Featured Work, India, Travel - Thursday, December 1, 2011 9:03 - 0 Comments

Exploring Arundhati Roy’s Kerala

Qantas The Australian Way, December 2011

In 1997, Arundhati Roy’s book, The God of Small Things, introduced the world to the southern Indian state of Kerala. In truth, it’s an odd sort of a cultural flag-bearer: it is a story whose key moments hinge on prejudice, betrayal and loss, and doesn’t always portray its community in a positive light. But its language is so evocative, from the “fatly baffled” bluebottles and the “nights, clear but suffused with sloth and sullen expectation” of the opening lines, that it has served as an incantation for millions of readers. Many have found it so seductive that they have come to see the place for themselves.

Today, the areas Roy wrote about scarcely need any help in attracting visitors. A few miles from the towns she described sits Kumarakom, where resorts are thriving to attract tourists to one of India’s most beautiful regions.

To see the article as it ran in Qantas: The Australian Way, click here: qa1211_Kerala.indd

Continue…

Popularity: 1% [?]