We set out right after lunch, the four of us in a long converted canoe with a tasseled coir canopy that kept the sun out.
Not that the heat bothers you once you’re on the water. My only moment of apprehension came when we all stepped on, one by one and the boat rocked about.
“Thank God Anuradha and Gautam are slim”, I thought to myself, comparing my companions’ weights with my own, more considerable displacement. But I needn’t have worried. Sturdy little things, these country craft. Besides, the boatman looked rather sure of himself, a man used to seeing clumsy town dwellers invading his floating domain several times a week.
 
Emerging from the resort, we turned past the humming thickets of the Kavanar Bird Sanctuary and sedately putt-putted past the last of the large barges. Our boat took a sharp turn, and for a moment,  it looked like we were going to sail straight into the canal bank. Then a rustle, a spray of dew and  we had pushed past some overhanging vines that covered the mouth of a tiny canal, so narrow, you could reach out and touch the embankments on both sides.
 
Suddenly, we were in another world. Impossibly green paddy fields spotted with groves of coconut and mango formed the backdrop and nearer us, along the shores, thatch roof huts were laid out behind the stone embankments. Life in the villages here is a public affair, lived out not inside the huts, but around the little courtyards, on the washing ghats, in the mango tree shades and of course, in the countless little tea and toddy shops that line the shores. Children played hide and seek between the palms, women did the laundry, and the men gossiped and drank from steel tumblers. Nobody really seemed to be working the fields, but then, maybe it wasn’t the season.
 
We turned home, passing under stone bridges, past sprawls of flowering lotuses. The boatman weaved deftly through, threading us through needle thin canals. We passed a platoon of ducks giving their young a swimming lesson and a short while later, a whole swampy field of egrets, like a snowstorm of wings and light settling on the glistening earth.
 
By the time we returned to the Vembanad’s embrace, the sun was hanging low over the waters, burning away the outlines of passing boats and turning their sails into whipping sheets of gold. The big lake was calmer now, its world of fluid beauty coming to rest, its life settling down for the night. The tiled roofs of Coconut Lagoon were dark now, the lights of the resort flickering on one by one.
We stepped ashore, silent, each in our own inner spaces. Nobody said a word. But then, what was there to say?