The Grace of India

The last night we spend on the houseboat, my foot reaches a level of pain just a notch above unbearable. It is so painful I feel scared. I don't even mind the intense pain -- at least, not so very much -- but I mind the possibility of having seriously damaged my foot. I haven't exactly been following doctor's orders. And I'm a dancer, not just as a hobby but as one of the primary ways by which I define myself. Why had I been risking my ability to dance by traipsing through India with a broken bone?

Miserable with pain and regret, I huddle on the boat’s cushioned bench. Barely able to lift my head, I do not eat more than a few bites of supper. I have no more medicine except the last few pills I am determined to save for the 12 hour flight (including a layover in Hong Kong) back to Seoul. After seeing my condition, Katie decides we should skip going to the elephant temple in Alleppey and head directly back to Cochi the following morning.

But the thing is that no matter how poorly I'm feeling, the go-go-go of my personality is still stronger. The next morning in the car, as we speed our way through Alleppey, I feel a tiny diamond of energy left in my body. I want to spend it.

"You know what? I think I can manage a trip to the elephant temple," I tell Katie.

"Can you pass me the breakfast bag?" she responds. "I think I might throw up."

The supper which I'd felt too sick to eat the night before had apparently given Katie the south Indian variation of the dreaded Delhi belly.

I extract our breakfast, pass the bag, and wish her luck. I am disappointed to not have seen any of India's famous elephants during our time here, but even I am finally ready to admit defeat in this matter. They are the only thing on our India "wish list" that we did not get to see.

About 10 minutes later, while watching traffic zip past us out the car window, I think my eyes might be playing tricks on me. Clouds sweep the ground in the morning, so I can't see altogether clearly, but believe I can discern a large, grey shape moving through the white mist.

"Katie! Look!" I cry, excitement temporarily canceling the pain in my foot.

"Do you want to see better?" the driver asks with a kind smile. He pulls the car off to the side of the road and rolls down the window to give me the best view.

There, walking down the road through the dream-like mist of morning, is a large elephant and its mahout. The elephant's sinuous trunk swings gracefully from side to side as it lumbers forward. It passes so closely to the car that if I reach out my hand, I would be able to touch it.

I feel this elephant sighting, fulfillment of our final desire in India, is a special blessing, a sort of farewell gift.



Thank you, India.

The Backwaters of Kerala

For two days, Katie and I drift along the backwaters of Kerala in our own private houseboat, which has been converted from a former trading boat. The boat is small but pretty. It has wicker chairs and faded cushioned benches on the front deck, wood panels carved into reliefs of wide-winged birds and bosomy women, a bedroom with tall windows that open onto the water and a mosquito net into which I manage to completely entwine myself both nights while I'm sleeping.


Woven rattan covers the boat's roof and walls. There is also an upper deck which the boat's captain tells me several times is "very beautiful, very beautiful. But so sad you cannot see it. Your leg." After the third time of his mentioning the beautiful upper deck I cannot see, I wait until his attention is focused on the river and then crawl on my knees up the ladder and onto the top deck. It is very much like the lower deck but without the shade, so I crawl back down again.


{if not for the courage of the fearless crew, the Minnow would be lost}

We also have a personal chef on board the boat. Just in case you read it too quickly the first time around – our own personal chef – such luxury! The chef prepares us three meals a day plus a snack. All the food is local. There are flat, disc-shaped fish caught from the river; fluffs of white rice harvested from nearby fields; various sweet-spiced curries; sun-yellow pineapple that drips down our chins when we bite into it; eggs offered before us in various incarnations; hot, handmade potato chips sprinkled with tiny green curry leaves. There is more food than I can remember, more than we can eat. Eating is pretty much our only activity on the houseboat -- unless napping also counts as an activity -- and this is some of the best food Katie and I have been served the entire trip, so we do our best to consume everything put on the table before us, though this admirable goal of gluttony proves impossible to meet meal after meal.


We pass by a number of houseboats in the main canals, but in the smaller ones, we are alone, the boat slowly putt-puttering down the waterways. At one point, the canal becomes clogged with glossy green lily pads. Our captain deadens the engine, pulls out a long oar, and poles his way through the thick vegetation.


We don't see very many people or many other boats until we get approach the towns, but sometimes a long, narrow canoe silently passes by and sometimes women in earth-toned sarees walk single-file down paths by the rivers. They smile at us as our boat passes by them.


Every once in a while, a church appears on the riverside. It surprises me to learn that the apostle Thomas came to Palyar in southern India, where he built the country's first church ages ago . (I can't recall the actual date but remember it struck me as having occurred a really, really long time ago in what can also be referred to as "the days of yore" if you're looking to plot it on a historical timeline.)


At one point as our boat languidly moves down the river, I notice two women on opposite sides of the river bank. They are both hanging laundry on their opposite sides of the canal and talking to each other across the blue divide. I wonder if their lives are always this way, a friendship separated by water, or if sometimes they take a boat or a swim to visit in person.


Children cup their hands around their mouths and call out “Halloooo!” as our boat passes. "Hello!" I call out in return, laughing and waving both my hands. The backwaters are beautiful, lovely, and lonely. The sunshine, an intense, pure blaze of white, brightens the sky and falls in streaks across the uncovered parts of the unvarnished boat deck. Kerala is a place which I dreamed of visiting years before I arrive. Nothing happens while I'm here. Nothing is supposed to happen. I simply am. This life is better than the movies, better even than books. It is. I am.