Tellicherry

Tellicherry is my hometown…and a place I hold closest to my heart. As a child, I would spend my vacations in this quaint little town- a peculiar mix of tropical wilderness, agrarian life and remnants of an era of British occupancy.

Tellicherry represented to me a place where man and nature cherished a close association. To me, the place was a kaleidoscope of raw, unadulterated images of nature at its richest. Farms and fields, groves and pastures, ponds and rivers, water-lilies and storks, ducks and geese, cows and poultry, birds and butterflies- it was a place where nature enveloped you in its caress…. a place where you could see the sights and hear the sounds of nature. One saw the sky and the trees; one heard the rustling of leaves, the gurgling of streams and the crashing of waves.

As a child, I would hold monologues with nature. Nature was my silent companion. The emotions within me were often cascades that were hard to contain, but I would never express it to my parents. I was aware that there was something extraordinary about my emotions that my parents wouldn’t understand. And so, I would talk to the elements of nature- the sun, trees, streams and the sea. They would come alive in my mind. I liked to imagine that they listened and they understood. And so, we shared this delicious secret between us- this ability to understand each other. It was a secret I loved and treasured.

Of them all, the sea was most alive to me- perhaps because it was infinite and deep. It seemed capable of containing my secrets.

The sea was the hallmark of this little town. It is a wonderful feeling to live in a coastal town, where you get to drive past the sea every single day. This was exciting to me as a child…and it still is. It was the sea I loved. I loved Tellicherry so deeply that I always feared losing it to time. Being someone who never welcomed change when it came to the beautiful things in life, I was miserable at the subtle changes that seemed to erode the beauty of my hometown every year. In that regard, the sea was a reassurance. Its permanence was reassuring. I liked to think that despite the passage of time, despite transformations in my own self and in the town I loved, the sea was eternal. It would always stretch out infinitely, taking me back to those emotions from my childhood that I never wished to let go off.

As a child, I have spent many evenings at ‘Sea View Park’. In those days, the park was dull, with rusted swings and seesaws. I would never tire of watching the waves crash on the rocks….of watching fishing boats in deep waters of the sea, bobbing dangerously with the tide…of waiting for the arrival of dusk, when the sun would bid goodbye to the world in a most spectacular sunset. To me, no two sunsets were the same. It was an unforgettable slideshow of canvases from nature’s palette, splashing vividly onto the sky the richest of colors-from the red hue of sunset to the deep black of the night.

I liked to wonder about what lands lay at the other end of this Arabian sea. I once scribbled a note- ‘I love Tellicherry’, put it into a bottle and flung it into the sea when nobody was watching. I liked to think that even when I was dead, I would leave behind my love for Tellicherry on this planet.

Sea View Park has now been renovated. It is a beautiful park now, but it is the view of the sea which continues to fascinate me. I once went to the park with my father. The swings were all new. I played on the swing- the only adult amidst all the kids who were playing.  But my father did not stop me. I could only see the sky above and the sea below…it was like swinging between them. The sea was in a dark mood that evening- a dark serpent against an overcast sky. The sunset was obscured. I had known this was my father’s last time. Today, he is also one of the numerous elements of nature that I communicate to…all the time.

Today, these monologues are no longer a secret. My mother knows. But then, she herself has learnt to talk to nature. It fills the void in her life in ways that no human being could. Today, I am not embarrassed about these monologues…this extraordinariness of my emotions. The ability to talk to nature…to listen to it…to feel one with it- I know it is a gift that God gave me. And it is the greatest source of happiness and inspiration in my life.