The rain started around two this afternoon and hasn't stopped since. On a tin roof, that's not weather, it's a kind of music, steady at first, then...

I walked down to the jetty just now, around six, because the light does something to the water at that hour that I still can't describe properly after all...

There's no road to this island. That's the inconvenient part. You park near the jetty, we load your bags into a vallam, and six minutes later you step...

The walk down to the jetty takes about four minutes if I don't stop to talk. I usually stop. There's always someone at the bend near the paddy field, or a...

The mist sits low on Vembanad most mornings until about seven. Before that you hear things more than see them. A diesel engine coughing somewhere past the...

Mustard seeds crackling in coconut oil. That's the first thing I smell every morning, before coffee, before the boats start. It drifts up from the...

At 5:40 in the morning the lake is a sheet of grey glass and the mist sits on it like it's been left there overnight to dry. Then the first diesel engine...

A guest from Bengaluru sat on the jetty here for three hours last month. Didn't read. Didn't scroll. Just watched the water and the paddy and the...

The kitchen smells like the start of everything here. Mustard seeds crackling in coconut oil, a sound before it's a smell, then the smell comes up through...