Kerala: Romance rains another day

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: It is one cliché Malayalam filmmakers in the 80s and 90s had no qualms recycling; the brooding conspiratorial rains instigating the virtuous hero to enter into a physical union with maidens he is not supposed to covet. The rain is not an excuse but the agent provocateur, its cosmic power causing giddy hormonal changes in the hero and making him do things he never would have otherwise. The man is not the violator, but a hypnotized victim.

Kerala Tourism woke up to the romantic magic of rains very late, long after filmmakers managed to resist the temptation to use the downpour to make men sire out-of-wedlock children. It was in 2006 that tourism planners decided to sell the monsoon for the first time. The ambition was to transform the state into a 360-degree all-weather destination.

The monsoon season, from June to September, is traditionally shunned by Europeans who land here for the sun and the tan. So if the season has to be extended, domestic tourists should be brought in. “Sell them the rains,” was the brief given by the then tourism director B Suman.

But the monsoon had two major disadvantages: one, it is incompatible with vacations (it is summer vacations that we have, not monsoon holidays), and two, it forces tourists to always keep indoors (travel is an outward activity). Research led to a promising link between North Indian marriages and south-west monsoon.

“Their marriage season ended right when our monsoon season began,” a top Tourism Department source said. Thus, during 2006 monsoon, Kerala was sold as a honeymoon destination. Taking a cue from filmmakers, the rain was sold as a sort of aphrodisiac. One of the ads featured a rain-drenched moon-eyed young couple along the edge of a backwater stretch. The copy said: 

“Sometimes it takes water to kindle a fire” (see the image). But despite the most seductive of sales pitches and the most inventive of events like ‘rain walk’, the monsoon failed to enthuse. The monsoon strategy was shelved the very next year. But since the rains were still considered the state’s most enchanting attribute, the strategy was tried once again in 2013.

The ad copy that could have lured some couples to the state that year said: “When it rains, every spark turns into a flame.” Unfortunately, no year could have been worse for the revival; it was the heaviest monsoon in decades. It kept raining and raining until all fire was doused.

The epitaph was written for ‘monsoon as a tourism product’. “The duration of the monsoon is too short to put in place a successful off-season strategy. The rains alone are not enough to convert Kerala into a round-the-clock destination,” a top tourism official said.

The Monsoon Kerala package was replaced by the ‘Dream Season’ package, which covered the entire off-season from May to September. Private players, too, are wary of the showers. During a stakeholder meeting held a couple of months ago, representatives of the industry had told the planners that the selling monsoons was doing more harm than good.

“Last time a number of business conventions were first postponed and eventually got organized in other destinations because of the heavy rains,” said Joseph Mathew, the CEO of Hotel Emerald Green in Edappally, Kochi. Monsoon is not part of the business plan of most tourism entrepreneurs. “It’s a mystery, I admit. But somehow we have been reluctant to promote the monsoon,” said Mr Chandrahasan of Kerala Travels. After a thought, he fishes out a reason. “This is a time when epidemics break out. It is professionally risky to tell our clients to visit our land during the rains,” he said.