Flavors of Different Kinds

“You have got to take that boat ride – the flavor of Kerala…”, persisted my mind, even as I munched on golden tapioca chips with black seeds on their hubs, just a little soggy in the sultry afternoon humidity of Kottayam (the tropical backwater town in Kerala). A spatter of humid tapioca chips on the tongue and occasionally in uneasy crevices of teeth cavities. A flavor of Kerala in its own right. A different kind of flavor.

A seeker of flavors that I am, there I was, on the Kottayam boat jetty. My mind brimming with anticipation. Promises. Great Expectations. Expectations that made boats ships. Isolation company. Hell cooler. Expectation. A flavor of Kerala in its own right. A different kind of flavor.

Everyone on that boat was looking forward to something. The boat of life… or the absence of it? An obscure, wheatish man in a cream-white mundu (a piece of cloth wrapped around the abdomen by men in Kerala) right up at the edge of the first row of torn, uncomfortable seats, staring at the boat wood right above the ridged ship window, gauging the perimeter of the area at hand. Or trying to gauge it, for, he seemed more interested in the last puff of his cigarette butt that was dangling between his sooty lips. The last puff would automatically entitle him to the next cigarette – new, long and puffy – the one that was precariously dangling right above his right ear, ready to fall any minute. Like the restless kid on the lap of the lady sitting beside me – the lady who smelled of fresh jasmine and coconut oil – dangling precariously on her thighs, partly on her right and partly on her left, neither side completely his. Ready to fall any minute. Looking forward to a breezy journey that would relieve him of the Kottayam heat and lull him to blissful slumber.

The wheatish man, who had stains of black on his lips and on his mundu, was carrying the extra cigarette and his brush, his pencils and his ruler. Anybody could tell that he was a painter. A painter who looked forward to his next job. And his next puff. His next job that would buy him his next puff. He was twitchy. Desperately twitchy.

Our pencils worked simultaneously. The thick pencil of his, venturing above and around his unsteady ruler, designed outlines. Boundaries for the black paint to stay on. Strict boundaries. Defined by strict, uneven pencil marks on the boat wall. The pencil of my mind, working backwards on the drawing surface from where the attached eraser on it was, erased all outlines. All boundaries. My palette worked on an infinite canvas. An even world of boundless backwater beauty. The beauty painted by inspirational strokes of Nature’s connoisseur hand. The beauty of aroma. The beauty of jasmine and coconut oil. The beauty of a breezy journey. The beauty of a blissfully asleep child. The beauty of tired, numb thighs of a tired mother. The beauty of houseboats, of sarus cranes, of blue waters, of lagoons, of rich-green paddy fields, of a prosperous harvest, of excited urchins jumping off the moving boat into plunging depths, of slender coconut trees, of mystifying music – felt but unseen. Like a fictitious legend. The beauty of flavor. Enticing flavor.

The wheatish painter, in the meanwhile, was into his second stub and into his black paintwork on the wall. Or out of it? In and out, actually. Coughing out ghastly phlegm, and filling color into boundaries. Like the choking smoke around his mouth. In and out. Out and in. It didn’t matter to him that his smoke had jerked a blissful kid out of his blissfully breezy slumber in a helpless cough. “Second-hand smoke is disastrous”, they’d say. “First-hand is safer. Well, relatively”, they’d say. The wheatish man, smoking the wheatish stubs, consoled himself by saying this to his mind: “At least I made the right choice!” A lesser mind. Bounded by strict outlines in pencil. A trail of gray ash, like a phantom, ready to disintegrate into thin air. A trail of temporary outlines. Of washable color. Of washable black color. Color that matched his lifeless lips. “Hey, it’s the flavor I look forward to too”, justified he. The nastiness of flavor. Ghastly flavor.

I couldn’t look from where I was sitting, but I could say that his work was taking shape; partly from the movement of round, yellow eyeballs in his eyes and partly from the sudden enthusiastic puffs he enjoyed – the puffs that led to more puffs that led to ghastly, noisy, whooping cough. Oh, how he “enjoyed” that!

The cool wind was a soothing grace on me. On the painter, it was a burden. A burden of fast-burning cigarette stubs. Of lesser “enjoyment”. What he did not realize (or chose not to) was that this was the same wind that assisted him in drying up his bounded work of black paint. Stroke by stroke. Fast. Faster than his stubs dried up his system. Organ by organ.

Fast enough, he was done with what he started at. He was done with the ‘looking forward to’ part, at least for now. He packed up his paraphernalia of dark pencils, a ruler, black paint and his smoky self into a careless bundle and leaped out of the boat as soon as I read “Alleppey” on a milestone that was more of a kilometerstone. Or a kilometerboard. “Unboard your ship”, instructed my mind. “Stay on”, pleaded my senses, still ecstatic from what they had inhaled over the last 28 kilometers. Patting themselves on their backs for what they took in and for what they chose not to take in. The flavor inhaled. The smoke ignored.

I reluctantly grabbed at one of the flavors – my half-full packet of very humid tapioca chips - and trudged down the aisle and down the mighty stairs of my mighty ship. I thought of Great Expectations. Of promises kept.

Suddenly, I thought, “What was it that the wheatish man (with the wheatish stubs) had created? Or destroyed??” Curiosity chose to take the better of me. Besides, I just needed an excuse to board back the boat. My ship. The boat of life. Or the absence of it? Up the mighty stairs, into the mast and through the aisle. Back to the obscure window-corner of the obscure sign painter. Back to his strict boundaries and his dry, black paint. I stared at the painted area.

“NO SMOKING”, it said!