Kodayil Kodai: Entering the Summer Paradise with a Bang!

The Great Kodai Trip: Day 2

Day 2: Sunday, 21st May, 5:30 AM, Vivek's house

far from wat i expected of madurai, cool breeze blew all the night and we slept tight. i got up at abt 530 in the morn and enjoyed the breeze sitting on the terrace for a while. sham and jilu had slept only at 4 or so and naturally we left them alone till they were the only ones left to bathe.

we had nice bath in cold water and had hot coffee waiting for us. i remember me and ravi both wore black turtle necks by chance when we left for hyderabad in jan for the conference. well history repeated itself and we both(by sheer coincidence, trust me)wore the same shirt as we left for kodai (guess we should have a 'black turtle neck day' every year!). eventually jilu sham woke up and we were set.


the qualis we arranged arrived soon and packed our stuff on to it ...


and went back to take some snaps with vivek's family.


we bid viveks parents good bye and hit the road, as usual i fought for the front seat and i got it!

The Journey to the paradise

about half of the 100-odd km jounrney was on flat road. for about an hour we were retracing the steps of Lt. B.S. Ward, surveyor of English East India Company, who in 1821 discovered this beautiful hill station. though some prehistoric and historic settlements(many tribes fled the plains to the foothills to escape the onslaught of Tipu Sultan) are known to have existed in kodaikkanal, it was not before the Europeans came when this place was sculpted to be what it is today.

many american and british missionaries which had come to southern india could not bear the oppressive heat of the plains and wanted some neat and natural surroundings to escape tropical diseases. they were happy at Ward's report and soon visited this place through various routes, built estates, schools and houses.

by the 1870s kodaikkanal was a clad with many churches and missionary schools run by Roman Catholics. Bier Leverage, the then collector of Madurai, moved to kodai after retirement. he was instrumental in the realisation of the man-made kodai lake, the foremost tourist attraction in kodai. in 1872, Lt. Coaker cut a path along the ridge of steep south eastern side which commends a magnificant view of the plains below. the path was named after him as Coaker's Walk.

we were quote hungry by the time we reached the foot hills. we stopped at a road side restaurant 'saapeeti' for breakfast.


and then the mountains came... and my stomach turned! my motion and elevation- sickness followed me all the way to the top. we stopped on the way to take some snaps...



... and resumed the journey... my stomach was giving away with each passing moment and when i was about to ask the driver to stop the car
Seeku: dei vivek stop the car man im about to throw up! (phew! that saved my breath!)

i too jumped out of the car and threw up... but still had a feeling something was left of the pongal i had at 'saapeeti'. nevertheless we had to stop again for me to puke out wat was left.

tired, i dozed off. when i opened my eyes, we were at 'silver cascade'- a huge water fall by the side of the road. from there till the centre of kodai there was a huge traffic jam and all the cars were moving hell slow. finally after abt one and a half hours we came to our cottage.

Enter the Cottage

and wat a cottage it was... straight out of 'raam' movie... we had to share it with some other guests who had occupied the rooms at the back. we were given 2 bedrooms, one in the front and another which seemed more like an out house. we dumped out bags in the room and rested for a while before leaving for the evening snack and the trip around the lake. our cottage was abt 3 mins walking distance from it. jilu does have contacts!

as we walked out of our cottage we got split into 2 groups one on each side of a narrow road leading to the main circle near the lake. seeku jumped from one side of the road to the otherside with his characteristic run-dance way, when a motorcycle with a huge old police constable sitting on the back came ahead straight at him. the constable, thinking seeku to be some nuisance creator, lifted his lathi and swung it , missing seeku's head by a whisker and shouted at him, as the bike went past, "DEI ! ORAMA PODA !". seeku actually flinched his way back watching the bike go! little did i know that that was jus the first of the more dramatic events in store for that day!

since it was sunday evening, all weekend holiday makers were on their way back to the city and so the roads were hell crowded. we had hard time finding a free place at the hotel for seven people. at last they let us in and we ate to fill. drowsy from the dinner, we strolled out toward the lake.

The Lake
the first thing that was on my mind when we came to the lake was cycling. but the guys wanted to boat. i dint want to go anywhere near water to i prefered to stay out and take a walk around the lake before they come back. i planned to do this in one hour only realising later how grossly i had underestimated the expanse of the lake. as i walked and walked, protruding cliffs kept hiding the pathway ahead of the turns tempting me to walk further only to realise i have hell more walking to do. i was not complaining though! each and every spot on the circumference was a spectacle of sorts ... giving me splendid views. here are some of them...


i found a small cottage like house which almost exactly resembled the house we see in 'kakka kakka' but for the missing first floor. had a passerby take snaps for me.


the guys had returned from boating and waiting for me impatiently while i had one fourth of lake ahead of me. they asked to stay at a place while they hired cycles and met came to me from the opposite direction. i too hired a cycle and we headed off toward the hills. the cycling experience was great, it reminded me of the days i spent cycling long distances with my friends back in hyd when we lived in that huge campus atop a hill.


after a couple of vain attempts to find a way to the top through some muddy roads, we finally caught the right one. ravi was moving ahead of everyone and i was closely following him. suddenly he came to a dead stop and stared ahead. an old man was taking his 2 german shepherds for a walk and comin straight toward us. ravi started shouting at him "UNCLE! PLEASE UNCLE! NAAYA KOOTITU PONGA, PLEASE UNCLE YEN KITTA THAAN VARUDHU!" he kept at this for a while even as that man was shouting back that the dogs were harmless and were wagging their tails at him! the gang some how managed to cross them and we finally got to a beautiful lake view point on the top.


then me and ravi raced back down and and saw a nice deserted greenish mound on the road side, pretty close to the lake. unlike other empty grounds around, this one did not seemed to be owned by any one. i had a feeling this small hill was high enough to have a good view of the lake, better than the one we jus had. but many houses separated the road and the mound and so i was trying to figure out a way to it. i called up the other folk who were still at the top to come and see this. they dint respond (strange...). after waiting for a while me and ravi headed toward the mound and met with a dead end. a local helped us find the way and finally we reached the spot. it was already pretty dark and there was a huge trench dug between the foot of the mound and the road and as i was trying to find the way toward the top, i got a call from sham and gave it to ravi. as i was still looking for a better view, i could sense ravi's tone change as he spoke...


The Conspiracy

ravi ended the phone call and kept staring at me. i asked him" what happened?"

ravi: it seems sham and jilu saw 2 girls walking past and started flirting. now they ve invited them to the sterling resort for dinner along with all the guys! (what the...)

we dint speak about it till we went back to the road to meet the others. they seemed to have jus come down. ravi asked them what happened and seeku narrated the story...

it seems 2 girls were walking down the road and seeku prompted sham and jilu to go and starta conversation. they were somehow impressed by sham's throat strangling mokkai (how dumb can a girl get?). it seems everyone in our group was invited to the resort for dinner at 830. i prefered not to say anything though ravi sounded some wat pissed. he basically dint seem to like the idea of socializing with stranger girls like this. a small argument followed as we cycled back to the boating office where our qualis was waiting.

since i had hired my cycle at a different place i went in the other direction to return it and was told to wait till they come and pick me up. as i was waiting in dark (crazy they dont even have decent lighting facilities around such a famous tourist spot) i spotted a cool mirchi bajji and tea stall. i helped myself some hot bajjis in the chill breeze. suddenly i start hearing cries of a woman who seemed to have lost her daughter, who had gone cycling alone and her husband had gone looking for her. her lamenting to those vendors gave me a chill down my spine. since the guys dint seem to come i considered offering her some assistance just when our driver came out of no where caught my hand. it seems he had been to the boat club and dint see any of the guys there so he came to this place and spotted me. i decided to leave with him for the boat club. i could hear that woman's cires fading away as we left... hope she found her daughter safe and sound.

as we reached the boat club we found the other guys already having some snacks at a shop near by and were surprised to see me come in the car. the argument between ravi and sham over those girls was still on... we decided to talk it over once we reach the cottage.

the argument turned more and more bitter... even as sham and jilu seemed to dress for the 'party' as the resort! i was getting pissed off with all this nonsense in a supposedly fun trip. ravi went out for a while i was chkin out the snaps i took sitting on the bed... i asked sham to show me his cam... as i browsed thru his cam, i found snaps taken at the place where they said they had met the girls. i was surprised he had no photo of any of those girls.

"enna da, ponnungala photo edukkaliya?"
sham: ille da... avanga venamnu sonnanga.
(huh? these girls call the guys out for dinner but are shy of camera? thats strange...)

and then ravi came back and it took off again. thats enuf, i thought... i took ravi to a corner and tried to pacify him. both him and sham were relentless. so kind of disturbed, we got into the car, with sham asking the driver to go to the resort and ravi to a near by hotel. sham kept telling ravi abt how this was their only chance to have some fun etc etc... and ravi asking him to drop him at the hotel and then do watever he wanted etc etc... all this while vijay, who was sitting with me near the window was keeping his face outside and something told me he was actually smiling (what the heck's going on?) the car stoped near the resort when ravi actually started sounding harsh threatening sham and saying he will get down the car and walk all the way back etc. sham said, he wont go there even if one of us doesnt wish to go and then asked the driver to head for the hotel... there was some uncomfortable silence for a while and then ravi started crying!

The Revelation

Ravi (sobbing): when i asked u to leave me alone you should have da... there must be some breathing space in friendship!
Sham(sobbing too): dei, i jus meant for all of us to have some fun da.

What on earth!.... sham hell never sobs, i turned back to look at him, it was dark and i couldnt see anything. and then a car passed by and the light it shone over us revealed his face... he was smiling, vivek and seeku too....

hell !!! why dint i realise this when sham gave that god damn lame reason for the god damn missing girl photo!

vivek (finally breaking the bakra show) : dei sham ... nee hollywoodla thaan irukkanum da! and then the whole car burst out laughing except ravi who still was quite shaken up.

it turned out that even the driver was in the plot. but he had over done his part by actually driving the car near the resort while sham had plans to end the drama as soon as we left the cottage. but this blunder actually intensfied the whole show and had ravi nearly begging for sympathy! no girl, no resort nothing... all in a day's work of sham's usual sometimes-funny-but-mostly-pain-in-the-ass idea of mokkai comdey. poor ravi, he actually struggled to laugh it of till we reached the dhaba.

to make things worse, sham and seeku kept reliving the whole episode again and again as we had the dinner interrupted only by moksham's mokkai on other topics.... ravi was boiling up and we all were pretty sure that sham is gonna get a good bedsheet parade that night from him.

Epilogue

we reached home... all flustered and still excited from the whole episode. we decided to wear it off over playing cards. ASS was the game chosen and we played it while seeku played ABK and kept loosing game after game and accumulating a chorus like rummy of A spade, A Hearts, A Claver, A Diamond, King spade, King Hearts....


finally when we got bored tormenting seeku, we decided to call it a day at last....


... but wait, ravi's solem vow still remained un fullfilled, angry as he already was at shams trick on him, he pounced upon him and started beating him black and blue. but given that sham is a giant savage animal to handle he needed assistance and me and vivek offered our services. sham tried to negotiate even this whacking with his pain-in-the-ass mokkai. but ravi was relentless and sham finally ended up with a bent back.


i had to massage his back with an ointment to calm him off!

well that ended one of the most eventful days of my life. whew... kodaikkanal, we are here to rock for another day!