There1,2 may be evolutionary reasons why men don’t ask for directions, but the evolutionary process didn’t take into account that you could be cruising down a swollen river on a motorboat. Faced with such incompatibilities, your instincts could work against you. Luckily, when survival is at stake, even long-held tendencies are easily jettisoned. You take all the help you can get.
Evolutionary strictures were far from mind when I set out to see the Pocomoke up close on a warm summer day, with a reluctant family in tow. After all, as many a Malayali could lay claim, I grew up on a river. Ever since childhood, I have had a fascination with rivers and boating. We lived on the pristine side of Kurumali puzha (river)3, which meant having to take a boat nearly every day to get to the other side where all the mundane activities like schooling happened. We were in awe of the boatmen who ferried the locals back and forth across the river. They were the heroes, along with mahouts, lorry4 drivers, and bus drivers, although bus drivers’ sidekick, the kili, was held in far lower esteem.
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| The ferry today: some things just don't change |
The boatman’s life was simple: he would show up before dawn, bathe in the river and get down to the business of plying the boat to and fro with occasional breaks for snacks and meals. He shut down the ferry after sunset and headed with the day’s proceeds to the toddy shop. Among his other pleasures were fairly constant dallying and having an occasional affair with the women who earned a living by chopping weed (thol)5 and transporting head-loads across the river to be used as fertilizer in rice paddies.
I certainly don’t have to tell you that it was his command of the boat in the raging waters of the monsoon season that drew our admiration, not his dalliances or affinity for alcohol. In any event, what was important for us was that, occasionally, in reward for our admiration, he would let us take the paddle (panghayam). Let me qualify that: the “us” never included me, only a cousin and a couple of friends. I was tagged unruly and deemed unreliable to entrust the boat owner’s precious capital stock, let alone other people’s lives. Among other atrocities, I was accused of jumping off the boat before reaching the shore. The resulting backward thrust would leave the passengers unpleasantly lurching forward, although I don’t recall anyone falling off the boat because of it.
Oh, how I envied my cousin, who would perch on the stern and proceed to paddle upstream moving the boat diagonally until the halfway point and then gently maneuver the boat down to the other side. In the summer season, when the river was shallow or formed a temporary lake on account of the mud dam (chira) built downstream, the boat was propelled by pushing a bamboo pole (kazhukkol) against the river bottom. My amiable cousin got to use the pole as well. This ostracization left a latent wound in me that would begin to heal only when I discovered how easy it is to rent a canoe and go paddling in this country.
On the fateful day, I led my skeptical family to the boat rental at the Pocomoke state park. One look at the river and my canoeing ambitions evaporated—the river was full and the blackish water was choppy from the steady wind. Confident that my cousin isn’t around to verify, I opted to rent a motor boat. The lady at the rental office was pulling double duty babysitting her kid off from school and offered little in the way of instruction. She hastily pointed at a fading map of the river pinned on the wall and said a popular route was to go down the river and return by an adjoining arm of the river. This sounded innocuous and so I got on board and started down the river.
The going was pleasant, at least for me, as my wife sat in detached coolness with shades on and a scarf pulled over her head. The children bickered “you did,” “I did not,” graduating into “I am hungry,” soon thereafter. I tried to distract them and grab my wife’s attention by drawing on my rudimentary knowledge of Eastern shore vegetation as we passed cypress swamps and batches of blooming water plants. Blue herons perched majestically on tree stumps ignoring passing boaters and kayakers. We sped by settlements that alternated with stretches with nothing but wild growth on either bank. The river widened somewhat and an occasional speed boat left us bobbing up and down in its wake, which tickled the children.
I kept looking for the opening to the adjoining branch to take the return trip. But I had no clue how far away it was from boat launch where we had started. An hour or so passed and still no sign of a leftward turn. “Are we there yet?” my daughter asked. It dawned on me that I had no idea where we were or where I was heading. Even if I was prepared to suppress my manly instincts and ask for directions, being lost on a river presented an additional handicap. There are exactly no stoplights or gas stations to stick your neck out and ask “how do I get to the Pocomoke park boat launch?”
Other than an occasional speeding boat the only sign of human activity was the piers jutting into the river from backyards of vacation homes. For a person who could be easily mistaken as one from a troubled part of the world, showing up in the backyard of a southern Maryland home claiming to be lost on the river was not exactly the most prudent idea. But one look at my wife—now in her “It’s all your fault” mode— and I decided it was worth the risk.
I clambered on to the pier, headed around the side to the front of the nice looking villa and knocked on the door. A middle-aged man of reassuringly slight build appeared. “May I help you?" he asked.
“How do I get to the Pocomoke River State Park?”
“Which way are you heading now?”
“That way,” I said waving my arm sheepishly.
“You are heading into the Chesapeake. The park is in the other direction.”
I looked over my shoulder to check whether my wife was within hearing distance. I was pinning my hope on the short-cut to the adjoining branch of the river. But that was just a few hundred yards out of the park, not miles downstream, he informed me.
I turned the boat around and headed back. It was soon clear how far we had come. “Aren’t we running out of gas?” my wife asked helpfully. It was hard to suppress a creeping sense of panic at this point. We were low on gas and it seemed unlikely we will make it back to the park. I kept a brave face when up ahead I spotted a pier. It was crowded with people. It looked like some sort of family gathering.
At that point, any remaining semblance of self-reliance vanished. In its place, a sense of self-interested kinship with strangers overcame me and I nearly crashed the boat on to the steps going up to the pier. Conversations stopped and people looked down. I flashed a helpless grin, as my wife looked away in utter embarrassment. “Nice going. I will never get on a boat with you again,” she muttered.
A guy in white shorts, t-shirt, and baseball cap looked down. “Need some help buddy?” he asked.
Much of what I said in reply seemed incoherent to him. He took another chug from his beer bottle. “Alright, alright,” he cut me short. “Get back in the boat and follow me,” he said pointing to his fully loaded cruiser boat anchored nearby.
“I might run out of gas,” I said, testing my luck.
“That’s OK. I’ll tow yah.”
He untied his cruiser and steered ahead and I followed him. Everyone was quiet—perhaps afraid to break the spell of good luck. The river and surroundings became an afterthought as I reflected on the generosity of this man. Around a turn, he called out and pointed to the right. We could see the park entrance. We had just made it on a near empty fuel tank. We all yelled “Thank you” and waved at him. He waved back, turned the boat around and headed back.
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| Decades later, author's daughter on the banks of Kurumali |
One minor mishap—brought on by poor river signage and an inattentive park employee, mind you—isn’t going to dampen my boating enthusiasm. The sight of that cruiser boat has given me some new ideas. Sadly though, the fate of the enchanting Kurumali Puzha is less certain. In the intervening years since my school days, the river has been dredged, looted, and stripped clean off the last grain of sand by the manal mafia6. I wonder what memories the children who live along the river will have when they grow up.
One thing's for sure. No child, however unruly, will be tempted to jump off the boat before it reaches the shore. The deep layer of filth, mud, and silt left in the wake of sand mining ensures that.
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| Not a cruiser boat, but it gets you on the water |
3 A tributary of Karuvannur river in Thrissur district, originating in the Echipara and Chimminy areas of the Western Ghats and flowing westward into the Arabian sea.↩
4 A dump truck adorned with colorful artwork and an exhortation to “Sound Horn” imprinted at the back.↩
