Everything about Kerala — its rain, its rivers, its spices, its language boundary, its history — is downstream of one geographical fact. There is a mountain range running the length of its eastern edge. പശ്ചിമഘട്ടം THE WESTERN GHATS Roughly sixteen hundred kilometres along India's west coast, with Kerala in the narrow strip between the range and the Arabian Sea. Mechanically, the range intercepts the southwest monsoon: moist air off the sea hits the wall, is forced upward, cools and drops its water on the western slopes. Kerala gets around three thousand millimetres of rain a year; the plateau immediately behind, in the rain shadow, gets a fraction of that. One range, two completely different worlds. WHY IT EXPLAINS THE LANGUAGE A physical barrier between speech communities, with only a few passes through it — half the reason Malayalam separated from Tamil. The most important is the Palakkad Gap, a break of some thirty kilometres through which trade, armies, migration and vocabulary all travelled. Palakkad's distinctive Tamil-influenced Malayalam is the direct result. THE ECOLOGY The Ghats are one of the world's recognised biodiversity hotspots and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Thousands of flowering plant species, a large proportion endemic; hundreds of birds; a remarkable concentration of endemic amphibians, with new frog species still being described — which tells you how incompletely explored these hills remain. ആന the Asian elephant · കടുവ the tiger · പുലി the leopard കാട്ടുപോത്ത് the gaur, the largest wild cattle species in the world മാൻ deer · കുരങ്ങ് monkeys · സിംഹവാലൻ കുരങ്ങ് the lion-tailed macaque, one of the rarest primates on earth, which lives only here THE VOCABULARY കാട് forest · വനം the formal word · മല mountain, hill · മലനിരകൾ a range · കുന്ന് a hill പുഴ river · അരുവി stream · വെള്ളച്ചാട്ടം waterfall · താഴ്‌വര valley ചുരം a mountain pass — Kerala's ghat roads to Munnar and Wayanad are called by their pass names വന്യജീവി wildlife · വന്യജീവി സങ്കേതം wildlife sanctuary · ദേശീയോദ്യാനം national park ഉരുൾപൊട്ടൽ landslide · മരം tree · തേക്ക് teak · ഈട്ടി rosewood · മുള bamboo THE HUMAN QUESTION The Ghats in Kerala are not empty wilderness. They hold plantations, settlements, towns, dams, roads and around a million and a half people in the hill districts, besides the indigenous communities. Much of that settlement is recent: a major wave of farming families moved up from central Travancore into Idukki and Wayanad in the mid-twentieth century. Three generations on, their claim to the land is real and lived — and the ecological cost of the clearance was real too. Both halves are true, and Kerala has been arguing about how to hold them together ever since. Quizzes below. Dr. Reshmi R Nair — SpeakMalayalam.