A 'metre' of tea from the chaiwala, finger-dousing curries and crisscrossing waterways greet tourists who holiday on Babu Varghese's Kerala backwater cruise. Those who want to see the land from the inside as serious travellers seek him out in his at his Thiruvananthapuram office.
Varghese feels tourism is more than just another way of earning foreign exchange. He started out trying to save a dying craft. Once Kerala's traditional cargo boats transported goods all across the state through the 1,500 km labyrinth of inland waterways. With rail and road hijacking the business, these boats, most of them over 40 years old, were hardly in use. The craftsmen, few in number, were also vanishing.
Varghese bought a boat and re-fashioned it into a houseboat using traditional material like undyed coir mesh and mat. Now a fleet of 11 such boats winds through the backwaters and introduces tourists to the history, geography and lifestyle of his home state. Children catching fish, women beating husk into coir and men selling illicit liquor pass them by. Two navigators, one escort and a cook, all old boatpeople, provide a whiff of the old magic. The escort reels out tales about the places as they parallel to a string of villages, dock, collect rations, shop, cook and eat traditional food. "Earlier, only rich, elderly Westerners came to peer through five star hotels and air-conditioned launches to see how the other half lives.
Today's visitors are younger, more aware and interested in learning about the culture of India," says Varghese. Experimenting with dying features of Kerala culture fascinates him. He bought two bullock carts a couple of years back. Spruced up with bells and colourful tassles on rattan shelters and remodelled seating, the carts take tourists rattling down uneven village roads close to the tourist-ridden Kovalam beach. A cart bearing an old Morris spring, embellished with brass trimmings and a fancy brass foot-step, has come all the way from Tamil Nadu. Next season, Varghese is planning bullock cart trips from Thiruvananthapuram to Kochi.
The government tourist office and other tour operators are furiously copying his houseboats, but Varghese is already eyeing another quaint holiday option: a tree house on the edge of a forest reserve and about 50 feet above the ground. Unlike others, these are "real" ones as built by local tribals. A pulley will take people up to a perch that has no connection with the ground. Birds and cool morning breeze will greet guests as they wake up in this aerial lap of nature.
Tourism is one way to support dying traditions, believes Varghese. Tourindia, his hotshop, handles some 2,000 tourists a year. He prefers to organise them in small groups. This helps maintain a consonance among people who will be staying together.
But while he experiments with the unconventional, Varghese paradoxically remains just as stubbornly conventional in preserving heritage in spirit. Like he refuses to fix televisions in his boats even if it displeases a large chunk of tourists. And though he is ready to talk of Kerala's rich past in detail with anyone who may be interested, he virtually chooses his clientele by refusing to serve anything but Malayali food.
Varghese sees himself in the hospitality and friendship business. He is also particular that his commercial venture should also double up as a socially useful set-up. For one who started out in life as a researcher keen on developing non-chemical means of controlling rodent population in fields, Varghese has come a long way. But the goal, strangely, seems to remain much the same: to make a difference.
