:: Cyrus Broacha

Family holiday in Kokomo

Cyrus Broacha

May.18 : Long long ago, or maybe a week ago, the Beach Boys wrote a beautiful song on the wonders of a place called Kumarakom. Only due to their limited knowledge of Malayalam (they were well versed with only four words and three of them were P.T. Usha) they called the place Kokomo. Kokomo or Kumarakom, call it what you like, is a fabulous piece of turf, and the Taj Garden Retreat is clearly the best holiday resort in the world. It is here that I decided to spend some quality time, not with the Beach Boys but with my family. The family, according to the last set of DNA tests, consists of me, a woman and two children. One male and the other female, one spotted and one striped.

Day 1. We arrived in Cochin and are promptly told it’s not Kumarakom. So clearly, the Beach Boys aren’t the only ones who make mistakes. After about a two-hour drive in the wrong direction, we reach Taj Garden Retreat. There GM Vincent Ramos mistakes us for royalty, and we are feted and felicitated. Great honours are heaped upon us, including the auspicious "Kumarakon-i-hind" which translates into a separate towel for each family member. This is particularly liked by my wife who always proclaims in public that being married to a man with scales can be counter productive in the long run.

After the traditional greeting (drinking coconut water followed by banging of coconuts on the nearest head, in this case my head) we are led to our room, upon a lake. As I ponder over its liquid serenity and fluid tranquility, my poet son asks the all important question that most poets tend to raise when confronted by this pristine beauty in an aquaform, "Dad, is it okay to pee in the lake?" As I answered in the affirmative my wife released another coconut, immediately cancelling my affirmation and further reducing my status in the family which was already at a precarious fourth out of four.

Then it was time for the bubble bath — my daughter was fascinated by the stopper, that kept the water in. However when she mistook the stopper for one of my favourite body parts, I decided to conclude the bath and check the other most crucial component of a holiday, the bed.

Remember you don’t want a bed that’s too soft so that you sink into it, or too hard that you can’t wait to get off it. The hotel bed seemed just right, not too flexible or too rigid. It was time for the Broacha test. (The Broacha test is similar to the litmus test, only it involves far more colours.) Firstly I lay on my bed, then my son jumped on my open torso, and then my daughter jumped in turn, on him. If the bed breaks, it has failed the test. If it holds it has passed. If my wife catches us, the bed is the least of our problems and the Broacha test has acquired a whole new meaning.

The Taj Garden Retreat gave us the time of our lives. Barbeques, picnics, evening games, dinners on the house, everything except exchanging your families, although I must say they promised to work on the latter.

So here’s the thing, if you want a short break this summer and haven’t planned anything yet, rush to the Taj Garden Retreat for a few days — you’ll never regret it. If you don’t believe me ask the Beach Boys.