Back from Munnar (BH:D67)

October 9, 2011

Sunday morning at 9am we began our return journey to sea level Kochi from the 5000 ft altitude of Munnar. When we went to have the resort breakfast buffet, we could see Murugan cleaning the car with much care and affection. 

A young man was walking around the resort taking photos using his sizeable tablet PC. He saw me looking at him. The great tool-user pain expression came over his face. It is an expression that shows a tinge of anguish at being technologically capable. Mechanics have it even when they are doing something as simple as unscrewing. These days it is easiest to notice on the faces of mobile phone users. It says, "What a pain this exclusive gadget that I have is! Look I know how to use it, but believe me, you don't want to get into this previleaged predicament!" This must have been the expression visible to rest of the tribe when the first man who tamed fire showed up with the burning twig at night. 

The young man tapped a couple of times on the screen and pulled the leather cover over the device. He moved to another location for some more of the sweet pain.

I had woken up thirsty earlier in the night, if you can call 2am night. Since the night was clear, I went to the balcony to check out the night sky. What a glorious sight! Thousands of stars on the eastern sky. The moon on the west. Couple of planets under the big dipper. I wonder why Munnar is not considered for locating an observatory. Since such a vast expanse of the universe was visible, I decided to wait till a shooting star blazed through. 

In the distance, a few scattered, isolated lights in the valley. The high beam of a vehicle snaking through the highway resembled a firefly. During this time of the night, the water fall resounded even louder. Then all of a sudden a white cloud rises from the valley. Like the softest downy white pillow has been torn. It rises gently like a magicians smoke and covers the village. For ten minutes, may be fifteen, it stays and then disappears, disperses just as gently as it had come. The magic worked. The lights in the village have shifted. The vehicle lights were no longer visible.

Suddenly in the southern sky, the flash of a meteor. 2:33am. I went back to bed, muted the TV and watched the stars on earth dance in the two dozen channels.

While waiting for Murugan, Achan suggested that we imagine the large rock nearby to be a mountain and the moss and lichens on it to be the forests. He tried remembering lessons from his geology days. He had been to most of the dams in the area then as part of study tour. "This is a straight gravity dam," he said imitating the accent of his professor, but he couldn't remember which dam it was or what straight gravity dam means!

The descent in broad daylight was easier than the headlamp assisted climb yesterday night. The fox was not there. Only some cows. The discussion turned to elephants and elephant training. Murugan explained that there are 16 pillars in the arena where new elephants are brought into train at Kodanadu. A mahout with a cane stands hidden behind each pillar. The elephant is secured by ropes. The main mahout faces the elephant and issues commands. Every time he strikes the elephant with his cane to make it obey, all the 16 hidden men bring down their canes simultaneously. Thus the elephant associates this disproportionate pain with a single cane. 

One more stop at the Kannan Devan outlet to pick up tea packets for neighbors and friends. After Chekuthanmukku aka HMC Junction we stopped at a plant nursery. Amma picked up some rose saplings, I picked up a Heliconia, Achan got a Krishna Tulasi (basil). We were pretty sure that the deep violet color of the Tulasi cannot be recreated in our garden because of the different climate.

The forest department has installed signboards intermittently on the road urging conservation. The Neelakurinji flower features prominently in these signs. These blue flowers are expected to carpet these parts in 2018. Murugan narrates the mythology behind the flower. His namesake is the god of the mountains. When upset with his parents, Murugan (Subramanian) moves to the mountains, his brother Ganesh comes to calm him down. Ganesh succeeds and Murugan rejects all his venomous anger from his body and mind. This blue venom scatters in the mountains and becomes Neelakurinji. There was nothing in the legend about why they bloom in 12 year cycles.

We came back via Kothamangalam, Malayattoor and Muvaattupuzha. All three rapidly expanding towns which will soon count as suburbs of Kochi. Lunch at Amrita restaurant which was once a toddy shop associated with a villain actor in south Indian cinema. We were back in Kochi by 2:30pm. 

Murugan works for Broadway taxi service that charges Rs.10 per km and then extra for driver's overnight stay. The trip turned out to be pretty cheap for a great weekend. Our train was at 5:25. Murugan agreed to drop us at the railway station. Till 5:25, sat at Vijayakumar uncle's apartment watching Hrithik Roshan and Shah Rukh Khan speak in their dubbed Malayalam voices for the Just Dance show finale. Luckily, the celebrities in this show speak very little. It is most ooh, wooh, whoop etc which are easily dubbed. 

I wonder why lots of models resort to undressing to grab attention. All you need to do is carry a Heliconia plant in a bag through a crowded railway station. Everyone, young and old, men and women, follow your progress with the plant. Feeling like a celeb, I reached platform number 4 and waited in the area where bogie number 5 would stop. 

Jan Shatabdi arrived from Kozhikode promptly at 5:15pm. The great Indian rush to get in. Kids getting crushed. Luggage squashed. Ever changing tableus of grotesque choreography by some BDSM fetishist. Finally somehow we are in. The plants are safe. 

This time our seats are split. I am in the middle seat of the first row left side. To the right side, there are only two seats and one is reserved for the Train Ticket Examiner (TTE). Amma and Achan are in the row in front of those two seats. The window seat of their row is a young man who insists on sitting there. 

Three girls show up and ask if I would mind exchanging to the seat next to the TTE's so that they can sit together. I didn't mind moving to the window at all. The TTE also didn't mind the switch. The girls chattered nonstop right from the time they got in. They looked like freshmen. Now the young man at the window in my parent's row wanted to exchange the seat. "We have been talking continuously for the last three days," I told him, "so you can sit there now!". The TTE went about his duty. In his dark suit and tie, he looked like a young Gordon Greenidge.

The setting sun blazed a trail on the Vembanad lake. A million ripples on the lagoon. I wonder if there is one ripple in a lagoon for every twist of a tail fin in the ocean.

Soon, the coconut groves become silhouettes. Each coconut tree has a distinct personality. It is unfair that we assign uniqueness only to specimens of our own species and dogs come a distant second. 

Oil lamps flicker for the gods who live in little temples beside the railway track. Electric lamps for the human homes. A buffalo submerged in a backyard pond. A human submerged in another with his arm held high for soaping. A bunch of young men playing football in the sand. 

TTE comes back to his seat in an hour. I offer him water. He gulps it down. "Why do you guys still have this British era costume? Isn't it horrible to wear this in the hot Indian summer?" I ask. "it is most uncomfortable," he agrees. I suggest someone should mail about this issue to some newspaper. He leaves the passenger chart on the food tray and goes to the other compartment. 

Gone are the days of compartments with booth seating. Now the coaches are airline style. The emergency chain is no longer a red bit of a nunchaku. It has become a light brown grenade.

I cannot help noticing the three girls' names on the chart. Two F22s and one F23. A Miss Bhatt, a Miss Talreja and a Miss Shefaaz. My brain goes into overdrive trying to figure out who is who. After five minutes of staring into the darkness outside, I come to a conclusion. The fairest of the all must be the Bhatt girl; the one with the nose stud Shefaaz's daughter and by the process of elimination, the shortest and most talkative one is the Talreja progeny. After congratulating myself on the Sherlockian powers of deduction, I look for our names in the chart. Bummer! This was the chart of D10 and we were in D11. 

TTE comes back to his seat. He hails from Mavelikkara. We make conversation. "thante ee prayathil ente makanu vayasu aarayirunnu" (When I was your age, my son was already 6) he comments on my single status. He has two kids now. Younger one is in UKG. He has been in service for 13 years. For two months every year, he is on Jan Shatabdi. Six days a week duty. Railways provides accommodation, food is up to them. He mentions his favorite Murali hotel in Thiruvananthapuram, near the MLA hostel, "Puttum Meenthalayum kittum. Randara kilometer njangal nadannu pokum. Thirichu auto." (We get 'puttu' and fish head curry. We walk the 2.5Km to the hote and take a rickshaw back) He enquires about the heliconia. They had plenty growing wild in their yard. Without knowing the upcoming star status of the plant, they had destroyed it all couple of years ago. 

He gets busy writing receipts of the fines he had issued. Rs 900 each for the two passengers who had been travelling from Kozhikode without reservation. I can see the D11 chart now. All 3 F18s. All three malayalee names. I didn't want to waste another five minutes trying to match the names with the faces. 

Train makes an unscheduled stop at Sasthamkota. I look at the all powerful TTE for answers. He telephones his friend on duty at the station. There is a passenger train traveling a little ahead of the Jan Shatabdi. Earlier, they used to hold that train and allow this express to overtake. But then a few hundred season ticket holding passengers petitioned the MP against the loss of 12 minutes of their life. So now Shatabdi waits and follows the slow Passenger train till it comes to its last stop at Kollam. 

A bunch of M19s and M20s soon show up to chat with the F18s. It was some kind of mild locomotive ragging. First, it was the tall girl's turn. As soon as she started answering the questions from the senior boys, couple of Kerala Police constables came to the compartment. "Podei, podei", the constable with the larger potbelly waved the boys away. They dispersed. The police intervention saved the girl. After a few minutes, the boys were back. The next girl was summoned. Half an hour interrogation session. The girls hold hands in solidarity when she manages to come back to her seat.

TTE takes off his suit and tie and relaxes as we stop at Varkala. Other unsuited TTEs show up. Inside his VIP suitcase a photograph of Sai Baba who died recently. I was glad that topic never came up in our conversation. 

9:15: back at Thiruvananthapuram Central Station. Back in my bed by 10:30. Invariably, the best part of any trip is coming back home...with refreshed eyes and a rejuvenated mind!