Capital lure

I fell in love with Trivandrum this time again. The last trip I remember making to the Kerala capital was in 1999, three months after my marriage. The Onam festivites had made Tvm culturally vibrant then. But it was otherwise the same - quiet and sleepy, like a village - save for a few high-rise buildings. A Bihari friend who visited it told me that it was probably the only State capital he had seen that looked like a village.
Save for the historical buildings from its princely state era and the British rule, Thiru-Ananthapuri (anything holy or regal in Kerala has a thiru prefixed) has gone for a complete face-over. The old small houses and shops in the main avenues have all but disappeared. Rents are sky-rocketing; our hosts live in a rented bungalow in Sasthamangalam that invites a rent of Rs.12000 a month. But it is huge, and there is a friendly old lady for a neighbour to chat with.

One goes there with prejudices of its original inhabitants being rude unlike in northern Kerala.
But then most of its present inhabitants are settlers - those who work in government offices and other organisations in the capital or Gulf returnees and other NRIs who thought owning a piece of heaven in Tvm instead of their god-forsaken villages elsewhere in the state was the in-thing.

What strikes me about Tvm is the cleanliness - you dont find any garbage dumped anywhere. Apparently, it was once rated the cleanest city in India. Nostalgia fills you up as you pass the Kowdiar Palace or the Victoria Hall. I drank in the beauty of the Palayam church, the College of Fine Arts, the LMS church and the Secretariat. The new Assembly building sticks out as a sore thumb in that historical melee.
Our Poovar trip was not to be. Instead, after visiting a few relatives of V and seeing off fil a day after we reached the capital, we made a night trip to one of the less-crowded beaches in Kovalam. We let the breeze caress our sun-tanned faces before having dinner at Hotel Sea Face. The name intrigued me - was it the face of the sea or just a sea-facing hotel? I also sighted a the billboard of Linchu's Ayurvedic Resort (dont get lynched there!).

Kovalam is the tourists' paradise in Kerala but there is a lot of shady activities going on in the name of tourism now. Drugs, s*x, fraud - you name it, Kovalam has it all. The latest issue of Vanita reports that cross/s*x massages thrive in the name of Ayurvedic massages.

The Trivandrum zoo: We left Trivandrum the next day afternoon after a trip to the zoo. We did not visit the Museum nearby this time - the kids are too young to appreciate it. But enjoy they did the wild animals in the Maharaja's own zoo. Sadly there are not many animals now. Many have died of starvation - I am told the contractors who supply food for the animals smear cleaning lotions on the meat. We saw a crane go to the half a dozen dead fish in its cage, smell it and come away; it drank some water instead. The animals, save for the vultures pecking at some red meat, looked tired in the mid-morning sun. Too tired to eat, too tired to humor the visitors (save for a huge old stork posing as if for a snap with its wings stretched wide) and too tired to walk. A sloth bear swung its head in frustration, a lion roared from the moat below its enclosure and a tiger shat into the shallow pool in its enclosure - all of which fascinated my children.

Mira still tries to roar like the lion and laughs as she remember the tiger shitting into the water. It was also the first time she had seen a zebra and a giraffe. Ash came home and pulled Mira big ears and said: Elephant!