in the icy cold lake!

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    1. Hahaha...:) True that! :) It will be like waking up to cold reality! :)

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  6. haha, the eskimo part is so true. I could clearly picture the lessons on Greenland and the Tundra region in geography. And yes, I was to ask you about the houseboats in Kerala until I came across 'important to know here' bit :-) And Kashmir ooohhh. You have travelled!!!

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  7. :) Travelled indeed! You wait as more stories tumble out of the Journomuse closet...:D

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