Thaiparambil get-together at Mango Meadows Kaduthuruthy July 28 2019

 As our car got closer to Mango Meadows resort, the greenness in the last few interior drive stretches was so much that it felt like green is the only color around here. Wet green kerala glow all around the greenery.

Guide walk
   The trip had started with a guide walking us through the campus and talking about the traditional significance and the traditional use of some of the thousands of species of trees in the campus. While it was informative, it was starting to feel like a boring school study tour, especially as the descriptive prose is more applicable to the future state of these young trees. It is hard to give a bone thin tree credit for having had it's bark being used as clothing by yester-year rishis.

The guide walk slowly disintegrated, and small groups started doing their own walks.

Cycling
   Niya, Vichu and Arnu got themselves cycles that were free to use for half an hour, the younger kids played in the childrens play area, adults were mostly loitering and taking in the agricultural sights.

Plough wheel
Archery and the plough wheel had caught my interest. Removed my shoes and socks and walked up to the plough wheel and turned it by stepping on it's leaves. It was a nice experience - felt like I was trying to connect to the past.

Samavar chaya kada 
With Balu and Anil uncle for company, I had tea and "vettu-cake" from the "Samavar"(the old style huge kettle - probably came from the British) tea shop. This was a really good experience. The smell of the smoke and the taste of the tea took me decades back to the times when my grandfather used to take me to a Thikkoti tea shop near my native home. Fell in line nicely with my "far from the maddening technology" mindset.

Treetop
     We had a group gathering atop the tree house, by calling in more folks. Fun to chitchat from the sky.  The place had started to offer experiences. We were slowly getting drawn in.

Lunch
 One thirty was lunch time. So far still not that great. I was looking forward to the lunch and had a good five rounds of rice with beef fry and alleppey fish curry. Tasty healthy simple lunch.

Cousins' thirty year photo re-creation
Sheebachechi had taken a photo of the thaiparambil cousins thirty years back, and we were attempting to re-create the same photo now. I had taken up the DOP (Director of photography) role
and tried to lay the pieces together.

Two clusters of people.
Dog cage with a dog in it between the clusters.
Align each individual's feet to match the angle in the old photo.
Spacing between the individuals in the cluster.
Height difference not in parity with old times.
Look direction - having each person look in the same direction as the old photo.
.. and so on.. very long list of details to get right..

Every one was very cooperative and I took the first re-shot to realize that the photographer's position now does not align with the photographer's position thirty years back. For that reason, one of the clusters was looking in the wrong direction. Positioning the photographer felt like a hard one to crack.  Given a photo, how would you position the photographer?

Second attempt got the spacing between people in the second cluster very wrong and was even worse than the first attempt. I had started off expecting reasonable success but failed pretty bad. The learning about how hard it can be to get a simple group photo right is the takeaway.

Pool time 
Akhil and Balu were the adult caretakers in the swimming pool, taking care of a bunch of our older-than-five-year-olds, while I watched over Kittu and Appu having fun in their hand pedal boats in a rubber pool.

Archery
Tried some archery with Niya, and we did manage to pierce the thermocol, even while we we were not on target.

Shooting
Shooting at balloons with small lead bullets. Children not allowed. Three shots included. I am not sure where the first two shots went, except that they did not hit the yellow balloon. I asked the conductor for advice. He pointed to a small projection on the gun barrel and advised to use this for direction. So I placed the balloon on that point, and shot it down. Method. When you know the method, you hit the target.

Fish at steps
Small pond with fishes hanging out at the steps. Kids threw sand and small stones which the fish ran to and gobbled as food. Cruel humans and fish-brained fishes.

Choonda idal
Next up, to the waters edge for some fishing-rod fishing. The kids lined up and took turns with the fishing rods.  While the kids were fishing, some of the adults took seats in the small podium built upstairs to take in the nice fast relaxing breeze, while also enjoying the view of the water clogged paddy fields.

Kutta Vanji 
Next up was the grand finale with some involved boating using oars in the basket boats. It was fun to try to apply some basic physics and get the basket boat to move the way we wanted. Vichu sounded pretty well versed based on his research and took a hand with oaring as well.

As we ended the day, we had a much better impression of the resort from where we had started off.

Crickets Orchestra 
As we reached the parking lot, the entire forest had turned into one loud masterful symphony of the crickets. Perfect spellbinding synchrony.