Green empires, blue inland letter cards.

This was what we saw, looking halfway from the climb to the top of Karalam Kotta. Paddy, coconut trees, pepper, coffee, rubber, cassava and of course a lot of other things, and a tea estate on the other side. Faraway blue hills. Taller, far less convenient to climb hills close by. A rabbit shot off from the bushes on hearing us. The only thing I could think of was "agricultural empire" (or however you translate karshika samrajyam - S K Pottekkatt used this term to describe Ilanjippoyil, the ancestral village) references from Oru Deshathinte Katha.

See the elephant-shaped blue thing faraway there? That is Kolagappara, favourite suicide destination for heartbroken souls. Climb up there, drink all the pesticide from your bottle, and jump off the cliff to be doubly sure. Scrawl the girl's name on the rocks before this if you are particularly vindicative. Whenever situation permitted (not a bankrupt farmer, but more likely a failed love, for example), stories and wild gossip would stir several villages' collective souls, eventually to be buried deep down in their collective memories. But only after the majority were suitably entertained, and after some lives were forever ravaged.

Living in a city now and the living with the shocking discovery that all my thoughts are in English these days (this, despite the thorough Malayalam medium education in the poorest, most backward districts of Kerala), remembering mightily entertained by Oru Deshathinte Katha and other works, I wonder about the vividity and earthiness of Pottekkatt's narrative. He kept going to see the world, and always came back with a travelogue to cast his spell on many a dreamy teenager.

Karalam Kotta has taller neighbours, and we surely are going back there someday.