Deepak, Geetu and I reached Trissur at about 12ish at night, with the rest of
the party having already reached the station beforehand. We were hungry, and to
our luck, there were a bunch of shops open at that time. That too in Kerala, a
state where bed-time means 9pm. We got into one of these restaurants and began
hogging. We stuffed our faces till it was 1:25am, when we realised that our
train to Mangalore was at 1:30. We reached the platform just before 1:30, but
Indian trains behave just like Indian people. If a meeting is at 3:00pm,
everyone arrives at 5:30 the next morning. The train was, from what little I
remember, about an hour or so late. And so, we decided to wait till the train
showed up. Not like we had much of a choice.
Waiting at the platform was fun of …. For the first three seconds.
Yes, we had little Ms Leela’s Gio high-speed internet, which we made
appropriate use of during the intermittent dance sessions. But by then, 4000
year old Deepak’s back began to creek, Geeta became allergic to me, I became
allergic to Geeta, and Leela’s cold got a little worse. That left everyone
except our superwoman Krishna(because she can punch a hole through any human)
and super-Mallu-man Yaseer(because he largely speaks in super-fluent Malayalam)
in pain, and there was no sign of the train. And then, when we were all at the
brink of dozing off on the platform, it came. Chhuk-Chhuk, Chhuk-Chhuk.
The remaining chaps had booked their berths on the train. I? Well,
in my scheme of things, this trip to Coorg was more of an afterthought, a last
minute quick-fix that saved my vacation. As a result, I hadn’t reserved my own
berth for the night. That meant one thing and one thing only. I had to find a
seat in the General Compartment, where all of India’s population had lodged
itself, so there was no place to sit. Also, I had to endure the cold winter
night, which this year, was notoriously colder than I’ve ever experienced. Unsurprizingly,
I didn’t have a blanket. Hence, tata sleep.
To really top things off, I did manage to find an empty seat. This seat,
which was RIGHT in front of the coach door, had a draft of cold air blowing STRAIGHT
at me all throughout the night. So, I crouched into a foetus position, or my
best attempt at the foetus position, and endured the night, sleeping in pockets
of 5-10 minutes. That was a bad night. Poor Deepak had offered to share his
berth with me. But that was a touch too gay and 69-ish, not to forget, a little
too unfair for him, and hence I chose to freeze to death.
But things improved with the rising sun. The cold subsided, we
reached Mangalore in one piece, and everything fell into place as per the plan,
whatever the plan was. Before I was even in the picture, the group had planned
the whole shebang. A seven-seater MPV to haul our arses all around Karnataka,
all the accommodation, the spots we’d cover on the trip, the works. So all I
had to do was pay up on time, and annoy the nuts out of the rest of the zoo
clan. Awesome!
Out of Mangalore, our first pit-stop on our way to Coorg came in
the form of Malpe beach, a fishy-smelly port that had lots of little motorboats
ferrying people around – mostly to this place called St. Mary’s island. That’s
precisely where we were headed.
St Mary’s Island is where the waters are clean and blue, the beach
is made up more of little crustacean shells (amazing for acupuncture) than
sand, and you feel like at that place, the world is somehow at peace with
itself. Of course, that’s exactly a location where our Ms Geetu had to get all
over-excited and wet her pants….. in the water of course (man, she’s going to
kill me when she reads this). Most of us followed suit; Deepak and Yaseer even
followed shirts, pants and underpants too, and just three of us walked back
with our “Chaddis” nice and dry. Many
poses and snaps later, it was time to head back to mainland, and so we did.
That’s because the next leg to Coorg, was a good 200-odd km away. We left the
beach at about 4pm, so it would be about 11 by the time we made it through the
winding Karnataka roads. We had to have a food break too, which would eat up an
hour at the very least. And we were famished as fuck. That brings me to our hungry
Leela.
Usually, this mild mannered vegetarian saint hardly lets you know
she’s around. During this trip, though, she’d gotten all of us scrambling for
our plates. That was of course because of a teeny-weeny fault of ours. We’d
stopped at a pure-veg restaurant, which, little did we know, would turn out to
be Leelu’s den. We ordered, the food came, it vanished, we ordered, the food
came, vanished, and the cycle continued. Our driver was taken aback when his
food disappeared by the time he turned around to pick up a phone call. The
culprit was Leela of course. One can just imagine how hungry she must have
been. Or maybe, that paneer was a bit too delicious.
Through all of this, we managed to reach our hotel at about 10:30
at night. Two from the gang had gotten the drinks. The smart one, I don’t
recollect who, got brandy (yay yay!!). The slightly soft one in the head (I bet
it was Geeta) got whiskey. Goodness, I hate whiskey! But in the interest of
getting sloshed, anything sounds good. Well, the drinks went on till 2am, the
morning of the 1st of Jan, and what an entry into the new year. We
yacked, yacked, yacked and yacked, gibberish and globberygoop of every size and
kind, and this was the night when Geeta tried to punch me for reasons known
only to her. Damn, why did she want to punch me? I’d asked Deepak as to why
this woman hates me so much, and his response left me a bit startled “She hates
you for the same reason you hate her.”
We three boys went back to our room soon, and I still had no understanding to
my recently answered question. Overthinking….. Ah, FTS.
Next day was déjà vu, only that last time, I was with my parents. The itinerary
for the day was a water rafting place in Coorg followed by the Golden Temple, a
Buddha monastery that’s pretty nearby (Google the place if your curiosity gets
the better of you). Apparently, the monastery sold some really nice momos, or
so we presumed when we read the word ‘momo’ on its canteen’s menu. Sadly, they
had run out of momos for the day. And hence began our hunt for momos in the
nearby restaurants, all of which sold the dish. Nice.
We spotted one which proclaimed that it served authentic Tibetan
and Chinese food plus the momos. Quite obviously, none of us gave things a
second thought, and barged right in. Little did we know that the place offered
a loose-motion inducing super-spicy chutney, which had the potential to have us
all sitting on the commode for the rest of the trip. Thankfully, we had the
lord of digestion on our side as we powered through the maida-wrapped momos,
plate after plate.
Back in the room, our choice of spirit for the first night of 2017
was RUMMMMMMM!!!! Neat, desi stuff, that you could chug right down. By the way,
it was on this trip that I realised my capacity. I’ve never downed some six-odd
neat pegs before, that too without dancing on the table tops, which I think is
quite an achievement. This night was actually an improvement over the previous
one. We’d all gotten along a bit better, and could tolerate more of each other’s
rubbish, and the best bit? The chaps knew how much I liked rum, so I got extra
of the dark-golden liquid, which is absolutely brilliant! I’m beginning to suspect
that I drank most of it, and the gang just watched me polish it all. But was I
the only one getting drunk that night??
Chapter 4: The best day
Chapter 5: Happy falls
Chapter 4: The best day
Chapter 5: Happy falls
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