Postcards Home from ....      The lush vegetation, coconut and
papaya trees are reminiscent of so many places in Central
America, the Caribbean, or the coasts of South America. There
are beautiful green mountains jutting out in the background.
They vie in majestic beauty for those of the Andes, only these
have lotus ponds and rice patty fields interspersed in the
foreground.  The residences and businesses are painted with
avocado and lime greens, pomegranate and mamey pinks, lilac
lavenders, banana and star fruit yellows, papaya oranges and
sand or garbanzo colored beiges. The security doors are a mix of
roll down metal sheets painted in a rainbow of colors and bars,
not unlike the rejas that cover most windows in Latin America.
The walls that line the streets are covered with graffiti-like
commercial and political messages, but the script is in Tamil or
Malayalam, with their own curvaceous non-Roman lettering.
Kerala is a communist state. Even though we are legions away
from Russia and Cuba, there are red i