Zero displacement and a mountain loop

Thursday, January 26, 2012
Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu, India
Humor arises from small quirks of reality. An innocuous question - ashish, teri email id ashishagarwa kyun hai - would be a constant source of fun on this trip.

We started the day with a short walk to the lighthouse beach. They had a wide variety to offer on the breakfast menu, as long as you wanted to have eggs. The beach was already bustling with activity, some surfers and the like. We finished our breakfast and then got some pics with the lighthouse. Needless to say, with ashishagarwa, the lighthouse duly filled the missing "l" and finally completed his id. I will let you imagine the other L jokes on the trip.

Our plan on this trip was to drive north. However, ashish said he wanted to see kanyakumari so south we headed. What we thought of as a five hour trip eventually became much longer due to traffic. Kerela offers no breaks between towns on a highway. It is one unbroken string of urban humanity, and has the traffic to match. I continued to inch along, both sides of the so-called national highway lined with red posters of Lenin and Che Guevara.

As soon as I handed over the steering wheel to ameet, the traffic improved and we were able to make faster progress. We had managed to hook up our ipod to the car stereo. As I wondered who was singing that song on the stereo, ameet answered "chitrakar" - hmm? "Chitrakar". Now I have never heard of this guy before. Then an Asha-Helen song surfaced, and he came back "Jitender and asha parekh on screen. Woh asha baithee hai audience mein". Man! This guy is an encyclopedia on Hindi movies and music, admittedly pre 1999.

We passed a tough looking mountain on our way, which Pawan wanted to climb but we were past it and decided to pursue that on our way back. Driving in kerela is different - anyone can amble onto middle of the road at anytime. Bikes and autos decide to break into a turn without warning... its actually pretty daring - Pawan started talking about the kairali martial art as he saw all this. And then of course, there are areas marked as "ladies crossing" where as you would guess, ladies cross the road. It fails me why reservation is required here, but if women ever "owned" something, this narrow strip of land is that domain of theirs. And then, in true "take only as much as you need" style, there are toll booths collecting Rs.2 as toll... why even bother... perhaps employment for the collector.

The scene changes when you enter Tamil Nadu. Amma gives way to Lenin, rows of green flags to the red posters, and roads break up a bit more. However, the relaxed feel of the coastal drive gets only better as traffic reduces. Ultimately we reached kanyakumari taking more time than we had anticipated. We weren't enthu on standing in the queue to ferry, and just went for lunch. Horrible stuff - refried dosa! Ashish still looked a bit confused, kanyakumari wasn't what he was looking for. "woh ramayan wala bridge kahan banaya tha". God, he wants to go to rameshwaram, which happens to be on the other coast! No, we are heading back.

On our way back ameet conveniently missed the mountain again - his bias is to get as far north as we can today. Right now we are in "negative displacemen"t from trivandrum, where we started. We asked ameet to turn around and went back to the mountain. The climb was an amazing one - fair steep rock face. Fortunately, gave a grip which allowed us to climb. That was perhaps the most fun part of the day. After the customary photographs, we headed down a staircase.

As we headed down, an astrologer who claimed to know English stopped us. What the heck, let's hear what he has to say about our future. He kept on talking about "lebhel" ("level" for the uninitiated) and how many coconut trees we would have. All of us would do extremely well and go from this lebhel to next lebhel. And then he kept referring to "grandfather lebhel" which I assume was the ultimate goal. "Invest in property, all other money will go away". Pawan kept egging me to ask something more specific. I didn't know what to ask, so pawan pipped in "when will he get married". The astrologer studied the hand carefully, and then came up with "soon, in six months". So finally I have something to look forward to! And yes, all of us will live to our nineties, get back to the drawing board on retirement plans!

As is the solemn duty of all us married single travellers, Pawan got on the phone with Sujatha. She suggested that we must visit the falls on way from kanyakumari. Perfect timing! We saw the signs for thirparappu falls, and took the detour. The roads broke further, kinda off road feel. Winding through the lanes we finally got out to the falls. Parked, walked, bought a ticket to get in (Rs 3 for humans, 50 for camera), and in all anticipation, presented ourselves to the falls. 30 meters. What was promised as 300 turns out to be 30, and I am being generous! And at the base of it, dozens of bodies washing away their sins in all glee. Man, this is a community bathing pool! Thanks sujatha, these falls will forever carry your name in our minds - "sujatha falls".

Got out of there, and as I tool to the wheels, the traffic started building up. The pattern was clear - if I was driving, we would face heavy traffic. So handed it to ashish and he made it seem like there was no traffic. May be it was just me, traffic is in the mind.

Settled at kollam (quilon) for the night. Had a great dinner, played teen patti. The good thing, as ameet would put it, is that we landed up with positive displacement. Zzzzzz.

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