Little does India offer without a healthy dose of spirituality, rituals and myths. Ambalappuzha located fourteen kilometers to the south of Alappuzha, Kerala, and it's famed for its Krishna Temple and more interestingly the prasadam offered- the famous paal-payasam, a sweet rice and milk pudding.

Legend has it that the mischievous Krishna himself, in the guise of a sage, challenged the king of the land to a game of chess. The prize the king had to pay if defeated was ‘a few grains’ of rice which was to be laid on the chess board in a particular order - one grain on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, and so forth with each square adding grain worth twice the previous square. The king readily agreed and unsurprisingly lost.

On realizing the geometric progression involved in the scheme of the prize, the king panicked, naturally, considering the final figure would empty not only his but his neighbor’s granaries many times over. The ever-pardoning Krishna revealed his true form and in probably the first case of a financial reconciliation - agreed to aid the king with an installment scheme, serving paal-payasam to devotees everyday, till the debt was paid-off.

The famous prasad is still served every afternoon in Ambalappuzha temple, and it isn't the only element of interest of the temple. At the south of the temple is a sacred room, known as Guruvayur Ambalam, the shrine of Guruvayur. It was to this room that the deity of Krishna installed in Guruvayur was brought to for safe keeping during the invasion led by Tipu Sultan in 1790. In a corner behind protective caging was displayed the mizhavu - a percussion instrument used by Kunjan Nambiar (1705–1770), the satirist poet who invented and popularised thullal - a dance form renouncing the ancient Sanskritised style of Chakkiyar Koothu. He spent his early years at the temple which was also the venue for his first performance of the thullal. 

The sun lowers itself into the western horizon as we approach the banks of the lake Punnamada, three kilometers east of Ambalappuzha. Our object of interest is the centuries old black granite statue, or at least the half that remains, of the Buddha. Buddhism was a prominent religion in Kerala circa 200 B.C. to 800 A.D. until the revival of Hinduism under renewed royal patronage. How exactly was only one half shorn of the statue remains a question. ‘Karumadikuttan’ as he is locally known is sheltered by a small concrete stupa and a narrow pathway leads away from the conical edifice to the banks of the lake, beyond which lie fields dusted with the gold embers of the sun. Strips of cloth and sweet swelling incense adorn the dilapidated structure. A strange tranquility descends on the soul sporadically broken by the mooing of a cow from a nearby farmhouse. With the sun setting the sky and the lake ablaze in hues of red, orange and gold this is truly a vista for the Gods.