Kerala Backwater At Dawn

The water here does not rush. It barely moves.

The backwaters of Kerala are not rivers. They are something quieter. A system of lakes and lagoons and canals connected by narrow waterways that thread between the paddy fields and the villages and the coconut groves. The water is still or moving so slowly it appears still. The reflections in it are almost perfect, the world doubled, green above and green below.

Dawn is the right time. Before the boats begin their day. The light arriving in the east through the coconut palms on the bund, their fronds silhouetted against the pale sky, their reflections below in the motionless water. The first light touches the water and the water holds it at its surface, gold and pink and then white as the sun rises.

The birds are already fully awake. The birds of the backwaters are numerous and varied and in the early morning they are operating at their full chorus. Kingfishers over the water, their flight low and direct, the blue-green flash of them. Egrets standing in the shallows with the stillness of something that has perfected patience. Herons. Purple moorhens moving through the reeds with the particular gait of a large bird navigating water.

A houseboat moored at the bank. A wooden vessel, traditional, thatched roof, vines growing from a flower box on the deck. Smoke from a fire at the back where the kitchen is. The smell of coconut oil heating. Someone beginning the day's cooking in the way the morning is begun here, with fire and oil and the spices that belong to this water and this latitude.

The sound of the paddle in the water. Slow. Measured. A fisherman in a long wooden canoe, standing to pole through the shallow section, his movement efficient and unhurried. The boat barely disturbs the surface. The reflection of the palms reforms behind him as he passes.

How still this water is. The stillness of Kerala's backwaters is a specific quality. Not the stillness of a waiting thing. The stillness of a complete thing. This system has been here as it is for a long time. The palms and the water and the birds and the boats have reached a kind of equilibrium, a balance so old that each part of it has been shaped by the others.

A child at the water's edge. Filling a vessel from the canal and returning to the house without hurry or performance. This water has been used this way by people at this canal's edge for generations. The morning errand, unchanged.

The light is fully arrived now. What was silhouette is colour. Green so vivid it seems placed rather than grown: the paddy, the banana leaves, the coconut grove, the hyacinth on the water's surface. Kerala's particular green, saturated by this latitude's light and rain.

The world is very slow here. Very complete. Nothing is missing from this morning. Everything it needs, it has.

Put your hand over the side of the boat if you are in one. Let your fingers trail in the warm still water.

The water is warm. Everything here is warm. Even the stillness is warm.

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