Part 2: Concluding chapter - Drive to Ooty, Coonoor and Wayanad

We reached the lodge in Ooty at 2.30. Only a solitary parking lot was available, that too at the edge of the plot. The adjacent plot was two feet below, to give us a cliffhanger experience. Chandru was fully geared to take it up with the lodge owner.

“Banni, Banni; Vaanga, Vaanga,” greeted the lodge owner with a smile. “When you said all the four from Bangalore were seniors, I visualized a walking stick, and one’s hand another’s shoulder for support. But here you have driven yourself all the way,” he added.  Chandru felt flattered. He skipped the parking issue. Swalpa adjust madi is the key, he argued.

A quick lunch and brief nap, and we were at the Botanical Garden. We overheard a guide telling his group that film guys select this garden extensively to shoot romantic scenes. As we were about to exit the Garden upon the caretakers’ warning whistle, Chandra realized that that she had left behind her shawl on a bush before taking a selfie. After all who wouldn’t like to look the best in a snap. The shawl was there untouched. Later a similar incident happened to me too. On return from the top of a hill that provided a panoramic view of Ooty, I found my new pair of glasses missing. But the confident Aunty reassured me that it would be somewhere in the car. And she did pick it up from under my seat.

Visits to tea factory, chocolate factory… kept us occupied half of next day. At the end, the dickey in the car was filled with various types of tea, chocolates dipped in all kinds of dry fruits, the Ooty-special Varky biscuits, and herbal oils that promised return of lustrous hair, and the medicated ones that would give you instant relief from all kinds of body pain.

We then headed to Coonoor. When we were at a signal near Coonoor, a stranger tapped the window. He asked us in Kannada if we cared for a guide. When he heard us consult each other, he switched to Tamil. “For me, the number plate decides the medium of communication,” he confided. He was a second generation Kannadiga settled in Coonoor. I unleashed a few sentences in Malayalam. He passed muster. I could have tried in Telugu too, but the only word that I knew, “Jargandi, Jargandi,” would have conveyed just the opposite meaning, as we hailed him into the car.

The next three hours were a verbal diarrhoea as he explained the importance of each place – the dwellings of the tribals far down the hill, the area where sandalwood Veerapan lorded over till death, the Dolphin’s nose from where Kamala Haasan (read: his dummy) dived to death in Guna (?), the 25000-acres of tea estate that the old-time heroine Mumtaz and her husband owned.

Next morning we filled petrol to the brim and headed to the next destination. Hardly had we gone a kilometer when the car stalled, on an elevation, waiting to roll back at the slightest sneeze. Alas, after a ten-minute Alfred Hitchcock suspense, a Samaritan stopped by and helped us drive to the nearest parking space.

Chandra, with her sixth sense, guessed the petrol pump chap might have filled diesel instead of petrol as had happened to them once. They walked up to that petrol station only to see two or three customers already lined up with the same ‘stall’ complaint. “Water might have seeped in and contaminated the petrol pump underground tank,” guessed the proprietor. He drained out the entire petrol from our car, cleaned the tank completely, and re-filled unpolluted petrol from another station. We lost about three hours in the process.

We then drove to Wayanad. Fear engulfed the minds of all that the car might not stop again at any strategic point. Unlike the hairpin-bends on way to Ooty, the drive to Wayanad was least taxing. The excellent hotel that we checked into there towards evening, made us feel past is past. A nice dinner, and we retired to bed.

Next morning we went around places that the young boy at the front desk had suggested. Unfortunately his interests proved at variance with ours except for the row-boat ride in a lake. The best part, however, was the bamboo-rice pudding that is very popular in Wayanad. We helped ourselves with extra cups.

During the drive back home the rest of us caught up with our quota of sleep as Chandru alone stayed awake to dump us all in one piece in Bangalore.

Drive to Ooty, Coonoor, and Wayanad (Part 1 of 2)

Being driven to…, rather than Drive to…, will be factual.

Chandru, my co-brother, was at the wheel in the newly acquired Honda Amaze. Yes, Chandra, my sister-in-law, had gifted it to him (themselves?) using partly her retirement-settlement amount, as a token of gratitude for having driven her to innumerable places in their earlier Wagon R. I would have given Chandru a helping hand in the drive. But his is a gear version, and I am accustomed to automatic transmission.

“So, we start at 6 in the morning on the dot,” proposed Chandru at the end of our preparatory meeting the previous night. “Should be no problem, since all are adults,” seconded Chandra.

And lo, next morning, there we were inside the car right earnest - at 6.35. Yes, at the last minute Chandru chose not to inaugurate the new pair of shoes his son had brought for him from US, and stuck to his trusted old pair. Chandra cashed in on the extra moments to quickly change her dress to one that fitted best the occasio. (No wonder she is fondly called the trendy lady among the six sisters.)

Aunty didn’t want to lag behind. She prepared extra cups of coffee to all rather than let the excess decoction and milk go stale on return. And you, Uncle? Well, under the spell of obsessive-compulsive disorder, I checked all over again if the windows and doors were closed, electrical connections switched off and, above all, if I had kept the wet-waste bin outside, so that it didn’t stink as last time.

What started off initially as a group-chat during the drive unwittingly dwindled into two groups – the two ladies at the back, with volumes deliberately getting low on occasions and, Chandru and I in the front, on the inevitable Modi Vs Rahul.

Gradually lull took over. Everyone except Chandru had begun to doze off, courtesy early morning wake-up. A sudden brake on the way brought Chandra alive. “Oh, my God, it’s time for breakfast,” she alerted. “How about Kamat, asked one. “Or, A2B,” suggested another. “Or the nearest one, because nothing works on an empty stomach,” suggested Chandru. And there we were in the nearest restaurant enjoying steaming Idli, crispy Vada, and coffee to down them.

With stomachs full, Chandru declared that Ooty would be the next where we would stop. “Unless,” amended Chandra, “we stop for a while to stretch our legs and have a cup of coffee on the way.”

“How about some soothing music, for the rest of the route,” asked Chandru. And, without waiting for a response he began loading the album, Solid Gold, featuring the best songs composed by Madan Mohan.

These numbers have a knack to take you down the memory lane. “One such,” I said, is “Jalte hai jiske liye that Sunil Dutt sings over the telephone to Nutan, in Sujata, directed by Bimal Roy. This was an SD Burman composition, though,” I added.  Chandra took on, and said, “I can’t forget another scene of Bimal Roy’s in Bandini, where Nutan poisons her lover’s wife, only to repent inconsolably.

And that led Chandru, singer of a sort, to hum a few numbers as he drove, till a 10-wheeler monstrous truck behind us racing at 120 kmph to meet his delivery schedule, repeatedly honked, and Chandru had to give in meekly. Moral: Don’t get involved too much in activities other than driving when on a highway.

Now began the signboards, “Ooty ….km,” to give us relief. Soon Chandru was serious, engaged in the most arduous task of negotiating an uphill drive with 36 hairpin bends. He did it admirably. He clarified that he had done it several times at several places. That gave me great relief that we were in safe hands.

There we were, in the home-away-from-home Ooty lodge with the amiable owner greeting us with an infectious smile.

Part 2, Touring Ooty, Coonoor and Wayanad.