The Magic of Incense, Salt and the Secrets They Hold

There is a small town at the southernmost tip where three oceans meet. On postcards, it looks mythical. But in real life, it smells like incense that settles into your hair and salt that sticks to your tongue. I witness coconut oil shining on almost every head that walks by. When I say I am from Kanyakumari, people pause as if I have named a legend. Exotic to them. Tuesday to me.

I loved my early childhood there, then life tugged me away. At seven, my mother’s transfer pulled me out by the collar. The puddles I jumped into, the monsoon smell of wet earth, the Sunday bells that shook the quiet, all of it turned into a stash of memories I kept tucked into school days in a faraway city. I never missed a chance to go back. Summers, winters, every festival, I returned to Nattalam, a small village inside Kanyakumari. Grandma’s house. Cousins arriving like a flood. 

Nattalam is the kind of place where strangers are relatives you have not met yet. I could not walk ten steps without hearing, “Aren’t you Ramesh Kumar’s daughter? You look just like him.” People I had never seen still carried pieces of me, as if the soil kept a ledger with my name written in the margins. Odd, and comforting. It made the land feel alive.

Our house sat near a church. Mornings were thick with devotion, soft voices reading verses behind half-open windows. My mother was already at the stove by then, building her puttu mountains and letting mutton curry bloom in the pot. The air turned into spice and memory. Breakfast was not just food. It was a mandatory ritual.

The beaches stretch so far that it almost feels like the world forgot to stop. Kids run barefoot, chasing waves and each other. Older women sell shell necklaces from faded baskets. Men balance banana bunches on bicycles and wobble through the lanes. If you pass a doorway at the right time, someone will pull you in and feed you like they’ve known you a lifetime. I have spent whole days in other people’s homes, playing with their pet hens, chopping in their kitchens. No one tells you to leave. They ask why you are not staying over. It is warmth, yes, but here comes the splinter. My beautiful town can be quietly cruel.

College took me to a fantastic city called Coimbatore, and just like that, everything changed. I changed. My voice, my clothes, my thinking. Cities don’t just change you; they rough you up first. They scorch, stretch, and slap you around until you either fold or figure out how to stand. In Coimbatore, I learned to wear a crop top and keep my shoulders steady. I learned that opinions do not need to arrive with shame. Each time I returned to Kanyakumari, I folded myself small again. I wore what I didn’t want to. Lowered my voice. Performed the version of me that fit. 

Something about me is that I grew up thin and have stayed that way. I ate like three people and still looked like an outline. What felt normal to me became my loudest insecurity. The town had a way of making jokes that bit through my skin. “People in Somalia look healthier than you.” “How will your parents find a groom?” “Aren’t your parents feeding you enough?” I laughed on the outside. Inside, a war started and refused to end. I wore that shame like a second skin for years.

College cracked that skin. Some girls(I am grateful for) wanted my frame. They asked for diet tips I did not have. Slowly, I unlearned the disgust I had been handed. I stood in front of the mirrors and said, You are sexy. One day, the words landed. With that tiny piece of peace, I noticed something else. It was not me. 

The small town(Nattalam) chewed gossip like paan, sweet at the start and bitter when spit out. A girl who laughed too loudly, a boy who stayed out too late, a woman who married later than the calendar preferred, everyone was a topic. Why are small towns obsessed with control? Because fear is easier to manage than change. Fear of independence. Fear that the next generation will ask questions you cannot answer. It’s simpler to keep people afraid (of judgment, of being different) than to deal with the chaos that comes when things start shifting. So the community polices itself with shame. Shame becomes the leash. Silence becomes obedience.

Here is the knife twist. A place can cradle you with one hand and cut you with the other. Love and damage can share a front door.

That realization was equal parts healing and heartbreak. I stopped seeing my town only as a victim of its conservatism. I saw it as a mirror of its own insecurities. The women who mocked my body were overweight. The uncles who commented on a girls’ clothes were terrified of the future they could not predict. They preserve what they can. They cook in clay. They avoid modern apps. They walk, they check on each other, and they can navigate the street by the sound of a neighbor’s cough. Community is muscle memory here. Growth of the mind, not always.

And yet there is safety. In most cities, if you fall sick, you are alone with your pharmacy receipt. In Kanyakumari, someone knocks with rasam rice and a list of medicines, and the instructions are not optional. Care arrives with advice and a reminder to protect the family name. It is a strange paradox, love threaded with control.

I owe much of myself to this place. Kanyakumari taught me stillness. While other cities run, Kanyakumari waits. The sea is not background there; it is scripture. It can roar and it can rest, and it always returns to itself. I learned to do the same. Turns out belonging isn’t a test. I can love a place without it loving me back.

I learned contradictions too. People here can hug you and cut you down in the same breath. You can crave a place so badly it hurts, while also praying for space from it. In many other cities, I can throw on whatever I want, and nobody even blinks. In Kanyakumari, a sleeveless top is still a scandal. People stare. Some comment. It feels like they want me to stay frozen in their photo frame, the soft-spoken girl in a kurti who does not take up space.

Sometimes I imagine bringing my whole self back and refusing to fold. A small cafe. Poetry nights. Dresses without apologies. Would the town welcome me or push me to the edge? Conservative hometowns adore the version of you that behaves. Step outside the frame, and you turn into a lesson for other people’s children.

I have made peace with that. I do not need unanimous approval. I need my own. The sea taught me that. It rages, then it rests.

On my last visit to kanyakumari, I sat on the beach and watched the sun bleed into the waves. My sister and I ran wild at the edge of the sea. My brother-in-law turned into our unpaid paparazzi clicking candids. Kids played football and built castles that the waves would claim. Church bells kept arguing with the wind. Everything ordinary. Everything eternal.

I do not need permission to carry these memories. They are mine, whether the town nods or clucks its tongue.

Kanyakumari may never fully accept the woman I am. It raised the girl who could become her. For that, I am grateful.