Sweet dreams are made of small planes and sticky weather

There’s a feeling a daydreamer gets when one of their daydreams comes true. We spend so much time in our minds that we hardly ever actually make anything happen so, when we do, it’s quite a headrush. I was giddy yesterday before we even boarded the small propeller aeroplane that took us from Bengaluru airport to Kochi. I felt like a little kid on Christmas Eve.

You see, somewhere between STA brochures and procrastinating/ taking study breaks on travel websites, I found out about Kerala. And Kerala became a kind of picture of India for me (the state’s nickname in India is ‘God’s own country’). When my friends were sending me postcards from exotic, far flung destinations and I was questioning sanity of my decision to study an MA in creative writing, I thought of Kerala. And for two years after graduating I swung between wanting to be in my comfort zone and using Kerala as the mental image that got me through each day that I really didn’t want to be at work.

And now I’m here. Last night at about 10 I stepped off an aeroplane into 24 degrees of heat and 93% humidity, and a stupid grin plastered itself on my face. Kerala at night smells like one of those artificial jungles in butterfly zoos.

Don’t get me wrong; I was happy to be in Nepal and I constantly had to pinch myself in north India! But for some silly reason, Kerala had a place in my heart before I even arrived here, and I’m so so lucky to have had a dream come true after three or four years of ‘maybe one day.. ‘