Kuruvadweep, Wayanad. A bird sanctuary, also an island-system, covered entirely with bamboo bushes and soft cries. How the wind whistles through the dried patches.

Bekaal.

The front porch at Parathody, our ancestral house in Shoranur, Palakkad. I remember reading an entire bunch of India Today magazines leaning against the closest pillar as a kid, fingers sticky from overdosing on elayada. The last time I went we only stopped for a few hours, eating idlis and halwa in the smoky kitchen with Leela cheriyamma and Apuppa. They're both dead now. Goshama's the only one left here, the last guardian of Parathody, a rickety hollow birdlike man on the better side of sixty. And Maloo of course, Maloo the household help.

I have no idea if I will ever manage to go back.

Backwaters, backwaters. Where else.

Periyar. Peaceful sans the people on the boats.

So while we huddled under a shed and sipped tea, Kundala dam just emerged from the mist.

Sunset, Kannur.

Kuruvadweep, towards evening is when the bamboo forests rustle something sinister.

Lemon lady rocking her pink-orange world, Kumily marketplace. I love how people down south wear colour, they pick the most blinding shades and work them like there's no tomorrow; another place that I went colour-crazy and stalked women in fluorescent sarees was Bastar in Madhya Pradesh.

Smugface

Passion fruit seller at Munnar. Always-seriously-joking-and-rambunctiously-soft-spoken to a t.

Maloo. She's the household help at Parathody, my family's ancestral home in a dusty green village in Kerala.

2008.

Easily one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. I can still hear the bamboo rustle.

Kuruvadweep, Wayanad, Kerala.
2008.