Mosses, Tombstones and a Lingering Morning, May 26, 2014

Lt Col. Miss Violet David “Sunbeam” rose from her grave and beamed at me with the quiet radiance of the springtime sun. I smiled back gratefully. The last couple of minutes had had me wondering about the curious title engraved next to her name on her epitaph. Now I knew.

It was the morning of May 26, 2014, our third and final day in Ooty, and Sourav and I had sauntered to the cemetery behind St. Stephen’s Church in search of some good photographic subjects. The dead didn’t approve. With my lens aimed at the nooks and crevices of their mossy tombstones and broken crosses, we were unwelcome intruders. The tall trees that spread out their hundred and one arms to form the wall that holds the churchyard a world apart from the rest of Ooty conveyed to us that we had stepped into a sacred place. So did the birds and the crickets that chirped in a rather measured tone, and the sun that shone sparingly through the foliage. We packed our gadgets away.

The cemetery, with its many decrepit colonial era tombs covered with layers of fallen leaves, mosses and wild flowers, teemed with a silent consciousness. Fragments of a long-lost Ooty stay trapped here, in the collective memory of all who lay here. A Major General William Pitt Macdonald, Madras Staff Corps, sat stone-faced at a lonely corner of his grave. It was the 12^th of March, 1867 when he had passed away – says his epitaph. His face, with its innumerable lines and wrinkles, had witnessed the rolling of decades with the deepest impassivity. A Victor David “Sunbeam” strolled past us, hand in hand with Violet. They had died as recently as 2007 and 2011 respectively, and their distinctively unscathed black marble tombstones stood out rather as misfits amid the surrounding unkemptness. A few ill-fated Brit kids, who had succumbed to various epidemics more than a century ago, loosely gathered around us. Their eyes for sure had stories to tell. Their ears thirsted for tales of all the newness that continually unfolded in the world beyond the church and the trees – and was yet beyond their reach.

We couldn’t speak to each other. I wish we could. Their voice is too subtle for us, and ours, disturbingly loud for them. They are creatures made of thin air, and when they were more than air, they had treaded the same lanes of Ooty that we tread today.  They belonged to families that founded, planned, built Ooty and served in its armies.

That afternoon, we started back for Bangalore, thus concluding my third trip to Ooty. The ethereal morning spent at St. Stephen’s, of course, is destined to remain etched in my memory as a precious takeaway for years to come.

How to Drive a Driver, May 25, 2014

Telescope House, Doddabetta Peak

Ooty, on Day 2 of our stay, thrust upon us this driver who'd get cold feet at the very sight of a traffic congestion! He'd grumble and whine, and look as sad and miserable as a forlorn puppy, only to get us out of his car. He'd prod us to walk 3 kilometers uphill to visit a point of interest, while he'd park his car somewhere downhill and enjoy a sweet nap. Sourav would consider obliging, I would turn defiant, my osteo-arthritis afflicted MIL would get into panic and my DIL would diligently try to play the referee in the ensuing chaos. 

"Let's arrive at a decision.", he'd say. "Do we, or do we not, want to see this place? Is it, or is it not, worth an hour of uphill walk? In case it is, does that leave us enough time to cover the rest of the sightseeing points by evening? And in case it is not, is it feasible for him to turn his car back?" His questions would have the precision to invoke a clear-cut majority rule, and yet we'd debate on hopelessly and haplessly to the point of a deadlock. The driver would be pestered a few more times to line up behind the stagnant queue of cars, and he'd nod like a stubborn mule, looking sadder and sadder with each passing minute. Finally we'd budge and decide to give the place a miss, and voila, the traffic ahead of us would suddenly start moving! We'd unanimously cheer, only to land up in the same soup, or loop, in the next 10 minutes - the takeaway lesson being, NEVER visit Ooty in the peak of the tourist season!!!

The view from Telescope House

Anyways, if I manage to ignore the element of unentertaining 'loopiness' that prevailed throughout the day, and one particular episode of our driver running into serious trouble with the policemen, and yet another all-the-more-inexplicable episode of us actually having to walk 3 km through mostly traffic-less roads and fields to discover the parked vehicle, the day turned out to be good. We visited the Doddabetta Peak, the highest point in Ooty, and caught a lovely glimpse of the surrounding hill slopes through one of the telescopes maintained in the Telescope House. We also enjoyed a demonstration of the tea-making process and machinery, along with a complimentary cup of Nilgiri Tea, at the Doddabetta Tea Factory. By the time we left Doddabetta to travel to Coonoor, our car dickey was filled with boxes of many sizes and shapes, all holding Nilgiri Tea in its many available flavors. 

While Coonoor itself offers some splendid viewpoints - Dolphon's Nose, Lamb's Rock and Lady Canning’s Seat - that provide breathtaking panoramic views of the lush Nilgiris, the journey to and fro Coonoor turned out to be no less visually fulfilling. As we meandered from one slope to another along the serpentine hillside paths, each turn brought forth a yet new look of the layered Nilgiri greenery - be it in the form of its untamed forests, grass-covered valleys or wide tea and coffeee plantations. 

Ensuing Dusk

On our way back to Maruthi Cottages, we briefly touched a very happening Ooty Lake brimming with adults and kids alike, with hundreds of people lined up at the Boat House to avail the paddle and motor boating facilities. The day wrapped up with Sourav and I taking a long semi-aimless stroll to the serene St. Stephen's Church, and along the busy streets of Charring Cross, and we ended up buying more handmade chocolates, 'Varkees' and aromatic spices for ourselves and our friends back in Bangalore and Kolkata.

An Ooty Downpour, May 24, 2014

This post has been selected for BlogAdda's TangyTuesday Picks (July 1, 2014).

It was not the first time Ooty saw me. She had, in fact, known me back in 2008, much before I got married, even before I shifted to Bangalore. The wind under my wings had grown curiously strong those days, and they could fly me from Kolkata to Hyderabad to Bangalore to Ooty, all in a single weekend, at the drop of a hat. Prior bookings? Who cared 'bout them? Hectic schedules? Who gave a damn? 

But now that I am married, and (therefore) chubbier, and have Lazy-lazy-lazybonesourav as my husband, and was travelling for the first time with my new parents, things were different. Full-sleeper bus berths were booked via Redbus well in advance, and MakeMyTrip hotel listings were scanned and re-scanned to achieve absolute unanimity of choice. The results were somewhat lukewarm. While I snored gracefully (or so my husband claims) throughout the night of our journey (from Bangalore to Ooty), the rest of the folks

 had sleep rattled out of their eyes and bones by the jerky ride. And the first glance of the hotel we had booked, Maruthi Cottages, had us suspect the plus-fifty praise-gushing MakeMyTrip/TripAdvisor reviewers to be bots. 

Ooty welcomed us with a torrential downpour that had Sourav and I undertake nothing short of an adventure in order to procure lunch. Our hotel offered no dining or room service facilities, though their website designer had the gifted imagination to advertise separate vegetarian and non-vegetarian restaurants in the premise. We ate, watched the rains, sneaked into our blankets, still watched the rains, slept, dreamt of an Ooty in floods, and finally woke up to a lovely, mildly rain-sodden evening tempting us to step out. We ventured out to the Botanical Gardens that was muddy, splashy and on the verge of a stampede, courtesy to an impressive flower show, an unimpressive cultural event and some ministerial visit. Maruthi Cottages turned out to be stone's throw away from Charring Cross, the commercial center of Ooty. And we somewhat forgave the bots on MakeMyTrip after tasting some of the renowned handmade chocolates sold in the shops lined along Charring Cross. 

Night descended with the gleam of a thousand meditating fireflies seated on the hill slopes. We watched mesmerized, only until one of the two supposedly out-of-order TVs in our cottage sprang back to life. City humans, alas, give in to the lure of the idiot box a little too quickly. Some random IPL match, some more heavenly chocolates, a few more clicks, reminiscence of many other hillside trips, and with that, our Day I at Ooty came to its closure.