INDIA’S WILD HEART

I GREW UP IN Kerala, the region in southern India with neatly manicured tea plantations and palm-fringed beaches that are the stuff of travel dreams. Travel writers have a hard time writing about Kerala without using the word “lush.” But I did not grow up skipping down lush green plantation trails. In fact, that was the childhood my parents happily left behind, moving out of their villages to set up home in the bustling city of Kochi.

They embraced urban living, and we children grew up on the sidelines of Kochi’s never-ending development, apartment towers stacking up precariously while the city ticked off construction mega-projects: an international airport, overpasses, a new metro system. For me, Kerala was Mahatma Gandhi Road, with its speeding buses and glitzy sari shops, restaurants full of loud conversation and steam rising off hot coffee, the sound of the