A Birthday memoir on April Fool's

Prank? Joke?

Today is the 1^st of April, a day reserved for pranksters. When I was a younger, I used to try really hard to come up with a good April Fool's Day trick. But who was I kidding? I don’t have a single funny bone in my being, and jokes never come easy to me. But in my class was this other girl, a sorta tomboy character who enjoyed reading Hardy Boys rather than Nancy Drew and preferred basketball and other sweaty sports to staying indoors. Thressy had a sense of humour to match her April 1^st birthday.

Kainady farmhouse at Thamarassery

But I’m a November born. Every year, I pretend that I don't care about my birthday. What is all this fuss about, I keep saying. Secretly hoping that I’d be spoilt rotten, by the people I love. So when my best buddies called to cancel their birthday visit plan, I sensed a conspiracy - a surprise maybe, and so I waited. 

That day, I was up early, but when the doorbell stayed silent well past the expected hour, reality sunk in. The excuses were genuine and the cancellation for real. To cheer me up, my husband suggested we stick to our original plan of visiting Thressy at her farmhouse.

One for love

Thamarassery, is a slow little town on the foothills of Wayanad, and as we left the main market place and drove further up, the landscape changed from beautiful to magnificent. A case of mistaken identity and a small detour later, we arrived at the plantation. Thressy was at the gate to usher us in, and on the dining table awaiting my arrival was this pretty little cake that her mother had baked. It was decorated with fresh flowers from the garden, and when I closed my eyes to make a wish, I knew it was going to be a good day after all.

Cake and lunch later, we set out for a walk. The estate was set up by her grandfather and his uncle in the 1940's. When they first decided to start their plantation here, in the rugged and mountainous region, they were faced with the task of taming the wild undergrowth and surviving the unknown. I imagined their struggles must have been similar to those undergone by Mathew and Elsa in Malaya (characters from Amitav Ghosh's The Glass Place, which I was reading at that time). 

The magic rub

Here too, the main crop is rubber, but nestling beneath the tall trees were pineapple shrubs. Thressy had answers to all my questions, I'm guessing others before me have quizzed her thus. From her I learnt that a rubber tree lives for 30 years, and it takes five or six years for it to mature and yield the white milk or sap. Of course this also means that during the early stages, when the trees need looking after, the land is positively yield-less. That is where the tropical pineapples come in, because they make the best intercrop. 

Our walk turned out to be a pleasurable exercise with her pointing out and naming every tree and shrub there was. Sajeev and I learnt to recognize the magnificent Mahogany, to spot and step away from the parachuting itchy-worms that live on tall teak trees, to differentiate between coffee and coco (in my defense, they look rather similar in their fruitless state). There were others too... like the cannon ball tree and the Elephant Ear Figs, but I’ve completely lost track of all the others she pointed out.

Fishing...

I’m not an outdoorsy person, (but you probably known that already from my earlier trekking post), and until then I had never really given fishing a thought. But that’s what we did next, at a small pond in the estate. Hook, line and sinker in hand, I waited for my first catch. Of course Thressy being the expert caught a large one just minutes after she had lowered the hook. Sajeev soon caught up with her, and just when I thought I'll never be able to catch one before losing my patience, there it was. A slight tug, a reflexive pull, and I caught my first fish ever! The stem of a coconut leaf was cleverly fashioned to hold all the fishes together and proudly we walked back home. What a day this was turning out to be, but the fun was just beginning.

We went in, got out the inflatable boat, took turns to fill it with air and then carried it all the way back to the lake, for a boating session. My first few attempts at rowing ended up with the boat going around in circles, but soon the rhythm of the water took over and it started moving in the direction that I wanted it to go. Boating done, it was time to visit the footwear factory.

'em chic Methyz 

Thressy’s folks own Methiyadi, the colourful, comfortable and chic footwear brand. I can vouch for its durability, because my pair has lived through the long Triund trek (check the pics) and the travels in Turkey. To finally see them being made at her factory, with the rubber collected from the plantation I had just visited, was something else. Uncle Tom took us on a guided tour of the factory, explained the manufacturing, colouring and assembling process, and also gifted me a brand new pair!

Oh, and then there was Yoyo (short for yojimbo which translates to bodyguard in Japanese), the cutest little baby pug. He was just three weeks old, and was already a handful. He behaved like he owned the place, sneaked under our legs, yelped and squealed when we accidentally stepped on his tiny tail, tripped on the TV wires, pulled things down and did everything possible to gain our attention. And when he was tired of all his silly games, he came by and slept at (and sometimes on) our feet. But that was for just a while; soon he’d be up again, going over the whole routine.

Sitting pretty: Yoyo

When hard work mushrooms

It was getting dark, and was time for us to call it a day. But before that we made one final stop at Harithavidhya, an NGO run by the Kainady family to promote sustainable farm management practices. Here, farmers are given training and new skill sets and also access to books and literature that deal with similar topics. The remnants of a mushroom farming class remained in one of the rooms - small little bulbs growing from within a strawlined plastic bag. Of all the birthdays I've ever had, this was the most unique - fabulous new experiences and food for thought. 

So today, on Thressy’s birthday, as she celebrates it in new and faraway Korea, between lab assignments and class work, I dedicate this post to her, and wish her a birthday that is as exciting as the one she ensured I had. 

Today, on your birthday Thressy.....