Travels To My Aunt

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When my sister and her husband come to Kerala, we always enjoy a visit to our aunt in Kottayam.

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Matriarch to a vast and global extended family, she lives in the old family home, built at the beginning of the twentieth century by our grandfather.

This is the house in which our father spent his childhood, my sister lived as a toddler and I was conceived.

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My grandfather and two of his brothers bought three large adjoining plots of land in what was a quiet rural area just outside the city. Each built themselves a family home.

Over one hundred years later, one of the plots has been sold up and developed into a commercial complex. The remaining two estates sit slightly uneasily, their houses with massive coconut, mango and banana-filled gardens, marooned like peaceful tropical islands in a bustling ocean of inner-city life.

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Our aunt, as always, offered bright, entertaining company

And delicious food.

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Maybe not quite Brideshead but, none-the-less, our ancestral home revisited.

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