Hey all, thought I would try something a little different today with a more image forward post. I still haven’t completed my review of ‘The Covenant of Water’ (because there’s just too many thoughts to sift through) but I figured it would be helpful if I could take a post to explore the landscape just a little bit. Verghese spends a lot of time exploring it because understanding the backdrop is crucial for the rest of the story. What’s amazing to me is that none of the pictures I found of the place were surprising at all when I found them, in fact they lined up exactly with what I saw in my head.

For the most part, the story all takes place in the Kingdom of Travancore, a region in the southernmost part of India.

Later in the story this Kingdom is folded into the state of Kerala after the end of the British Raj in 1947. All the regions of Kerala including Travancore speak Malayalam and so do most of the characters.

The house the characters live in on the Parambil estate looked something like this in my head, though with less moss growing.

What’s funny is this is actually a building called the ‘Ammachi Palace’ and served as a Summer retreat for certain Travancore royalty. I guess I couldn’t help but picture a place for royals based on how all the characters love their home so much.

Much of the story deals with the rivers and canals that run all over the place. Note the coconut trees that grow everywhere too.

The Parambil Estate where the characters live is near a river that connects them to the rest of the world. They get their mail, buy their fish, and travel to church all via the water ways.

Another side of Kerala is the mountainous regions where one of the main exports, tea leaves, grow in spades. One of the characters eventually ends up owning a large area of farmlands in the mountains.

And of course, none of this would be complete without the people who live there. Most everyone in the book is warm hearted and very giving. The few stogy, antisocial characters are looked down on. I found this great travel video from about eight years ago that gives a little glimpse of who a tourist might encounter while traveling in the region.

Often referenced in the book when speaking on ‘typical Malayali beauty’ is this depiction of the goddess Lakshmi by Raja Ravi Varma. Varma was a royal with a talent for painting who depicted this goddess in particular with distinctive Malayali features to help popularize his work.

While Lakshmi and other Hindu gods are widely worshipped in the story, most of the main cast are actually Saint Thomas Christians. Pretty much everyone in the story learned to read using a bible. A notable feature that makes the women of the story stand out among other Malayali people then are the traditional clothes they wear. In the time the story is told, Saint Thomas Christians wear simple white vestments designed to remove any suggestive features of the female body.

In fact, the very first scene of the story takes place in a church …

Which leads nicely into the next post. Look forward to my review tomorrow!

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley