A House Called Repose

My father grew up in a house called ‘Repose’. It rests like a quiet sentinel behind a cast-iron gate just off a coppery dirt road in a suburban enclave not far from Kochi, Kerala. On one corner of the open veranda is a bench where the watchman sleeps at night. The garden is planted with jasmine and red hibiscus shrubs; but the pepper vines trained on a trellis, whose fruit add flavour to our meals, are the true pride of my grandmother.

Somewhere between etymology and folklore, Kerala is said to derive from ‘kera’, the Malayalam word for coconut tree, and ‘alam’ meaning land. Thus, ‘Land of Coconut Trees’ — a fitting label given the landscape. To me, however, Kerala has always been inseparable from Repose, the object of our annual trips.

There I lie in a nook, chai in hand, facing the open veranda, in view of untamed creepers and overgrown banana trees; around me arise memories of wet and warm monsoons spent with that door open, framing the downpour that composed the metronome to our days. Torrential weather never dampened the regime of the fishmonger, who rides by every morning calling out ‘ayala, chaala, karimeen’, a wooden crate and hand-held scales secured to the rear of his trusty Raleigh bike. We would rush out as my grandmother followed at a withered pace, and watch wide-eyed as he weighed off the wet, slippery fish, fresh from the Indian Ocean. Much remains unchanged… the shopkeeper too in the shack twenty paces away who stocks the chakka chips, munch bars and frutti juices beloved by us.

I spy my father sneaking a cigarette on the balcony, having professed to quitting; perhaps the draw of his youthful vice too strong at the very spot where it had taken root. I recall how, when cousins arrived, there would be incessant games of cricket on the dusty streets outside in which my father would join, while inside the aroma of fried sardines and pomfret curry drifted in from the kitchen, giving pause to the disc bouncing off the carrom board in a flurry of talcum powder.

In mid-afternoon sun, amidst a potent mugginess, my grandmother waters the plants with a snaky hosepipe. I watch her nourish each tree and shrub with resolute care, locating the roots and soaking the soil to saturation. 

Soon, a hodgepodge of navy and white with a subdued hubbub of noise drifts down the lane away from me. I admire the schoolgirls on their way home with their coconut oil-glazed plaits, something that always eluded my shoulder-length hair. Caught up in that liminal moment between school and home, I imagine what Keral life might have been like had my father not left Repose as a youth. For I did not grow up here. My father’s winding career would take him first to Hyderabad for study, then to Bangalore, Manchester and Essex in England, before his new Repose in a quiet Cambridge cul-de-sac — which would be my home, a colder clime.