My favorite spot

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My favorite spot





This is supposed to be about my favorite spot. But it probably is yours as well. The space where little girls in braces could dream about winning beauty pageants, where unaware passers-by lead to fantasy tales, where some one’s poor grandmother grew a distinct resemblance to a witch with a broom stick. Where self-identity was amoeboid and the air breathed exhilarating, spiked substantially with a substance called dreams.

My ‘spot’ is physically located continents away in a little stairway (8 steps to be precise) in the Nilgiri Mountains in Southern India. The Nilgiri Mountains are also called the Blue Mountains because of a perpetually blue mist that hangs like a veil over the dense eucalyptus -forested slopes. The privileges of belonging to a nature-loving family included an apartment to camp in the hills for the summer . Every summer vacation, our family would leave the plains (as the locals refer to the towns below) for the hills, No. 201, Royal Castle to be precise. Don’t get fancy ideas though; the only remote reason the building could claim that name was its rather pompous ex-actress owner who lorded about the place. Never mind. Our apartment was at the top most floor, and my stairway was positioned next to the door leading to an open terrace above. No elevators meant few adults tried to huff and puff their way upstairs. And to the few wiry kids who dared to venture, I sat there - the oldest of them all, and glared them away.

From that stair, I could see tea-covered hills, and tiny women scuttling around picking the best of the season’s leaves. Their children played around their feet, the smaller ones strapped to their back-packs. I imagined myself strapped to Amma’s back like that. Cozy I suppose. The people of the hills are distinct in two ways - their ability to walk with amazing speed and ease over every curve and jag. And their wrinkled ruddy skin, moisturizer an obvious luxury. The occasional street dog ambled along, again toy-size from my vantage point. Church spires sent little balloons of smoke in a distant town, and the clock of the prestigious public school nearby struck every passing hour - a majestic reminder that time was moving on….

And that was what I liked, That time passed but nobody cared. Unlike in my hometown, Madras - a typical Indian metropolitan city where somebody is always running to catch a bus, the milkman, a bargain, a tuition class, a maid, a millionaire. Nobody here seemed to be interested in what I planned to do after my boards, whether I wanted to become a doctor or engineer (until recently the only two recognized professions in India). School seemed ten thousand miles away, adventure wonderfully near.

- Kusumanjali R Shrikant
December 2005

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Comments

[prof ravindranath]

royal castle ooty.
yes kusumanjali indeed royal castle ooty is a great place stay; nearest to real nature. royal castle is ooty with in ooty.