Seaside resorts unanimously charge a premium for rooms that overlook the ocean. We were ready to shell out something extra for the following: 

• A dose of balmy sea breeze to exorcise stress and the general drudgery of everyday life.
• A view of the ocean and sky intersecting at infinity beyond the horizon.
• Buffet breakfast where you can pilfer a couple of bananas and idlis to feed your toddler later.

What we were not ready to shell out something extra for: 

Four-legged fiends (but more on that later). 

When we reached the place, the guy at the reception gave us the stink eye because he believed that we were not supposed to be there because we didn’t have a booking (we obviously did). That stink eye was, in hindsight, an early omen for the things to come. After some tinkering on the computer, he reluctantly led us to our gorgeous sea view room with a balcony. 

To say the place had old world charm would be an understatement. But the structure, Old Lighthouse Bristow, had a history stretching back to 1928, and the staircase was a testament to that. They creaked and groaned under the pressure of humans and luggage. But the creaky and winding stairs were the least of our problems, as we were to soon find out. 

Kochi is a great place to spend a few days, especially if the beach is walkable from your hotel. A walk along the promenade and a view of the industrial scale fishing happening with the Chinese fishing nets was a great way to start our trip.

The trouble with toddlers is that the world around them is full of colour and tempting treats. They want to grab everything in sight and make it theirs (at least for a few seconds or minutes). If you were to look up synonyms for ‘toddler’ in the baby dictionary, ‘trouble’ would be the first word that pops up. 

Toddlers are a mischievous and observant class of babies who can spot plastic toys, bubble blowers, balloons, ice cream stalls and everything else half a kilometre away, and our toddler was among the crème de la crème of mischievous toddlers. 

As parents, you have to consider it a win if you go back home or to the hotel with less than three new items for your toddler. 

It had been a hot morning where we had all lapped up ice creams by the beach, and despite some meek protests by our toddler to buy some other stuff, we returned to the hotel empty-handed, soaking in our victory of the day.

Just as I was about to turn on the air conditioner, I froze. There, between the vents of the AC was a mini crime scene. 

Framed between the vents with its legs splayed out, lay an unfortunate member of the rodent family, who was for all intents and purposes, dead.

There’s a rat in the air conditioner, I told my wife, trying to suppress the alarm that usually accompanies such a statement. 

After a couple of high-pitched shrieks from the other end, I dialled the reception and explained the sitch. 

I expected housekeeping to come in with the required tools, remove the objectionable content from the room and sanitise the place. But what we got was an electrician who directly grabbed the remote from the table, turned on the AC and gave me a clueless expression that said, “Why did you call me here? Don’t you know how to turn on an AC?”. 

My attempted explanations of “Rat, rat” and feeble pointing didn’t get his attention. That’s when I stood on the bed and pointed more closely, with a louder cry of “RAT!” 

Finally the electrician seemed to understand, and he was horrified when he realised. “Oh! Sorry sir,” He said, huffing off. He came back with the required tools, and managed to remove the rat. “Ok sir,” he tried to leave. 

“Can’t you change our room? Or at least sanitise this one?” I asked. The electrician looked at me blankly as if removing dead rats from air conditioners was a commonplace occurrence that didn’t warrant anything like changing your room or extra cleaning. Finally he said, “Ok sir, we will do it by evening.” But it still remains a mystery what “it” was, and whether “it” was actually carried out.

On day 2, our toddler decided to have a game of running and catching from our room on the first floor to the reception on the ground floor. The trouble was, the wooden steps to head downstairs had a blend of undesirable characteristics:

• Old and creaky
• Winding
• Steep

Toddlers can navigate nearly any terrain with their tiny frames and nimble toes. Grownups, especially those trying to chase toddlers, acquire an unwieldy manner that makes them clumsy oafs.

As I chased her down the stairs and ran after her, I missed spotting the flower uruli (Heavy vessel filled with water and floating flowers) at the base of the stairs. Before I could realign my coordinates, I tripped on it and fell. But what made it worse was that my angle of descent as I went down was so unfortunate that I fell sideways right into the vessel of water and flowers, causing a massive splash and ensuring that most of the flowers ended up crumpled on the floor. 

This resulted in a pair of contrasting reactions: all a matter of perspective. The hotel staff were shocked beyond belief, while my partner was laughing: both parties couldn’t imagine that someone had messed up so badly that they didn’t spot a huge vessel of water that was dead centre of the reception area. Weren’t these urulis meant to be spotted and admired?  

With my left knee and foot hurting and my pants now sogging wet, I limped back to our room to recuperate a bit, while my partner half apologetically, half laughingly went in search of the toddler who had caused this furore and who had seemingly disappeared from the face of the earth.

Barring these, the trip was filled with pleasant memories too. we visited most of Kochi’s landmarks like: 

• Jew Town: bursting with colour, cafes, and shopping opportunities. A quaint little synagogue to boot.
• Mattanchery palace: Simple and elegant, packed with history.
• Took the ferry to Marine Drive.
• Marine drive: What a place to catch the beautiful sunset.
• Many other spots, including the Kerala folklore museum, beaches, sea view restaurants.

We even went on a long, peaceful boat ride down the backwaters, where we could hear only the sound of the boat slicing through the water, the sound of the oars, the calls of birds.. And a toddler’s voice piercing the peaceful silence with high-pitched squeals and a barrage of questions.

When it was time for us to leave on the morning of Day 4, we were obviously late, savouring our buffet breakfast. We hurriedly packed, dumping our clothes into suitcases. 

When we locked up and wanted to check out, I suddenly couldn’t find one of my Crocs. Frantically searching everywhere in every corner of the room, I didn’t manage to spot it. Perhaps I had dumped it along with clothes in one of the suitcases? I hurriedly emptied the suitcase on the floor and rummaged through the clothes pile  — still no Croc. 

It was time to leave. We’d miss the flight if I delayed any longer. At the desk, I told the puzzled receptionist my tale and asked if they had any spare footwear, but he was in a constant state of disbelief.  How could one piece of footwear simply disappear from a locked room? 

I told him that we didn’t have time to ponder the intricacies of this mystery; but this was evidently too much for him to take, so he dispatched a few staff members to investigate. 

Finally, one of the staff members turned up with a triumphant expression and a battered Croc hanging from his hand. 

This is what it looked like:

It seemed to me that after the rodent in the AC incident, one member or several members of the same clan had decided to exact revenge on an unsuspecting me.

The Croc was chewed up in several places, but I didn’t have a choice: the clock was ticking and I didn’t want to leave barefoot. Besides, I had spent over 4k on these shoes, and didn’t want to just throw them away. 

While the receptionist and the staff were arguing if it was a rat or a dog that was responsible for this (One of them wondered if rats had the strength to carry a size 9 Croc from the first floor to the ground floor),  I grabbed some hand sanitiser and tissues and got to work. Scrub scrub scrub, right in the lobby. That was the best I could do.

Put them on gingerly, rushed to the taxi, and tried to drive the picture of a rat chewing my shoes out of my head. It was a dog. Yes, it had to be a dog, I told myself. Maybe if I wrote to them and demanded CCTV footage, we would actually get to know. 

But somehow, my toddler felt that rat made for a better story. And I felt that way too, after having a run-in with another rat in the AC incident. Oh, and here’s the best part — I still wear the same Crocs 😀