Ravi Varma

Support system is an understatement when I talk about Kochi.  The city contains my family, my friends, their families, my dentist and a never-ending supply of calming post-monsoon breeze. I generally enjoy meeting new people, making more friends, learning a whole new personality. It always opens my mind up to yet another story of being. Having said that, it is so so easy to go back to old friends. You don’t have to explain why you are the way you are because they just know. Mostly because they saw you grow into that person, year by year, one embarrassing learning moment after another. You can get right into the topic at hand, no need for any context setting and thankfully, no need to apologise before you stop everyone to take photos of the food. It’s also pretty cool to be driving around in an actual car with the same folks you shared toy cars with.

We attended a few events recently that gave my sister and I the opportunity to dress up. This is where the difference of going to an all-girls college and a co-ed college was clearly visible. I was pretty chuffed about getting a dozen or so “likes” on my Insta story. Then walks in my sister, scrolling through her four dozen likes, countless replies and comments which included “If Raja Ravi Varma was alive, he would have painted you.” I admit even I was floored at the creativity of female friendships, and my father found it so amusing he is addressing my sister as Ravi Varma now. What isn’t amusing is how he starts announcing instructions at 7AM, beginning with “wake up, it’s too late already” even while being decades older than us and theoretically needing more rest. I wonder if this is how I seem to my more easygoing friends (oops).

A viral fever has gone viral within our family, hopping from my sister to my mother and now to me, via hugs and shared cups of tea. I don’t mind being forced to cancel plans and sit at home. I had hoped to get more exercise in though, to balance the idlis, idiappams, kappa ulli chamanthi, paneer pollichathu and of course, the Kerala meals. That seems increasingly difficult now, and my dad pointing right at my tummy and saying “you are visiting too many aesthetic cafes and eating way too many sugary pastries in SG” doesn’t help. According to him, banana chips and vadas are okay, but donuts and croissants are not. In any case, he is right about the pastries (I say while helping myself to a specific chocolate cake I had been meaning to try).

Things have changed around here. Some of my go-to bookshops have moved, boutiques and parlors have shut down - the pandemic wasn’t kind to small businesses. New ventures like a kick-boxing studio and a Padelball court have opened up. This pickleball/padelball trend has clearly surged in the last two years, if it has managed to reach the quiet leafy suburbs of Kochi. “Thak! Thak! Thak! All evening long!” - my sister expresses her disdain for Padel, as the playing and accompanying exclamations of the players get in the way of her studying. I am too content and sick to care about the noise pollution, happy to cruise from one filter coffee to the next.