The Shape of Water

In Kuttanad, where the ebb and flow of the tide is both eternal and ever-changing, AKSHAYA PILLAI traverses the many backwaters, rivers and canals which mould not just the terrain but also the lives of those inhabiting India's lowest-lying region. 

- AKSHAYA PILLAI

A SOUND PIERCES the still night. Half-asleep and with a racing heart buried in a soufflé of pillows, I try to match objects with the source. Obvious ones first: thief, dried plantain leaves, wind whooshing in with a ghost-like flamboyance. Latter ones, all an exercise in imagination—a lost beach ball looking for a five-year-old, a boat finding its way through land. In Kuttanad, it’s easy to play Proust and sleeplessly ponder about the fluidity of one’s existence.

Who are these people, I wonder, as I toss and turn in my Airbnb, who can feel at ease in strange hotel rooms under the unfamiliar weight of a new quilt? I give in and switch on the banana fibre lamp. It is then that the most comforting of sounds arrives: September rain, soft as a lullaby, taps on the clay roof tiles of the restored warehouse. Comfort and courage well up again.

The culprit eventually turns out to be a white puppy wrestling a wet umbrella that had been propped against my door. I fish a Sinarest tablet from my pouch. The glass stands half full on the bedside table. In our everyday life, I realise abruptly, water is a utility— tamed and quantified, predictably confined in glasses and measuring cups. Sometimes dripping from taps or tiles.

But here in Kuttanad, where the land is flanked by the Arabian Sea on one side and patrolled by the flowing rivers on the other, life adheres to the whims of water. Its ebb and flow shapes not just the landscape but also the portraits of its inhabitants. This year, the town had to wait for the monsoon. September brings much-needed relief, but ever since the 2018 floods they are not quick to rejoice. Very delicate, this dance with anticipation and anxiety.