Gods own country and the Devils own people

Last week I took a long 15 hour train trip to Kerala.Someone called it gods own country and the devils own people but we shall come to that later.
After passing brown arid dry terrain of Tamil Nadu,it comes as a shock to enter Kerala.One can almost see an invisible hand with a piece of good green crayon draw a deep line between the two
states.
Kerala is lush and green with beautiful waterfalls and the smell of damp earth which is so refreshing after the heat and dust of the neighbouring places.The rain falls in torrents or a slight drizzle and the sound is a soothing plonk plonk on the sand outside.Almost all the countryside is dotted with houses with typical conical roofs strong enough to allow torrential rain fall off like water off a ducks back.Each of the houses( however rich or poor the occupants may be)will have a small garden and some plantain trees,papaya a jack fruit or a mango tree and sometimes the tapioca trees.Now that the build up to onam(the harvest festival) is on,the gardens are dotted with yam plants in all their glory and one can be sure that a tender yam is just waiting to be dug out and melt in ones mouth(its hardly needs much cooking time).Flowers abound and again they are fairly typical,the hibiscus,the yellow trumpet flower and the theti (a red round bushy flower).The gardens are lovingly tended to on a daily basis and is often inhabited with a couple of chickens,hens and the odd duck.I love the duck.Its a bird that is pretty common in Kerala and can be found in ponds and rivers.Not very tasty contrary to popular taste but there is something to be said about the duck and the way they always swim in formation and do those upside down jumps in the water.
In between all this green expanse there are breaks and they come up on you rather suddenly.The lakes and backwaters beckon with their lovely long snake boats with fisherman throwing the nets for the catch of the day(rest assured that fresh fish is always on the menu of all homes).The waters are clean and silvery and the black boats almost inspire the most dull person into wanting to paint.The waterways are long and wide and can be seen interspersed with large coconut groves and small coves to anchor the boats.
Kerala besides being beautiful,is also clean.The mallu obsession with washing(its all that water around them) doesn't stop with just washing themselves,even the animals,roads and gardens are clean.Its a joy to just see so much cleanliness around.The garbage is most houses is burned and turned back into the soil.This is not some countryside story.Trivandrum the capital city is exactly like this.Hardly any high rise,just the odd ones that mar the landscape but by an large its all houses with gardens small,large and medium.Walk into any ones house and someone like me will come back richer with small fiery chillies,lovely pink chambaka ,and a thousand other fresh home grown produce.
For all this beauty that is Kerala,the people (despite being some of the most educated and the most literate state) are small minded,lazy,opposed to progress and intolerably arrogant and its the tragedy of the state that all the beauty of the environment is wasted on the people who in my limited experience,haven't changed a bit in all the years that I have seen and interacted with them.Fottunately the ones who do leave the state do turn out to be pretty nice(with the usual exceptions) so one can only conclude that too much homogeneity is not very healthy.