Of Taj Mahals and Houseboats

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The done thing these days is to go to Kerala and faff about on boats -- big boats, little boats, motor boats, row boats, paddle boats, canoe boats, house boats, country boats, town boats -- ok, I made that last one up. But the rest are all available for the tourist trade. When Infosys Grrl and I went to Kerala last month, we did two boat rides from Ernakulam and enjoyed them thoroughly. I tried to convince Canadian Tourist that we should do one of the same rides again but in the end, we didn't. Instead we went to Alleppey and went on a house boat for a night: it was as lovely as everyone told us it would be and as I'd remembered it being from the time Blondie and I had done it four years ago. Unlike the last time, we ended up on a motorized houseboat -- which is bigger than the non-motorized version and is worse for the environment. We did ask for the non-motorized version but were told (very firmly) that they really weren't in use in and around Alleppey anymore, that they were not at all fun, that they couldn't go very far in a night, etc etc etc... it was quite clear that as tourists, we were expected to rent the expensive and worse for the environment motorized houseboat. So we did: we went on a smallish, motorized but non airconditioned (there must be limits!) houseboat called Vidya. The most interesting thing about it was that we were told -- by 4 or 5 different people -- that the number of houseboats in Alleppey has gone from about 100-150 to more than 400 in the 4 years since I was there last. When Blondie and I did this houseboat thingy, it was still a fairly offbeat thing to do; now, it seems to be part of every tourist's list of things to do in India. This isn't a moan about "how it was before" except that it is.... we saw half-a-dozen houseboat building yards lining the Keralan backwaters, all churning out ever larger houseboats. As it was, we were moored for the night in a row of other houseboats; and I don't think we were ever out of sight of at least a couple of other houseboats in our entire 21-hour "day" on the Vidya.

Some experiences are not destroyed by being jostled by crowds of other eager tourists. For me, seeing the Taj Mahal is one such. I've seen it thrice now, always in the midst of thousands of sweating, squirming, screeching Indian and foreign tourists and the structure still has the power to awe me. Perhaps my enjoyment of the Taj is a little diluted because I have to share it with so many others but the experience of the Taj Mahal is in seeing it (in the stone, so to speak) and the stone isn't altered by whether it has one spectator or one hundred thousand. The Taj is monolithic, it stands and withstands all viewers; it doesn't move or change or alter in any way, though we react to it. And do we ever react to it: I dare you to look at these pictures of it and not be moved by its cold stone perfection.

The Kerala backwaters are different. And a houseboat trip taken to admire these backwaters is quite different: it isn't so much a viewing as it is a living, a way to admire the sheer mobility of the life on these backwaters -- and for me, part of the appeal is that it used to be one of the few ways that you could encounter solitude during a trip through India. Not real solitude of course, for there you are accompanied by three staff people on your boat and then there are the people or person you're traveling with but still.... in the context of India, this is solitude indeed. The sights you see from a houseboat -- coconut trees, banana trees, rice fields, fishing nets, small houses perched on fingers of land threaded between the backwaters, all seemingly postcard perfect -- are not monumental in any way. They don't take my breath away and make me forget the hundreds of other boats plying the backwaters with me in the way that the sheer monumentality of the Taj can. They make me long to live there, to breathe in the warm, humid air and to sit in the shade of the coconut trees to watch the drunken reflections they cast into the waters. It's not a comment on the beauty of the two -- they are both sublime but for me, one was a sublime vision and the other a sublime experience. So perhaps this posting is just a comment on the effects of their respective beauty. I don't think I'd want to spend a day and a night gazing at the Taj. For all that it is beautiful, it is also a cold marble memorial to the traumas and agonies of married love and regular childbirth! Not to mention the traumas and agonies of those who actually built it. The Kerala backwaters are nothing like that: they are a warm and floating sensation and I'm very much afraid that if I go back to spend another day and night in them in another 4 years' time, all I will see will be the back ends of hundreds of other houseboats.