Mostly About Kottayam

All guidebooks and travel websites are unanimous in their opinion that there is nothing to see in Kottayam. But Lonely Planet has a passage which caught my fancy:

Kottayam is a bookish town: the first Malayalam-language printing press was established here in 1820 and it was the first district in India to achieve 100% literacy. Today it’s home to the newspaper Malayala Manorama (with the second-largest circulation in India) and is the headquarters of DC Books, Kerala’s excellent bookshop chain.

A bookish town! What a quaint attribute for a town to possess! So, on a whim, I checked out of my hotel in Alleppey and caught the early morning ferry (Rs. 10, 2.5 hours, lovely scenery) to Kottayam.

The first person I met upon landing in Kottayam was a paediatrician, and you can’t be a paediatrician without being bookish. He gave me a lift to the centre of town; on the way he told me about Dutch farming techniques, and who else but a bookish person would know about things like Dutch farming techniques?

For over two hours, I loafed around the arterial streets of Kottayam looking for evidence of its bookishness, and I was not disappointed. The public buildings look bookish, the Jerusalem Marthoma Church is the most bookish-looking church I have ever seen, and the bookshops practically ooze bookishness. This being a Sunday, the DC Heritage Bookshop was closed, but the bookish vibes emanating from its venerable red-brick façade well-nigh overpowered me. The schools were likewise closed, but there were no children playing on the streets; no doubt their bookish parents kept them hard at work at their textbooks, moulding them into bookish little replicas of themselves.

At the restaurant where I had lunch, a family of four sat at a corner table. Not to be foiled by the lack of reading matter inside the restaurant, they were poring over the menu, brows knit in concentration. “Ki pagoler moto bookish,” I muttered to myself, and polished off my pazhampori.

In this way, for over two hours did I tramp the streets of Kottayam, soaking up its bookishness. When I tired of this (for there are limits to how long I can amuse myself thus), I returned by bus to Alleppey, making a longish detour to pack in a spot of birdwatching at the Kumarakom Bird Sanctuary. But now I must leave you, else I shall miss the night train to Madurai.

I am afraid this has not been a very sane post. But then, this has not been a very sane day.