sulaimani

I went out of the way yesterday, taking a detour from our way home, to buy sugar free Passion Fruit extract, fielding questions as to why I can’t have tea without it now. 

It started from a trip, on a idyllic afternoon, with nothing else to do. I used to think if we take a right turn anywhere from our place at Kollam, we would run into the sea and if we take a left turn anywhere, we would run into some lake. So we did just that. Took a right turn into a random lane and kept driving aimlessly, through the narrow lanes. Life changes as we keep going in. Sleepy temples with its large peepal trees and aalthara on which some would be sleeping or some local friends would be joking around or a football team may be cooling down after playing on the dusty ground nearby. A tortoise dries itself on a tree trunk jutting out of a small, dark green pond. 

We stopped at one of the “beaches”. I wondered if there wasn’t an old church which was about to fall down there last time when we chanced upon it. Asked a chettan who was sitting in that sweltering heat and he said it was demolished and they may build a new one in its place. Coconut trees around may be trying hard to survive in such heat, trying to dig its roots deep in this sand and looking stunted. Sand around these places are dark, rich with minerals. I joke that I can smell my way to the beach, but I was looking for this dark sand and trying to follow that trail to find the bylanes that lead to the beach.  

We continue to drive along the coast. For a good stretch, I find that the road is neatly paved, end to end, with no outgrowth of grass or bush on either side and all the boundary walls of the houses are painted fresh. Even if the house itself may not be painted. I wonder if the community decided to beautify their road, who had the drive to make it so clean and whether they had to convince all the families to find money to paint the outer walls. We stop somewhere with a little nook to park the car on the side. Chakki and I climb the makeshift stormwall made with boulders near the sea. There are couple of people playing cards, maybe waiting for the heat to subside before going on with their work. 

For some time I used to think that life is not the busy hurrying and the big buildings near the city, but if we head five to ten kilometres outside the cities and turn anywhere, that’s where it is. While travelling by bus or train and looking wistfully outside, I used to force myself to extend my gaze beyond the immediate view that we lazily overlook and look farther in, to imagine what it must be like, and what the days would be like there.  

After some time we decided to change course, hit the left and explore the theory of ending up on the lakes. After a long time of aimless driving, at times ending up in lanes through which the car could barely pass, we break out of the wilderness onto a beautiful temple on the side of a lake, with an on ramp for the boats. A bit farther out, road ends into a boat jetty, the jankar was just coming in and we have no way of turning back now. I had never taken a car into a jankar before and had no idea where this was heading, but we got in, strapped the car down and got down. People on the boat explained that we could get down on the next stop, drive further and wouldn’t have to take the boat back again. 

On our way back home from this, stopped at this “kappi cafe” with promise of “not a kappi, but an experience..”. I am sucker for sulaimani, lime tea that is served after biryani in some malabar restaurants. Especially after the movie, Ustad Hotel.

Oro Sulaimanilum oru ithiri Mohabbat venam. Adhu Kudikumbol, logam ingene padhukazhai vanu nikenam” (Every Suleimani needs a bit of love in it. And when you drink it, the whole world should slowly stop and stand still)

The one who was making tea here looked like an arabian sailor and I asked him for passion fruit sulaimani and a normal one for chakki.

Soon after that, I found this passion fruit extract in a store and since then, I only make this version of the tea at home in the morning and evening. I am not sure if I found the secret ingredient, but it is one indulgence that I look forward to every day.   

(Reading “The Covenant of Water” by Abraham Verghese for hours today, immersing myself in this beautiful story based in Travancore, my place, about hundred years back and was thinking about the other waterworlds around me)