Sunday, February 28th

After the late night of Kathakali and going out to dinner, we slept in a little. After having breakfast, we drove to an elephant sanctuary in a town 24 km away. Once there, we were guided around by a man who worked there, who insisted that he was not a guide, but only a person working there who "by the grace of God" had learned English. He told us many thing about the 60 elephants at the sanctuary, and showed us around. We took many photos. On our way out, we bought elephant stickers, hanging plastic bowl-like trinket things, and ice cream. Some of the ice cream came in plastic spheres with a hole on top, through which you could scoop the ice cream. We boarded our two buses and drove back to our lodging in Cherutheruthy, where we ate lunch. Then we had several hours of down time, during which we swam in the pool, played cards, and wrote this sentence.

Around 4 in the afternoon, we loaded up our buses and traveled about 4 miles down the road to a small village. Upon arriving, we were greeted by a man named Kungu who teaches and preforms at Kerala Kalamandalam (our school for the arts). He brought us to a mat weaving shop, mat weaving being the specialty of his village, and introduced us to the master craftsman there. We learned that his particular style of mat weaving (using natural reeds) was becoming obsolete as these materials were growing more and more scarce. Many mat weavers were switching their crafts to plastic weavings. We browsed the shop for a bit and after we purchased many mats, Kungu invited us to his home for some tea. We were shown in by his wife and daughter who, soon after, served us all tea. As we were drinking our tea, Kungu told us the story of the performance that we were about to see. We were also introduced to Kungu's father, an 86 year old man who was one of the two original students of the man who originally introduced the art of Kuttyattam to the general public. When we'd finished our tea, Kungu escorted the men of our group to a nearby home where they donned Dhotis, which are, in the simplest of terms, Man-Sarongs. We then proceeded to the village temple and were shown the various shrines and inner temples to the gods Shiva, Vishnu, and Ganesha. This was a very special tour as usually Hindus are the only people allowed in these temples. After our tour, we settled down on mats (plastic) and watched a performance of the Kuttyattam dance form, a version of dance theater in sanskrit. The performance was accompanied by two clay drummers, our friend Kungu on a different type of drum, and two music students who kept rhythm with tiny cymbals whilst singing. The performance lasted about an hour, and afterwards we were ushered to Kungu's Uncle's home for a traditional feast. We ate dinner on banana leaves, using only our fingers, and enjoyed many new foods, including a type of milk and rice dessert drink. The family that cooked it tried to make it not spicy for us, but we were still inundated by the hot pepper. When our meal had finished, we thanked our hosts profusely and boarded the bus back to our hotel.

Lucie Kessler and Charlie Lehner