Good that I stayed long.

I love the air gushing onto my face while gazing out from the train, standing at the door.

It was for this elevating feeling and a two-three days stay with my extended family that I headed for Ernakulam, monday last. I also had an engagement function of a dear cousin to miss by a few hours, thanks to the exam I had on that same day. I had very few thoughts else and very few questions. Having had faced the good half of my semester exams with heady mixes of tea and eleventh hour Photostats, I needed a small reminder of places and people elsewhere. That was all I wanted of it.

But during my stay that got elongated to fill full seven days, I undertook a few journeys of the kind that re-kindle in you questions about one’s roots. Which place do you call ‘Home’? Which place do you yearn to go back to? Who were the deities of your forbears? And where do those stone idols now rest, having been transposed with all customary honours and rituals?

In a temple called ‘Aameda’, named for its tortoise (aama) deity, not one but many idols of serpent gods and goddesses rest. In Kerala, serpents were worshipped and they are part of lore. Though my knowledge of these kinds of tales is limited, I have faint remembrances of a king being bitten to death by a serpent despite of the precautions he had had taken. Aameda is famous nowadays because it has become the resting place of serpent deities from many ancestral houses of central Kerala. The temple has received them deities because the respective places were chosen as building sites of the new age.

With their transposition ‘a few things were forgotten that never should have been’.

Among those God-heads some were from my peoples lands. The serpent was worshipped to ward off disease and evil. And when I visited Aameda, I had that one prayer.

In another place named Engandiyoor, quite near to Guruvayoor, the native land of one of my uncles’ I had the opportunity to see a still un-transposed ‘sarpa-kaavu’. Mine was a journey of discovery, indeed. I have seen such places elsewhere. In Karikkam temple, there is a huge sarpa-kaavu. The snake-idols are usually ensconced inside the canopy of forests where temperatures fall a tad below ambient. In regions infested with deadly and dangerous snakes, snake-worship is said to ward off fatal snake-bites. I do not know of any science behind this. But the wise man who was in charge of the latter place I mentioned stood testament for this anecdote. No doubt India has a wide array of exotic and poisonous snakes. But I have heard that Australia hosts the most poisonous of serpents. Is there snake-worship in Australia???

My journey also helped me re-acquaint with the geographies of two renowned temples – Guruvayoor and Tripunithura. My usual visits to Ernakulam are too short to permit such pious escapades. But this time was different.

I also gazed at a half-completed two storey dream. And taking cue decided a few things and kept them unto myself.