Finding God's Own Country

Here in Mysore the Indian summer is now reaching its swealtering climax. The sun beats down for 12 hours a day and the air doesn't move. Most of the time I am so hot that I can't think straight or string a sensible sentence together. I have even taken to not leaving the house during the day and wearing one of those sweeping floor length moo-moos, like one of those obese people on Rikki Lake wear before they have to be broken out of their homes by cranes and demolition crews after four years of lying in bed eating only Pringles. I can't get Pringles here thankfully, but my incarceration means that there are still many things that I would like to do before I leave in a few weeks. They include:
a) Write more emails;
b) Find a bit-part in a Bollywood film;
c) Dye all my clothes orange and spend a month in silence at a Himalayan ashram, eating only ghee and drinking my own urine (but not the Kool Aid!) once a day to cleanse my chakras;
d) Befriend a beggar (every westerner who comes to India needs a photo of them hugging at least one beggar)
e) Find spiritual enlightenment.
The last one is the trickiest of all. I thought I might find spirituality in Goa, but all I found was a load of bad-smelling trust fund hippies drinking smoothies and weaving banana leaf hats on a beach. I must say I was beginning to feel a little worried about going back to London with nothing but a couple of embroidered pillow cases, constipation, a shit haircut, and a lot of cheap gold jewelry to show for it – with no hint of a spiritual epiphany.
So two weeks ago I headed south on a night bus to Kerala in search of something more substantial than a pashmina to bring home. Famous for it's Christians and Cardamom, India's southern-most state seems to inspire even the most pissed-off backpacker to make evangelical proclamations about the 'intoxicating scent of the spice plantations' and the 'romantic backwaters' fed by its two annual monsoons. It has even earned itself the nickname 'God's Own Country' – but being a strict North London atheist and having been in India since January - I have learnt to prepare myself for disappointment. In India you quickly learn that wherever there is spirituality, there is always some toothless old chancer in a loin cloth trying to grab your bottom, and wherever there is natural beauty, you can always rely on some dodgy Indian businessman to build a vast monolithic hotel filled with dusty plastic flower arrangements and carpet-tiled conference centres.
So as the familiar bus-window landscape of paddy fields, decomposing rubbish, corrugated iron shacks and fluorescent-lit tea stands flashed past, I had already convinced myself that the heady scent of Cardamom would probably be overpowered by the fruity stench of open sewers, while the rolling tea plantations would most likely be littered with plastic bags and tacky billboards advertising noodles and luxury apartment blocks. After all, who needs to preserve the beauty of God's Own Country, when you can build your own 24-story concrete heaven on the outskirts of the city with built-in air conditioning, gym and sauna?
But I was wrong. At the risk of sounding like a sycophantic gap year student with too much time on their hands and diary pages to fill, as we wound up the cool mountain roads deep into the Cardamom hills east of Cochin, Kerala provided (even a Godless London malcontent like me) a convincing argument for the existence of God - in His Own Country, if nowhere else. As we drove almost 3,500 feet above the humid fug of Cochin, a waxwork Jesus waved solemnly from behind a big glass case in front of a turquoise church, sprays of wild lilies and scarlet blossom grew by the side of the road - and even India's trademark anorexic cows looked fatter and happier as we reached the cool hill station town of Munar.
We were staying with a family just outside Munar, in a house surrounded by gardens of exotic flowers, fruit, spices, tea, coffee plantations and vegetables – which also provided the ingredients for every meal, (rather than Tescos). Not only did every inch of earth seem to have something growing from it, but Rajee, the woman who ran the place, was like a voluptuous Indian lady Madonna who seemed to be able to produce delicious meals and beautiful children simply by brushing past the stove - or her husband - at the right time of day. Forget ashrams, orange robes and chanting classes; eating homemade pancakes with pineapples and honey from Rajee's garden rates as one of the most spiritual experiences of my entire trip. It was like paradise – apart from one minor blip: Rajee's third son 'Deebu', who would be better described as 'Son of Saturn'. He may have only been four, but his baby teeth were brown and pointed into little fangs, and he would charge around the house making unearthly, blood curdling screams and hurling himself against walls. One evening we sat around the table discussing religion. Rajee and her husband Tomy, asked Luiza and me if we were religious. We said 'No', they said 'not even Christian?' and we said 'No, nothing, not even Christian.' They said, 'but the British brought Christianity to India! Even we are Christians'. At which point Deebu, who had been lurking quietly under the table, dragged out a three foot long wooden crucifix from the living room cabinet, threw it to the ground and started maniacally screaming and jumping up and down on top of it. If there had been a stream of green vomit gushing from his mouth, and a man's voice chanting backwards in Latin then I would have thought I was on the set of a cheap 1970s horror film.
After meeting Deebu, I decided that I was fine being a godless north London cynic - until the five hour bus journey from Munar made me re-evaluate my beliefs once more. It was a beautiful, sunny, cloudless day and every window on the bus opened out onto the acres of (Tetley) tea plantations below. I fucking hate Indian buses, but I was actually having a lovely time looking at the tops of green hills with white puffy clouds sitting on top like 99' ice cream cones. All was well until the bus driver began our descent, lifted his foot from the break pedal and decided to freewheel from 3,500 feet to the bottom of the valley. As we swerved and skidded around blind corners, overtaking lorries and motorbikes, gravel furiously hitting the bottom of the bus, I swiftly found spirituality again and made some heartfelt prayers to God. I prayed that we wouldn't die in a pile of twisted metal at the bottom of a ravine in His Own Country, and that if I did I was wearing modest enough underwear to be found in. I also prayed hard that I wouldn't vomit in Luiza's lap, because I would have to jump over her to make it to the window. Luckily He was looking after us that day. The bus slowed down, I didn't vomit and even when the guy in front of us did, the ticket collector shut our window just in time to avoid the spray coming back in and splashing us in the face.
After that our trip to Kerala was littered with what I like to think, were mini-divine interventions. In Periyer Wildlife Sanctuary, six monkeys came and hung out on our hotel balcony. We rode elephants and in every place we visited we accidentally stumbled upon a random village festival giving out delicious free food wrapped in banana leaves. I didn't believe in God before (or at least only before my math’s GCSE and during extreme plane turbulence), but I'm beginning to understand why so many people who live His Own Country do.