The Shape of Water

In Kuttanad, where the ebb and flow of the tide is both eternal and ever-changing, AKSHAYA PILLAI traverses the many backwaters, rivers and canals which mould not just the terrain but also the lives of those inhabiting India's lowest-lying region. 

- AKSHAYA PILLAI

A SOUND PIERCES the still night. Half-asleep and with a racing heart buried in a soufflé of pillows, I try to match objects with the source. Obvious ones first: thief, dried plantain leaves, wind whooshing in with a ghost-like flamboyance. Latter ones, all an exercise in imagination—a lost beach ball looking for a five-year-old, a boat finding its way through land. In Kuttanad, it’s easy to play Proust and sleeplessly ponder about the fluidity of one’s existence.

Who are these people, I wonder, as I toss and turn in my Airbnb, who can feel at ease in strange hotel rooms under the unfamiliar weight of a new quilt? I give in and switch on the banana fibre lamp. It is then that the most comforting of sounds arrives: September rain, soft as a lullaby, taps on the clay roof tiles of the restored warehouse. Comfort and courage well up again.

The culprit eventually turns out to be a white puppy wrestling a wet umbrella that had been propped against my door. I fish a Sinarest tablet from my pouch. The glass stands half full on the bedside table. In our everyday life, I realise abruptly, water is a utility— tamed and quantified, predictably confined in glasses and measuring cups. Sometimes dripping from taps or tiles.