Muttom - A place I won't forget anytime soon

One lazy afternoon when I was channel surfing, one Tamil channel was showing the popular '80s flick "Kadalora Kavithaigal" which featured Satyaraj and Rekha. I'm not anywhere close to being a fan of Satyaraj, and I get bored out of my wits watching movies where the epicenter is a tiny village and all they do is run around the fields holding goat kids in their hands while looking all coy. What? I'm just being honest. So I was about to move on in my extremely focussed channel surfing activity when the scene in the movie shifted to this beach which made my jaw drop. So while the naive and "pure" character of Satyaraj tried to impress the belle, I kept my eyes open for any indication on where the scenes were shot. It wasn't until the last scene where he has to bid her goodbye at the railway station that I finally found out. Muttom. Not batting an eyelid when the scene was enacted, I was rewarded for my patience and persistence. As the train pulled out of Muttom, I whipped out my laptop to see where it was.

The sand, surf and the blue-green sea at Muttom

Located around 35 km from Kanyakumari, the drive to this tiny coastal village along the shores of the Indian Ocean is as scenic as can be. It takes close to an hour from the Cape Comorin, and the roads are fairly good. We'd just visited the temple at Sucheendram, and when we asked for directions to Muttom, an auto rickshaw driver very helpfully told us "Aiyo, Muttom ah? Anga edukku poreenga? Waste-u.. Sema Waste-u.. anga onnu illa saar." ("Aiyo, Muttom ? Why are you going there? There's nothing there to see." (We Tamilians love to generously sprinkle "aiyos" in our conversation, and he was no exception.) So Arjun, not one to give up, asked him the directions to the beach, and the guy wouldn't stop his helpful banter - "Anga andha padam eduthaanga, avlodaan.. beach mattum daan" (They shot the movie there, there's only the beach, nothing else). But we finally got some rough directions out of him and sped off. We weren't about to be discouraged by one guy who thought it was "waste-u". I wavered a little bit, wondering if the place really wasn't going to be worth, but Arjun wouldn't have any of it. And I'm glad for his singleminded persistence, because I'd have missed out on one of the most amazing experiences ever. 

Yes, true, there is nothing else to "see" there apart from the beautiful stretch of blue-green waters. But that alone is worth the drive. It is untouched, and clean, with nothing taking away from its brilliance. The rocks on the beach add to its charm, and you can spend hours just sitting there and watching the waves rise and fall. Muttom is a fishing village with a lighthouse that's approximately 100 years old. 

The road less travelled...

The rocks on the beach tempt you to strike a meditative pose...

Of course, I'd like to thank the director of the movie, Bharathi Raja for introducing the place to movie-buffs and beach fanatics like us. No one makes a film in a rustic setting better than him. I'm not about to post the picture that I had taken of me posing like Satyaraj on the rocks.