Kerala weekend trip

For a person from a typical tamil iyer family, i was pleasantly surprised to attend a very simple, sweet wedding of a malayalee family friend’s in a small village close to Palakad. A total contrast to a typical iyer family wedding, which is anywhere between 1.5 to 3 days, this wedding was simple for 2 reasons- the people were quite simple and warm and the wedding procedure is hardly for 10 min . The total duration the bridegroom's family would have spent in the marriage hall would be less than 4 hrs! The bridegroom’s family had made their own arrangement for transportation for the wedding! The bride literally walked empty handed(like a saying in tamil- kattina pudhavai’yoda) in her bridal silk saree with jewels holding the bridegroom hands(like cinema). All the essentials she will need during her stay would have been purchased by the bridegroom’s family beforehand.


I have to definitely mention the sweet dishes in the sadya (marriage lunch), as i had gobbled 3 glasses of them during my lunch ;). There were two kinds of Pradhaman- one was with Milk called as "Palada pradhaman " and other one called as "Parippu pradhaman" was based on moong dhal and cocunut milk.

Just a little about kerala climate- I felt Chennai climate was far better ! It was 42C heat and the frequent power failures made it a little difficult to enjoy the mango, jackfruit, tender coconut and banana trees around. It was very calm and quite peaceful. There was a heavy shower with lightning during the night. Which was very much a blessing for us. But, that happiness didn’t last for long –as there was a complete blackout due to the rain!

Some learning in this trip is that you have to wash and eat a raw mango. Immediately on plucking the mango from the tree, it will have milk secretions, which will irritate our skin. I have some scar in my chin as a result of that. :(


We did see few multi-storeyed apartments in palakad. One of the multi-storeyed which we visited on our return to the station to meet another family friend was next to Palakad Town South police station. It seems it has won the second best ASIA’s police station award.