Growing up in Chennai India, I would visit my grand parents’ house in Kuzhuppilly, a beautiful little town in the neighboring state of Kerala, almost every summer vacation. Not only was I excited to go see my grand parents, I’d look forward to the journey that would get me there… twelve hours in a train from Chennai to the nearest major city in Kochi, a ferry ride along the coast, and an hour long bus ride through lush green vegetation.
The very modest house with four rooms, set amongst coconut and palm trees, was surrounded by canals, and I remember we’d do a balancing act walking across wooden planks to get to the house. Every summer, the small rooms would be filled with several grand kids, sleeping on the floor with sometimes nothing more than woven mats for beds.
With no electricity, one barely serviceable bathroom that everyone had to use, firewood stoves for cooking and heating, chickens, ducks and cows all around the house, it was a far cry from the house my parents live in Chennai, leave alone the house we live in, in the suburbs of New York. As far as it was from the way we live today, I must say that I had the most fun ever on these summer vacations.
It might have been a very modest house, with small windows, but the people who lived in the house, my grand parents, who provided me with possibly the most fun memories of my life, had the biggest hearts that I’ve ever known!
