Matheran: The Legend of the Matheran baby

The gang of eccentric friends that I belong to have a nickname for my little girl, who just turned seven on Saturday. They call her the Matheran baby. The mention is usually followed by sniggers and ribbing, because they recall that the trip I made to this hill town, during the monsoon in September 2004, was exactly nine months before my daughter was born.

It is a shame that I had not visited this paradise of rolling green hills before this office-sponsored trip took place. Then, I had a sorry profile of technical writer in a popular IT organization. Sorry, because till this day I have no idea why they hired me. I don't think even the manager knows what he hired me for, because in that one year that I worked (rather, did not work) over there, I had almost nothing to do. In one year, I worked on three manuals, that too without contributing much. I don't know the fate of these manuals after I worked on them. There was no feedback. There was no Internet. I had to wear formals, even sport a tie, and sit at my desk doing nothing.

Needless to say, the company I was to have on the office-sponsored, overnight trip to Matheran was not really the kind I looked forward to. But just when I was about to decline the invitation, an organizer announced that we could take our spouses along. Now that was a nicer deal!

So as my wife and I made the trek to the railway station at 4.30 am hopping over potholes and puddles, I was still wondering if I had made the right choice. The apprehension persisted even as the local train rattled towards Nerul, carrying a delirium of 20-odd software programmers, testers, and other geeks, ‘dumb-charade’ing or cooing Bollywood’s cheesiest songs that was staple fare on state-sponsored radio. Wifey dearest made faces at me and chuckled. She knew how I hated these games, "antakshari" and "dumb charades". Worse, with nowhere to run and hide in that local train, I was forced to be part of this circus. So, to shut the folks up for some time, I threw in a googly: Those Magnificent Men With Their Flying Machines. I knew that this one would keep them busy until we reached Nerul.

It did.

Like any other 'tourist spot' in India, a swarm of taxiwallahs descended upon us outside the station. We had two choices: Get adventurous and hike up to Matheran through the hills, or simply ride up in a maruti-omni taxi. I chose the latter because I had my unwilling-to-hike wife with me and also, being relatively new in the organization, I did not want to join strangers on the hike. Although this was an opportunity to break the ice with work-fellows, I was not feeling so gregarious. We squeezed into a Omni cab and left the panes open so that we did not miss the fragrance of the hills and the powdery spray of the drizzle. Unusual of me to take an easy ride up a hill, but with wife dearest for company, a romantic getaway was also unusual.

A horde of simians greeted us at the state-tourism board’s hotel, the place where we were to camp for the night. While we lunched in the open restaurant, I caught sight of a modern-day Arjuna outside the restaurant. He was poised with a catapult, its rubber string drawn back with a projectile in load. The outstretched arm held the wooden Y in the frame of which was a large male langur on a tree. With one eye tightly shut, this Arjuna, a hotel staffer, had set his aim on this monkey.

“All I can see,” he whispered through gritted teeth. “is that m**********r’s testicles. I’m going to blow it off today. Even that bloody monkey’s mother will not be able to tell the bugger from his sister.” A veritable Arjuna indeed. 

Fortunately for the langur, the aim was not as good as the epic hero’s, but the stone struck the bark and scared the big langur away at least for that moment. We were left in peace to feast on the steaming chicken curry and butter-soaked chapattis.

Being married earned us privileges. Employees who had their spouses in tow got private rooms, each of which had a verandah and the lovely forest lookout. The not-so-privileged ones jostled in the muck and grime of the dormitory. As evening grew, the drizzles stopped and left behind ribbons of fog in the woods and thickets. Crickets and birds sang their operas. The air was heavy with the smell of damp wood and vegetation. We hiked about, strolled around the marketplace, downed copious amounts of ginger tea, and found our own getaway spots, away from the rest of the gang, who chose to ride sodden ponies and hand-pulled rickshaws.

The good thing about Matheran is the absence of vehicular traffic. Motor vehicles of any form are allowed only till the common car-park area midway up the range. This prohibition alone is responsible for the upkeep of this ‘hill station’. The only vehicle that trundles up hill is the ‘toy train’, which again does not operate during the monsoon.

Like every other hill station in India has a 'market road', Matheran has one too, dotted with shops selling trinkets chikki and every other ‘local produce’ that these shops typically sold. Then, there are the eateries; (desi) Chinese, Punjabi, Gujarati thali and the like. And of course, there are hotels. Starry ones and their cheaper counterparts. All this entwined in the green forests. Just before sunset, rain lashed Matheran with the promise of keeping us company for the rest of our stay. Most tourists disappeared from the forest trails and the marketplace, and yet there were others who enjoyed every moment. Of this, of soaking in the rain on a forested hill. Of washing away the dreariness of city life.

We walked towards Charlotte Lake where we witnessed the forces of nature defying laws of gravity and holding us spellbound. Ok, without meaning to sound clichéd, it was just that the winds were so strong, the cascade from the Charlotte lake was actually being blown back into the lake! In the process, it drenched us, our backpacks, and my camera too, because of which no photograph of the trip exists. And then of course, there was the rain....

...And rain it did, throughout the night. Dinner was served in the open restaurant and, just like it was in the afternoon, the meal was delicious. Steaming dal, the same lunchtime chicken curry, butter-soaked chapattis, steaming fried rice, pickles, and several other vegetarian assortments. I was given the errand of going to the ‘couples’ quarters and inviting them to the restaurant for dinner. Which I did earnestly, leaving wifey dearest to the inquisitive lot of colleagues, who thought they could take the chance to pry information about me from my wife. Is he always like that? Aloof? Introverted? Reclusive? Cynical, too? I don’t know what answer my wife gave them. She did not tell me.

At a particular room, I had to knock several times before a crack materialized in the door frame and a face poked out. The neck craned to reach out the door, from a bare torso and a towel-clad hip. This was my manager’s room.
Uh, go ahead. We will be joining soon!
I apologized for having interrupted the ‘joining’ and I strode back to the restaurant as the rain lashed harder.

The next morning, when we trudged back to Neral railway station and took the local train back into the city, the downpour got worse. Just so that I was polite enough with the colleagues, I casually asked of them what they did after dinner. The colleague’s face brightened and turned towards me. You missed it! We played dumb charades till 4 am! It was difficult to suppress the grin of sarcasm that threatened to tear across my face. Aww, I exclaimed and turned towards wifey dearest, and winked.

At that moment, I quietly thanked the management for the 'couple’s' private rooms. I’m sure my manager must have done the same. We would not have had our little Matheran baby had it not been for this office-sponsored picnic.

Goa Diaries Part 1: Sand, sea, surf, and skin

The blond Scandinavian cupped a hand over his brows and shielded his eyes from the sun, as he stared up at it. It was just past midday. The other hand wrapped around his knees that he drew up to his bare chest. His bum was buried in the hot white sand of Calangute’s beach. From his trance-like disposition, the heat did not seem to scald his backside, which was surely unaccustomed to such bludgeoning heat. It seemed as if his red boxers were enough to insulate his derriere. There was no other clothing on his person. Like him, his girlfriend who frolicked in the warm water wore only one piece of her two-piece red bikini. The top was in a pile of clothes and other belongings that lay next to her boyfriend, who was staring up at the midday sun.

We sat down next to him on the burning hot sand and immediately, sharp pangs of pain shot up my derriere despite the thick denim shorts that I wore. I lifted myself up, then plopped down again, and sprang up yet again, before I got accustomed to the scalding. The other two friends of mine, colleagues from the computer training institute I worked at, did the same thing. Anyone watching us would have been thoroughly amused; three men bobbing up and down on the burning hot sand.

But the blond chap seemed oblivious to this assault. Instead, he turned towards us and smiled with such glee, one would have thought he was sitting on a satin futon.

“In my country,” he said in a thick accent, as if he saw the bewilderment on our faces. “In the town I hail from, the sun is never directly overhead.” Then he pointed south-westwards and with the same index finger, drew a parabola on the cloudless, blue sky, just above the horizon and the shimmering sea. “That is how the sun travels in my country. Always skimming over the horizon, but never overhead. Like this!”

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“Norway.” He also mentioned a town that I had never heard of.

“I’ve heard of Stavanger, Lilhammer, and of course, Oslo,” I said, remembering the scanty map of Norway that I had seen in a school atlas. What I was trying to do was show off my map-reading skill and knowledge of the capitals of all the countries in the world. Yes, I have memorized the capitals of all the countries in the world. It was a game we played in school, memorizing the map of the world and the capitals of the various countries, and then quizzing each other about it. Anyway, the trick worked. The blond chap’s smile broadened. Amid the yellowing patches, the sun gleamed on the whites of his teeth, but I was appalled with myself for having noticed that glint. Until then, we were more interested in the glistening skin of his girlfriend, who bobbed in the water, topless. Her hair was as golden as his. Even at this distance from the water’s edge, where the surf left some of its foam, I could tell that she was taller than her boyfriend. At one point, she emerged from the water like a Penthouse center spread model, but when she saw that her boyfriend had locals for company, she turned around and returned to the sea.

Then, it was 1999. Then, it was end-April. ‘Off-season’ for tourists in Goa. Most beach shacks had closed business. With most Indian tourists catering to board exams and entrance tests, the ‘phoren’ guests felt at home in their minimal clothing and unabashedly enjoyed the warmth of the scalding sun on every inch of their skin. We, on the other hand, were on foreign territory, in an area that, at that moment, was supposed to be off-bounds for locals. 

 Goa does not have officially designated nude beaches even today. Then in 1999, the number of Indian tourists during off-season was ostensibly low. We guys were lucky to have the institute's Management guys feel generous out of a sudden and pack us off on a trip to Goa at the company’s expense. This was my first trip to Goa, the first of more than a dozen that followed in subsequent years. Until then, I thought all those tales of topless sun bathers on Goa’s beaches were urban legends. Then I chanced upon a copy of Cleo Odzer’s biography about her hippie days in Goa. The excerpts that I read evoked a curiosity that I had to satiate. What I saw on this stretch of pristine creamy sands, between Calangute and Baga, I will never forget. Dozens of topless women meandering about, playing ball, riding on the waves, or simply lying on beach mats, with their sun-baked nipples aimed skywards like little missiles.

The three of us, my colleagues and I, wore the most clothes on this stretch of beach. We were also the only brown-skinned, ‘lowly creatures’. Our intrusion upon this space of foreign territory was not challenged, but we did sense a few scowls and grimaces directed at us. It reminded me of a Bruce Willis scene in one of his ‘Die Hard’ flicks, in which the crafty antagonist gets Willis to wear a placard around his neck that read ‘I hate Niggas’ and dispatched Willis to a street in Harlem. I felt a little like what Willis must have felt. Even our brown-skinned brethren, waiters and beach shack owners, glowered at us with disgust. What annoyed brethren even more was that the blond – whose name was Eric, we discovered later – took a liking to us and spoke to us, like men just happened to do so over a bar counter, every now and then. Thankfully, I knew better than to stare, much less ogle, at the free, bountiful display all around us, and I also steered clear of the shacks. Then, in 1999, I did not drink.

My casio digital watch beeped and announced that it was 1 PM. We realized we had spent a lot of time with Eric. His girlfriend was beginning to get restless in the water. The sun had gone further overhead. My belly was also rumbling with hunger. Fortunately, one of the shacks at a distance promised to serve us ‘authentic’ Goan prawns curry with rice; the burly owner was still eager to serve local guests. That’s where we had deposited the remaining colleagues who did not want to spoil the colour of their skins by stepping out in the sun.

We stood up, dusted the sand off our shorts, shook hands with Eric, and after casting a furtive last glance at his girlfriend, walked back to the rest of the group. As we neared the shack, we could see dupattas and kameezes of all sorts fluttering in the breeze. The sounds of dumb-charades emanated from the area where the group huddled. I thanked my stars for giving me an opportunity to give this game – which I absolutely hated – a miss and indulge in a little ‘sightseeing’.