Whispers of Water and Memory
As a child, I spent many hours on river and stream banks. They wove through my growing years, teaching me lessons in their many forms. I may tell those stories another time. This piece, however, reflects on two rivers of Kerala—the Periyar and the Meenachil.
Some time ago, I spent a week on the banks of the Periyar River while staying at the Aluva Guest House, once the summer palace of the Travancore royalty. The river lay just a stone’s throw from my room, and I could listen to its music as it flowed gracefully past. History whispered from the walls of the old palace, but the river’s song was more compelling. Soft yet insistent, it carried me away from kings and palaces into a timeless communion with flowing water.
Periyar holds a prominent place not only in Kerala’s geography but also in its folklore and literature. For the acclaimed Malayalam poet Vayalar, the river flows dancing with a thousand anklets, each ripple a silver bell. As the river and its banks remain in eternal embrace, I longed to draw closer. A concrete footbridge spanned the river just above the water level, and I crossed it again and again. It felt almost like walking on water, as in the biblical story. The sensation of moving across a vast expanse was so vivid that, for a moment, I forgot the bridge beneath my feet and imagined the river itself supporting me—a fragile echo of the divine.
Theatre of Shadows
At dusk, the sky above the river turned into a theatre of shadows, filled with the battle cries of thousands of bats as they began their nightly journey. They hovered over the campus, covering the evening sky like dark clouds, before flying away to distant destinations in search of whatever they sought. Watching them was eerie—mesmerising, petrifying and strangely enticing all at once.
Local people say these bats were the original dwellers of this land, long before the palace was built. The trees on the campus are enormous, probably more than a hundred years old, and provide them with ancestral homes. There is something almost primaeval about watching these creatures emerge from their ancient abodes as darkness descended.
A Bridge Between Worlds
Morning brought an entirely different river—serene, silver coloured and covered in a thin veil of mist. Pilgrims could be seen taking their ritual baths and praying for their ancestors. Watching them sitting by the river, remembering their departed loved ones with a tinge of sadness and tenderness, I, too, felt transported into a divine realm with them.
It appeared to me that the Periyar was a bridge between worlds—the living and the departed, the temporal and the eternal. It gave me calm and awe, humbling and elevating the soul all at the same time.
The River of Home
If the Periyar was a grand stage, the Meenachil River was a familiar hearth. Meenachil is my birthplace.
Born in the misty hills of Vagamon, the Meenachil flows gently through central Kerala before finally dissolving into Vembanad Lake. It hardly ever crosses the boundaries of Kottayam district. It is a small river, yet in its journey to the lake it traverses hills, plains and numerous towns.
Meenachil, in Malayalam, means “smelling of fish,” but the name is somewhat misleading. The river itself does not smell of fish. Its banks smell more of coconut husks and drying latex sheets, of rain-drenched soil and the faint sweetness of jackfruit.
Though the river does not smell of fish, the politics along its banks have often been far fishier than the river itself—leaders multiplying factions like tributaries, each claiming growth while feeding on division. Yet the river flows on, indifferent to human follies, carrying with it nothing but the quiet dignity of water.
For me, however, the Meenachil is not merely geography. It is birthplace, memory and magnet. Though I left the area long ago, its pull remains irresistible. Every year, I return, drawn not by nostalgia alone but by something deeper—the reassuring feeling that rivers, like roots, never forget.
The Periyar and the Meenachil are not rivals but companions in my memory. One taught me awe—the grandeur of nature and the mysterious presence of something larger than myself. The other taught me belonging—the quiet assurance of home and the intimacy of return. Together, they remind me that life itself is like a river: always moving forward, gathering strength, changing course when it encounters obstacles, yet never abandoning its onward journey.
2 responses to “A Tale of Two Rivers: Awe and Belonging”
It is more a poetry than lovely prose. You should expand it to an epic poem. Go and sit there and start writing. A great Tamil and Malayalam scholar Balasubramaniyam Sirpi has a Tamil poetry Sahitya Akademi award on River. One for translation from Malayalam to Tamil. I am fortunate to have him as family friend.
Thank you so much for your kind words. Coming from someone like you, who is, among other things, an established author and poet, they mean a lot to me.
I certainly don’t possess the poetic mastery to weave an epic, but your thought is truly inspiring. I promise to sit quietly with the idea, wait for the right wave of inspiration, and attempt a humble verse of my own.