We love the sand, ocean and sun ... but we've never experienced them as we did in Kerala.
After sharing several photos with friends and family early on in our trip, we received the common response "were you at a private beach?"
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When we first arrived at Kovalam Beach, our tour guide Sreejith steered us "over to the left", even though was loads of beach right in front of us.
We politely ignored him and continued walking directly down from the parking area towards the beach. He again pointed us in the direction of "over there" and we all silently scratched our heads, but followed this time.
He led us past laborers working on a new stone railing, past women preparing their fruit to sell and past hawkers setting up their baubles and trinkets.
We walked through fishing boats waiting on the beach for the sun to fall for another go at the night's catch, past maimed and otherwise disabled people begging for money and were met by Balu. Balu turned out to be "the guy" who would set up our umbrellas, chairs and bring us our towels. He also conveniently shooed away the hawkers and other irritants, so as to make our stay at the beach most enjoyable.
We soon learned that the section of the beach on which we were deposited was called the "foreigners section."
"Whatever" we said to each other, and plopped down our beach gear.
Soon after our first dip in the ocean though, we realized the huge difference in where we had been led, and where we originally were going to go.
At one point, Tony ventured over "to the other side" ... and soon after we heard whistles from the lifeguards.
A group of boys had seen Tony - and wanting to play - got too close to the invisible line. They were about to cross over into the "foreigners section."
Now - I'm all for enjoying the beach ... and we definitely had the beach mostly to ourselves. There were a handful of other non-locals that visited the day we were there, but the majority of beach-goers were definitely restricted to "the other side."
How do you explain that to your kids? How do you tell a 3 and 6 year old that the reason "our side of the ocean" is so empty and not crowded is because of segregation?
How do you keep your teenager from getting cynical about the "luxuries" afforded to him based on the country he came from and the amount of rupees in his parents' wallets?
I don't really know how to succinctly wrap up this post ... I just know that I wanted to share it ... I know that it bothers me ... and I'm still waiting for the magic words to pop into my head when my kids ask why we get treated differently than those around us.
