The west end of my hometown is nothing like the rest of it. It is frilled with cliffs that overlook a beach, which invariably crops up on every list of the best Indian beaches.

I should be proud of calling this beach-town my home. And I am. But as a boy, the small town of Varkala filled me with the kind of boredom the advent of the internet has made unimaginable.

The small, leafy railway station was very close to the house I grew up in, and during the summer every train that stopped at the station dropped off a flock of European or American tourists. These backpackers were a sight to behold. As a child, I was instantly fascinated by the different coloured hair these visitors had — blond, red, ashen, brown… Some wore ponytails, some had tonsured scalps, a few even had tattooed heads. When they changed into bikinis, the female tourists seemed straight out of the posters of x-rated movies that played almost clandestinely at one of the four ramshackle cinemas in town.

If the beach lured tourists to our town, the tourists lured the townsfolk to the beach. We went and watched them sunbathe, swim in the sea almost naked, smoke what was rumoured to be ganja and lock their lips in long French kisses. Some of these tourists spent the whole day on the beach, some retired to the adjacent cliffs and lazed in hammocks strung between coconut trees. The narrow path that ran along the rim of these cliffs was lined with small lodgings, tiny cafes and shops selling overpriced curios. The view of the beach from the cliff was magnificent, and the steep trails trickling down through thickets connected these cliffs to the beach. There were infrequent stories of drunken tourists falling off the edge and crashing to their deaths on the rocks below.

Watching these backpackers parade through the town, I realised that a big world existed outside this sleepy little town, a world probably too sophisticated for small-town boys to have a place in. When the season ended and the tourists were gone, I would find myself imagining the places they went back to — the size of their cities, the shape of their homes, the nature of their livelihood. Oddly enough, all the places I thought up had a distant view of either Big Ben or the Eiffel Tower.

It was to escape the boredom the town imposed that I decided to read and write stories — I believed reading would make the town less unbearable and writing would finally help me escape into the bigger world. I was about 20 when I could finally escape from the town by running away from it.

After attempting to make many cities my ‘hometown’, I returned to Kerala and found a job in Cochin, where I finally settled down. During one of my visits to Varkala more than a decade ago, I stayed in a beachside hotel for a night. I was still many years away from my first book deal. A few yards from my hotel was a small bookstore full of second-hand books. I chatted with the shopkeeper and found out he loved reading books more than selling them. I mentioned my roots in the town and it turned out that he knew my father well and thought highly of the library we had at home. Deep into the conversation he told me how distraught my father was over a son who had dropped out of college, left home and wanted to be a writer. Unsure if I would ever get published, I pretended not to be the wayward son who let his father down.

These days I visit Varkala whenever I can, and no matter how short my visit I don’t leave the town without going to the beach and the cliff. My new book is set in this town, and any story set in this town is incomplete without the beach and the cliffs.

The beach hasn’t changed much since my childhood, but the cliffs have, almost beyond recognition. There are more hotels and eateries, and many of them have menus in Russian, German and French, besides English. More tourists crowd the beaches, and many carry surfboards as effortlessly as we carry a file. The bookstore where I met my father’s acquaintance is no longer there. A money exchange counter stands in its place. There are many second-hand bookstores along the path, some on the sidewalk, some inside restaurants. I look up their collections, faintly hoping to spot one of my books among them. No such luck so far.

To get to the beach I have to drive past the school I went to. And every time I go past its arched gateway I remember an afternoon from my childhood. Proximity to the sea has always been a cause of concern for school authorities. I remember how the boldest of us would sneak out at lunch recess and pedal down to the beach for a quick adventure. One afternoon a group of students burst through the school gates just before the bell marking the end of the lunch recess tolled. They looked like messengers of some really bad news as they abandoned their bicycles in the garden and ran down a corridor. A few minutes later, the bell tolled again, ordering the school to disperse: the sea had taken away one of their classmates. The sea returned him the next day. I don’t remember his name, but I still remember standing in a long queue to have a glimpse of his face.

Sometimes I ask myself if I would ever come back to Varkala for good. ‘Yes’ is my answer. Because almost everyone goes back to their hometown when they die. But then it will not be the beach I will be headed to. It will be a much quieter and emptier place, shaded by cashew trees and far away from the sound of the sea.

(In this monthly column, authors chronicle the cities they call home.)

Anees Salimis a novelist; the author of The Blind Lady’s Descendants

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