The subiquitous coconut offers every part of itself for some essential household need, but is also grown for commercial purposes. The outer husks are buried in water pits next to the house until the fibres are separated and can be taken out for driving, beating, teasing and twisting by hand into ropes. It is a cottage industry undertaken by women all along the way from Cochin to Iranjalakudda. At Cochin a coir factory on Gundu island, processes the raw fibre into mats and high-quality floor covering. In the same way, screwpine, kora grass, split bamboo, pineapple fibre and rice straw are skillfully gathered by both men and women and made into mats and baskets for every purpose.
    Geography is destiny. In the case of Kerala, the gift of life is brought annually by the monsoon winds to the 597 km coastal strip of rich tropical land between the Arabian Sea and the wall of mountains known as the Western Ghats . The mountains are breached by the 15 km wide Palghat Gap. The highest peak, Annamalai (in Devikulam district) is 2 ,775 m, but there are several beautiful hill stations and places of pilgrimage deep inside the wilderness, like Sabarimala. Apart from this, there are 44 rivers that run down the verdant watershed, 41 of these flowing westwards.
    The monsoons have been likened to a battalion of grey elephants. For three- and-a-half months, Kerala receives the full brunt of the winds that bring rain to the entire sub-continent. The tall palm trees flatten themselves against the attack like well-trained soldiers, but rarely break. The red earth is churned into rivulets of blood. The heavens are cracked open by terrible thunder. Every individual, big or small, carries an umbrella under the arm, unfurled within seconds to create a black drag on-line of jostling scales. In the old houses grandmothers sit reading from the Ramayana, while children gather round a hanging lamp filled with light like a golden lotus.
    Once the rains have passed, the country swells up with a voluptuous luxuriance. The system of canals known as the backwaters, formed by linked-up rivers turns the countryside into a sheet of shining water. People live a semi-aquatic life, bathing, washing, planting rice, banana, tapioca, fishing or tending the coconut plantations, moving from one place to another on their flat rice-barges or single- paddle canoes. It's difficult to make out where the land ends and the water begins. Water birds hover over the surface of the water. Tiny lotus-like flowers scatter the rim like a net of pearls.
    To the casual visitor, the Kerala countryside might well seem a canopy of green, but to the close observer it is finely differentiated. Each shade of green owes its existence to a valuable cash crop that has been introduced and nurtured by the human hand. There are the emerald green rice fields over which generations of slim- waisted Kerala women have worked, and the fresh green banana groves. The coconut plantations appear from the air like the whorls on a giant's head, with the even taller areaca nut trees waving like feathers. The coconut tree was originally brought to Kerala by immigrants from Sri Lanka, possibly from Indonesia. It was the Portuguese who developed it for commercial exploitation, bringing at the same time the cashew tree, the papaya, and the pineapple. In the mist-covered uplands, the hills are closely planted with the billiard-green of tea bushes, the dark, rich green of coffee plants with their hidden clusters of bright red berries, and the blue-green rubber plantations, all of which owe their existence to the British who cleared the original jungles. Of these only the poetically named Silent Valley, the last of the tropical jungles, remains threatened, but still clinging to its virgin existence.
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