Dear Diary....

Don't you just love reading the 'Dear Diary..' kind of books? Like 'Daddy-Long-Legs' or Olivia? I wish I had a diary habit too - but since I don't , this blog will probably be the nearest to it. I'm at a cross-roads in my life - talk about mid-life crisis! Behind me I see the tough journey that I've been through and ahead, lies uncertainty. Like every other Indian parent, I worry a lot about my daughter (scond from left, front row, in the photo) and what lies in her future. Did we make the right decisions? Was I right to let her choose the path she's taken? Should we have counselled her against her choice? Parenting can be very agonizing at times.

I'm not sure what my next step should be. I feel like I'm at the very edge of the cliff ( shades of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, eh?) - either I plunge into the abyss or I find my wings and fly. But I'm sure I'll fly.

Here comes the sun!

The clouds have let up for the moment and we've had a patch of sunny weather. Blue skies are back again - yippee!
September is a month for memories. My grandfather's birthday is at the end of the month and whenever September comes around - we tend to reminisce about him a lot. And boy, was he ever a character! Peppery, irritable, fractious, witty, acid-tongued and with very little patience for fools - he dominated our lives as the original paterfamilias. His grandchildren were always a little scared of him, I think - me , least of all , as his eldest grandchild - because we never knew where the next irritable remark was coming from. But he was like the banyan tree - in whose nurturing shade, we were protected and shielded. And that's something you realize when you leave home for the first time and step out into the big, bad world.

As part of an extended family, in a typical patriarchal system, girls generally get the short end of the stick. But strangely for a man of his age and social mores, my grandfather was unequivocal in his support of the female child. When I wanted to leave home to study in the far off north, he was my strongest supporter. When I had a falling-out with my in-laws, he was my rock. My grandmother trotted out the usual arguments about how a girl should learn patience and adjustment (yeah, right!) but he was so proud of me for having struck back at the Empire.

He was a repository of tales and reminiscences - my cousins will remember the one about the tiger and the one about the scary footsteps at night especially. His feisty comeback after his strokes never ceased to amaze us. Nor did he miss a chance at exasperating us with his insistence that he was absolutely fine. From a humble background, he climbed to the rather rarefied heights of a conferred IAS and headed the APSRTC as Director, Operations and APSTC as well. My daughter remembers him as a very old man, her great-grandfather, who taught her to say 'Kanakaambaram', when she couldn't pronounce the word.

How happy he was to see her when she was born, when I got home from hospital! And his reaction was so typical too; I was admonished for not holding her properly and he told me not to drop her!:-) And then, in spite of our outcry, he insisted on carrying her so he could see her face properly. In his waning years, he would sit out on the porch in winter, in the sun, falling asleep over the newspaper. But woe betide anyone who thought him a faded old man - he would spring up into wakefulness like a tiger and could argue the proverbial hind foot off a donkey when he chose to.

When I think of him, he seems like a beacon, shining strongly down the years, guarding us against rocky shoals and steering all of us to safe passage. May god bless his soul!

Monsoon Musings

It's monsoon season and out come the dusty umbrellas, the raincoats and the old gumboots from the closets. Eulogized in numerous songs and ballads, the Indian monsoon brings relief to a baking subcontinent after the travails of summer and is the mainstay of the agricultural industry, not to mention the major source of hydel power.
It's raining and you know what they say - it never rains but it pours! And pour it does, reducing roads to slush with evil looking puddles and traffic to an impossibly entangled snarl. Damp clothes, musty homes, late maid-servants, crotchety auto drivers add to all the other woes of the season. On the bright side, however, the garden raises it's weary head and begins to look green and healthy again. When the harsh summer sun leaches the plants of the will to live, they grow depressingly yellow and sickly. The rain brings all the dramatic color back and you can almost see the plants perk up and decide that life's good after all! The patch of no-man's land behind my house is now a confused green tangle of growth with purple Ipomoea dotting it here and there - very colorful!
And when the sun comes out after a bout of heavy rain, everything looks newly washed - even the sky! My pigeons don't care too much about the rain but they look so bedraggled and wet that I wonder what they do when it rains continuously for three days - a rather common occurrence during the Indian monsoon.
Rainy days are also time for warm cookies, puffs or cakes , crisp pakoras or vegetable frittata and cups of steaming tea! Warm razais to snuggle under and a suitably spine-chilling mystery to read - aaahhhh, Heaven!
Right then, it's reality check time, off I go - back to my mundane job and responsibilities - I'll post again later.

Return to Nature

My obsession with Coonoor is a life-long one. It was exhilarating to visit this summer and get back in touch with all my favorite spots. But it was kind of sad to see that nobody seems to be investing in the place.

My old schools (see photo for Stanes High School, Coonoor) are going strong but could do with some cash inflows. And Lower Coonoor definitely is very crowded. So when I read about one family's gesture to make a difference - I can't help rhapsodying about it. They've left behind a very rich lifestyle and a Bollywood heritage to run a 22 acre farm where they are looking at organic produce, biogas driven energy and organically made cheese. Kudos to them! Visit them to know more at:
http://www.acres-wild.com/

Coonoor - Sights to See

The moment Coonoor is mentioned to any of the taxi drivers, it elicits the same response - 'Ah! Sims' Park' and a sage nod of the head. Like as if this entire town were built around just the one place of note that tourists can flock to. Tourists do flock to Sims' Park but there are plenty of other places to see in and around Coonoor.

Sims' Park on a sunny afternoon is like a slice of paradise tucked away in a forgotten corner. The sun tries vainly to break through the gloom of thousands of trees, some of them more than a century old, and light up the emerald lawns and sloping paths that make up about eight levels of this Victorian garden. Botanical specimens, duly labelled, from all corners of the Empire were brought in and laid out amidst this hollow around an ornamental lake, replete with pergolas, summerhouses and clipped hedges. We sat on the lawns and breathed in the fragrance of eucalyptus, pine and wintergreen while thousands of birds called and cooed far above us. A fruit show held here in May is the event of note and many tourists flock here to visit during that time.

Up ahead of Sims' Park, Lamb's Rock, Dolphin's Nose and Lady Canning's Seat are all noted view points and on a clear day, we can see a dizzying vista of smoky blue mountains, green valleys, winding roads right down to the sultry plains. Lady Catherine's Falls can also be seen cascading in milky white in the distance. The journey to these places (about 8-12 kms from Coonoor town) is just as enchanting - you pass through shola forests so thick that the sun cannot penetrate the thick cover of eucalyptus, oak and pine. Ferns and moss grow beside oozing rock that channel many a mountain stream that comes to sight unexpectedly round a bend. Birds like the red vented Himalayan bulbul or the canary flycatcher call and colorful flowers grow by the wayside. Manicured tea bushes grow on the slopes of the mountains as you keep climbing upward. The feeling of getting away from it all is very pronounced as each winding bend takes you to your destination.

I just wish the Government would pay a little more attention and make these places neater and easier to reach by repairing the roads more often.
At Dolphin's Nose, we bought tea grown in the nearby Singara and Adderley estates - rose tea, ginger tea, chocolate tea and broken Orange Pekoe. And eucalyptus oil, wintergreen oil, clove oil. Spices are found in abundance, thanks to the foresight of planters who often interspersed the tea bushes with spice trees, teak and pepper vines.

Needlecraft: On our way back from Dolphin's Nose, we stopped at Needlecraft, on the Singara Estate. Needlecraft is situated at a lovely vantage point at the truly beautiful Erin Villa- a tourist spot in itself. Erin Villa dates back to British times and is surrounded by a garden with a fountain and summerhouse. Quaint and so much a symbol of the Coonoor experience that you expect a roaring fire and chocolate cakes once you're inside the cool, dark interior. Exquisitely embroidered napkins, serviettes, bedsheets, bedspreads, pillowcovers, cushion covers and handkerchiefs in petit-point, cross-stitch, satin stitch and herring-bone are their forte. The prices are steep however , with a pair of pillowcases costing Rs 280/- , but for a good cause as the lady who owns the place tells us. The money goes towards supporting convents - so I guess that's fine.
Outside Sims' Park is the Pomological Station- where research on fruits is conducted along with growing of hybrids and Pasteur's Institute - only one of two in all of India, that manufactures anti-rabies vaccine. You can purchase nutmeg jelly, pear jam , strawberry jelly or loquat jelly - to name just a few, at the Pomological Station.

Coonoor - Misty Blue Mountains

Coonoor is a rather sleepy tea town - at least , that's what the usual description of this small town nestled in the Nilgiri mountains says. To me, it wasn't sleepy at all. As a child, there was always so much to do and discover. I traipsed around the place without let or hindrance, much to my mother's disapproval of my skinned knees and windblown hair. I climbed grassy hill sides, ate berries, plucked ferns, played with friendly calves or goats and went flower-picking with my friends. Coonoor was a safe place then and thirty years later, it doesn't seem to have changed in that respect. But lower Coonoor has gotten more crowded and jaded, the traffic has increased manifold and where once, a gentle quiet reigned, the raucous honking of cars fills the air.
Upper Coonoor hasn't changed very much, thank God! Both St. Joseph's Anglo-Indian Convent for Girls and Stanes High School are still the same. The familiar sights of the chapel and nuns' living quarters at the first and the logo of 'Nisi Dominus Frustra' at the other were welcome to my eyes. The principal's cottage where we once stole strawberries from, was shut but evoked many memories - rotund Mr. Wood and his beautiful daughter Anne, his fat Labrador, Simba, basking in the sun. Funny how childhood impressions are so strong!
The Ritz Hotel is now Velan Ritz and wears a tired look. Its signature stuffed bison is gone - I hope to a far gentler place than on earth. The Raja of Chettinad's summer dwelling is still shrouded in royal mystery behind forbidding gates. The green expanse of the Golf Links glitters in the afternoon sunshine just as it did thirty years ago. Wellington's Defence College is still a stern off-limits place. How can a town stand still in time and yet change so much in other respects? It was undiluted pleasure for me and my family to see that the ghat roads still gave on the most incredible views. The roads were bad in parts but motorable. The road repair gangs fight an eternal battle against the incessant rain that turns many roads into slush and gravel. But once you grit your teeth through that ordeal, journey's end can be a heart-lifting panorama of valleys and blue peaks shrouded in the shola forests with microscopic roads winding through them.
And the names! Exotic, decadently Victorian names. Hill View, Orange Grove, Clovelly, Llanelly, Pleasant View, Glendale, Wallwood Garden, Hampton Court, Quail Hill, Figure-of-Eight Road. If it wasn't for the steady hum of Tamil and Malayalam all around you, you would think that you were back in the Raj and even now, a sola-topee clad English officer will ride out from the hidden bend in the road. I know that as a patriotic Indian I shouldn't say this - but I have to give those long-forgotten, intrepid Englishmen their due. They persevered in a strange land far from home and laid roads, railways, gardens and churches that even today give Coonoor its unique flavour. God bless their memory!
Next post - Places to See!

Summer trip to the Hills

I'm just back (very reluctantly, I may add!) from a short vacation in the Nilgiris. I was brought up there as a child and haven't visited since my father's passing away. So, in many ways, this was a trip down memory lane. I love the mountains and their sense of isolation- with each hairpin bend that you cross, you can feel the human trappings peel away - layer by layer. All the dust, the noise, the frenetic pace seems to fall behind in the face of those stone massifs, which stare back at you impassively as they seem to mock our mere human existence. The birds and monkeys , the abundant and verdant foliage - it's like a different world. Mountain streams are a-plenty, a wondrous sight to watch as they cascade over weathered rock like silver.
Well, we stayed at Coonoor because from experience, I knew that Ooty would be more crowded with tourists. Tourists are a big no-no for my family - all of us love solitude and a leisurely, laid-back holiday away from the swarming hordes.
The place we stayed in, Hillworth Resorts, was a big surprise - a brand-new offering from the MGM family with about 10 suites done up in the decor of the bygone days of the British Raj. A four poster bed that needed steps to climb up on to it was a delight - as were the spotless furniture and bathrooms. Vintage newspaper cuttings encased in glass added a quaint touch to the walls.
The view was to die for - just a vista of trees and blue, misty hills over which a golden sun would come creeping up to catch us in its rays. We had breakfasts in the brilliantly sun-lit restaurant with bulbuls and magpies serenading us in fluting song, while a small brook rushed on madly below us downhill, burbling and splashing. A very attentive and helpful staff made it a very memorable stay.
We had an Indica with a driver engaged for the entire stay and that made things very simple. Any time the urge to sight-see came on, we just hopped in and went.
More on Coonoor later!