The house and its laid back guardians, the stone lions,
would have some stories to tell us if they could speak.
But as things are, they are content to bask some
more in the sun each day and keep an indulgent eye on the family,
keeping their sense of serenity at the changes and
modernizations each generation has brought in.
There are so many things to do here (if you feel
up to it in a day interspersed with so many meals!) 
There's table tennis, basketball, football, cricket,
boating, tree climbing, fishing… and if you are bored
with all these 'usual' things to do, you can always dream up new things, 
sitting on the sun- warmed 'kulir kallu'.
 
Welcome to Olavipe - my island in the sun!

The house has had a mini zoo - an ancestor loved
animals - with bears and parakeets and dogs beyond
count. It has seen numerous weddings and births,
games of table tennis, cricket, football, and thousands of
pretend games played by generation after generation of
children on the white sands of the 'mittam' (the
front and back yards of the house).

The dining table is long and stretches on, to hold all the food for a family 
hungry after a day's work and play. Fish in a hundred different avatars,
duck, vegetables and poultry raised and grown within the Thekkanat
grounds, all cooked to perfection, to satiate the appetite of a truly
'foodie' family.

The palm leaves rustle and keep you company
while you laugh. The waters twinkle in merriment. The
golden' lion guards' raise an amused eyebrow and turn
the other way leaving you to enjoy your mirth
undisturbed. Warm feelings of family and its intricate
ties surround you and include you not as an outsider
but as one of its own. Welcome to Olavipe the gift of
the waves, and Thekkanatt Parayil, 
the ancestral house of the Parayil Tharakans. A house 
used to laughter echoing through its tiled
passages - through one, into the other - till at last the
sound is set free into the wild and carried on by the
waves and the birds. Welcome to the happy house.
The Parayils have lived in this house
for more than a century.