The eventful life of my Patti had set off a nostalgic travel into the past. My thoughts go whirling like electrons of an atom. It is predominantly so after her death. (My mind refuses the usual connotation of the word, ‘death' as for as she is concerned.) My life as associated with her keeps playing out like a film continuously in my mind, these two months. There, I keep visiting this quaint, laid back place which you can neither call a city, nor list under a village. It is tucked cosily in the foot hills of Kodaikanal.
I remember the bus ride from
In those days, the bus depot itself had a unique characteristic that we could see simple village folks not yet influenced by the so called 'modern life'. From small villages along the mountain slope, they would come down to sell honey, fruits and other things. Then comes the most thrilling part of taking a ride in a “goda gaadi"- horse drawn cart! One has to master a certain technique or one would slide down. While we used to struggle getting in amidst giggles and scolding, the horse would go chomp, chomp nonchalantly.
With the flick of his wrist, the driver would snap his whip and make a funny noise rolling his tongue and the horse would start its trot. The rhythmic clicking of hooves on the road and the musical clinking of bells tied around the neck of the horse would announce our visit to the entire street. One could feel eyes following the cart.
The street had my father’s ancestral house besides my Patti’s ancestral house. As I walked down the street and turn left, beyond the lush fields, I could see the mountains calling out to me. Wherever I stayed, I could feel the urban restraints slipping away giving place to a wonderful sensation of being enveloped by nature.
Every house had two ‘thinnais’ which served many purposes. I cannot forget the late afternoon activities and rituals connected to the thinnais. My Patti’s mother used to sit there after the coffee session around 3.30 p.m and start directing the women of the household to wash their faces and get dressed. (It is an idea that the women had to freshen up for the evening after their long hours of work.) “It is time for the flower vendors, hurry up” she would urge all the lazy ones. Even during peak summer days, when we opened the tap, cold mountain water would rush out.
The vendors would then come, claiming our attention by their sing song calls. As the ‘combing, plaiting, arranging flowers on the plait’ stage would get to a close, we could hear the tinkling of bells announcing the arrival home of the cattle from their pasture. The mischievous cries of young ones, the warning call of mother cows the shepherd’s clucking tones, the noise raised by cattle’s’ running feet and the dust covering the entire street – if all of them on their own, were to be cherished memories, then the entire scene bathed in the golden rays of setting Sun was so moving!
One may feel this is a highly romanticised ideal rural scene. Perhaps! However what had impressed me and been etched as a fond childhood memory is here in reality. The memory is haunting me as the quaint little place I used to know had disappeared giving way slowly to a township growing like an uncouth monster where nobody seems to have the genuine sense of owning a rich unbroken living tradition.
When I went there recently, seeing such a change gave me such a blow that it was almost physical. I turned towards the mountains, the silent witness (or should I say, ‘silent and helpless victim’?)they appeared to reach out and share in the moment of grief. Now, my Patti as the strong link to the place not being there makes it a profound loss. I have a permanent yearning now for the place it is never to be with occasional glimpses of those beautiful scenes framed in my memory flashes in my mind often that I have an immense yearning for the place it is never to be.
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