History and Culture

Mushrooms and Clouds in the Hills of Kodaikanal - 2

vavachan — Tue, 15 Dec 2015 16:31:00 GMT

Chennai was experiencing non-stop rain for a week, roads were waterlogged and homes flooded. Luckily my sky palace on the third floor was a constant reassurance against any such possibilities. Also, my neighbourhood was relatively unharmed in what can be described a catastrophic rain of biblical proportions! Never had I witnessed water relentlessly hitting the ground for hours and days, the first bout of rain lasted for about a week. Now the reason Chennai’s weather is indispensable to the story is, our college was forced to finally shut their gates, which didn’t come as a surprise to any of us. Even a normal morning shower pretty much guarantees us a holiday and this was far from an ordinary rain, this felt like the beginning of the end. Anyway, according to an expert even under non-cyclonic circumstances it takes only thirty minutes for Chennai’s roads to get waterlogged in a heavy shower, so you could imagine the sheer number of records this one broke. The university broke its silence, the semester was postponed to the following week and our remaining two semester exams on an even later date. When the endless rain took hold of the city, I spent a fulfilling week with my mom and my brother. I have been in college too long to realize that the thing you end up missing the most is not the booze or the drugs but your mother’s food, three times a day. The struggle for food is real, I despise eating out so much that a plate of plain rice and some lemon pickle at home is my staple diet whenever I am broke .Once my mom is here, the feminization process begins and everything looks and smells better. My brother with his moderately serious back problem (the doctors recommended bed rest but kept emphasizing on its seriousness too, may need surgery blah blah) took advantage of Amma’s coming to Chennai and left the IT city. For one whole week, we lazy bastards just sat back and watched all the movies that we always wanted to watch but couldn’t because of a time constrain or slow internet or better things in life. When I meet my younger brother, I go way back and open a certain vault in my brain which is filled with our own private memories, each one funny, and stupid and exaggerated. A textbook introvert like me transforms into a cheerful and spontaneous individual which I’d like to believe others think of as sparks of brilliance. We are like the 90’s Indian movie portrayal of friendship across two mentally challenged kids. I can only seems to access that part of the brain when I am around my brother and some close friends.

That one week we experimented with gluttony and that strategy where doing nothing is the best. But during that time I was able to get some gyming done, after putting it off for half a year. So for the first time in chennai, I was leading a considerably healthy life, but I just couldn’t wait to drink and smoke. Abstinence for any other reason but religious is a noble cause because it makes that indulgence all the more precious and satiating. Sick of the stash you are smoking? Just go without it for a week, the best that can happen is that you stop craving for it and quit completely. Teens and new smokers wouldn’t know what I am talking about, my advice is actually targeted towards a specific age group in the population who can be labelled as ‘young adults’. Stupid young adults like me who instead of battling into adulthood are perched comfortably on top of the tallest tree waving a white flag. We miss being children, we miss the unknown because the known is either depressing or unattainable. Before my undying urge to drink and smoke took hold of me, my mother left followed by my brother the very next day. I was alone again, faced with this frightening and exciting prospect, I realized that this time I would miss them more than usual. I missed the reassuring sound of my mom singing into the phone, I missed being mocked by them for being slow and absent-minded.

Since my family departed In two different directions, I too made plans of my own before the relentless rains could repress me into a world of silence. Some of my college friends and I got really hammered and decided to go to kodaikanal.Running to the hills couldn’t be the worst idea when the rain had brought the city to a standstill. That perfectly rational thought only occurred to me during the trip but at that moment it was my drunken honour confronting everything with a “bring it on” attitude. I couldn’t be blamed for my momentary machismo, I had spent too much time at home in a near teetotaller state plus the meteorological situation was begging me to go.

The next morning, I realized I had made a big blunder, we had only three days to our second last exam and if things were to get worse in kodaikanal, we could get stranded. You can call me a loser all you want, but we all know a drunken night is always followed by a morning full of introspection. As it is I have four arears, missing an exam now would be a form of academic hara kiri.Three of us had volunteered for the trip out of which one backed out citing parental disapproval, apparently some uncle of his in kodaikanal witnessed a landslide and begged his parents not to let him go. The other guy was showing enthusiasm bordering on psychotic behaviour, which made the decision at hand a lot more difficult. I don’t remember what led to my final decision but before soon I was walking with an abnormally large bag (with a relatively few items) slung diagonally across my body toward an ola auto.

Before heading to the bus stand, we had a beer each to ignite some enthusiasm at the beginning of the long night’s journey and also to reassure ourselves that this was the right choice. We were set to travel by a sleeper bus, which anybody will tell you is much better than the butt-numbing seats. Unfortunately, we got the last berths right in the tail of the bus, a rough night awaited us. It was nothing less than some astronaut or navy- seal level endurance training, for one I banged my kneecap against the bus’s ceiling several times. Every turn and pothole would send us crashing into each other and the side window. My friend even suggested the likelihood of us waking up with broken noses in the morning. I felt grateful to be in one piece when I got up from that long and restless sleep. I woke as soon as the bus started climbing a hill, it was probably the change in air. Upon opening our windows to the cold Palni morning, we were trembling in anticipation, I took out a smoke and started rapidly puffing it like it was nothing. The cold weather reinvigorated our spirits while brightly coloured flowers of varying shapes and sizes cheered us on. On the way up, I wished I had my mom’s ability to name any flower instantly, something that she inherited from her childhood in kerala. After spotting every kilometre stone for the last thirty kilometres we reached a point from where we could see all the distant hills robed in milky white clouds. I have always wondered about kodai, what makes it so special? Of all the tropical hill destinations of the south, what makes it magical? People would say it is the weather or the greenery but I would give the credit to the clouds. The clouds here were energetic, quick to fuse and disperse, they were greeting us tourists in their own language.

Okay now to explain the purpose of the journey, we wanted to achieve a feeling of oneness with nature with the help of a psychedelic herb that commonly goes by the name of ‘Magic Mushrooms’. My travelling companion knew a guy and soon after we finished our breakfast, we headed to a location near a popular supermarket to meet him. It started to drizzle needle like drops that didn’t feel like anything on my sweatshirt, and upon pulling on hood I could just pretend like it wasn’t raining at all. I remember feeling powerful, for having prevailed over nature. Within an hour we had our score and we were on our way to Karuna Farms in a jeep. A delightful little Bluetooth speaker owned by my friend came of great service as we broke the silence of the cold misty morning with some hip-hop music. That speaker would see a gradual appreciation in its importance over the period of the trip. Karuna farms seemed a good thirty to forty five minutes from the main town and the road that lay ahead could be better described as a fairly steep descent marred by huge boulders. I was greatly impressed by the jeep, we were driving over ditches and cracks (big enough to bury a nano car) with much impunity. Once we entered karuna farms we walked on an outdoor pathway made out of old tyres, my friend led while I tried to catch up in my bright orange bathroom slippers that offered zero grip on the wet rocky terrain. The vegetation grew denser as we progressed, “this place better be worth it”, I thought to myself. Trees old and new would respond to the breeze by rustling their leaves in a chorus while tiny singing birds flew effortlessly from one branch of a tree to another, I was sold. The reception was a modest brick hut with a tin roof which stretched over a much larger area and it was empty. My friend who was on his 2^nd trip to this place started shouting out the manager’s name. Soon we were settled in our cosy little cottage, just a short downhill trek from the reception. The owner’s vision is clearly etched into each and every building there, for instance the only source of light in our cottage was a glass tile on the roof, and not only was it energy efficient but aesthetically pleasing as well. The vision is clearly that of simplicity and common sense but it is also an earnest plea to people like us as and it went like this “Your valuable technology and your love for privacy are overrated. We beg you to be curious and not suspicious, we want you to forget those urban instincts that have made you less human”. I took to the message instantly because the aloofness in me has always craved for the silence of the hills. Enough of this pretentious crap, so once everything was sorted, it was just me and my friend and the permeating silence of the place and the silence decreed us to eat the shrooms.

We quickly unfolded the newspaper which held the herb and consumed two dozen each. We settled on a bench near the community waterfall hoping the silence and the waterfall would somehow make us more receptive to the psychedelic substance which had been travelling in our bloodstream for about twenty minutes now. I was the first one to get affected, it started with a feeling of immense drowsiness followed by a sensation of nausea erupting from my food pipe. I was swaying this way and that, unable to get a grasp over my mind although physically I was perfectly fine. Everyone fondly remembers the first time they smoked weed, well this was something like that but even better (some may disagree, fuck them). We decided that we had to give some kind of form and definition to our high, so we set off to our cottage (which felt every bit like home) and on the way my shrooms trip unfolded. The phrase ‘run like the wind’ echoed in my mind and I tried running with the wind. Once the wind passes, I’d stop all of a sudden and start walking again. For some reason I didn’t want to offend the stillness of the forest with my sudden bursts of energy. But that was just the intermediate phase, soon I and my friend were running around like two children in a garden and I felt like I could vividly hear all the fauna around me. There was a moment in the garden, when I got separated from my friend and kept on walking, it felt like a mile but when I turned back he was there right where I left him fifteen minutes back. I chanced upon this beautiful scenery, the milky white hills in the distant and mischievous clouds on top making faces at me. I remember scolding the clouds for being insensitive to my state. In the same trance like state I casually looked at my feet to have my beautiful moment obliterated by a giant bulbous leech that was actively feeding on my blood to fulfil its destiny. In that second I was terrified by the prospect of these parasitic beings whose only purpose in life was to suck our blood. I quickly ran back to the pool where I found two more leeches hiding in my toes and in my state of panic I shoved my foot underwater and plucked them all out one by one without the slightest regard for conventional remedies. I witnessed in full visual detail as tiny vertebrates crawled towards my feet, latched themselves on to me and started growing at my expense. Without ado we got rid of the rest of them and made for non-leech territory. I borrowed my friend’s boots and had them on for the rest of the day until the fear left me, you may laugh at me for this but the fear is very real. Back in the cottage, my fear gave way to excitement, our Bluetooth speaker started playing tunes of contemporary music and my arms and legs started moving on their own. Dancing aggressively with what felt like an unlimited reservoir of energy, I felt like I was good enough to get laid, fight somebody, hold an intellectual debate, win a marathon etc. I got a glimpse of my not so distant childhood, a world unhampered by afterthoughts and fear of consequences.

Having made up my mind to break out of the trip, I walked off to the reception. The reception was where everyone usually hung out because that’s where the food was cooked and as we later found out, the only place where you could make a phone call. I entered the little brick hut to find myself walking in the midst of a loud discussion “ Bhut Jolokia is easily the hottest chilli” said the manager’s assistant, I supported his statement by adding “ Yeah, when you eat it’s pickle, you will need a drop or two at most, it’s that chilly”, the person on the other end of the conversation was an old man clearly north of 60 who sported a brown monkey cap and a 90’s moustache which was completely white, his calm yet upset demeanour coupled with a look of determination (like that of a child) made me feel like this man had caught old-age like a disease. He said “yeah” thrice distractedly and turned his attention to the food in the giant containers. Later I saw the same man trying his hand at carving and failing miserably, when he asked him what he was making, he replied “Everybody’s up to something, I thought I should also do something”. It was difficult for me to be affected by people because nature was overwhelmingly around me and the same could be said about my problems. Up in the hills, in the company of nature’s best creations, you wish the music would never end.

Mushrooms and Clouds in the hills of Kodaikanal

vavachan — Wed, 14 May 2014 20:17:00 GMT

So me and a friend of mine, growing increasingly tired of the Bangalore sun and the Bangalore pot decided to make a trip to Kodikanal to trip on some Shrooms.Kodaikanal is a city in the hills of the Dindigul district in the state of Tamil Nadu, India .We left with around 2000 bucks each thinking that it's off season which led to a daunting time towards the end. It was the last month of college and by the time you reach the third year you no longer have the energy to socialize or converse for that matter. In the first year it pays to be a natural suck ass.I had exhausted almost all the money in my account except for the reserve money to cover the bus tariff to the airport which was to happen a few days later. My friend had it all sorted out and quite impulsively we got ourselves two bus tickets to Kodai for the following evening.

The bus ride to kodai was like just any overnight bus ride, by the end of it you want to piss real badly, your grumbling stomach doesn’t help and to top it all, you have an awkward morning wood. After getting down we found a broker who conversed with us in fluent English and drove us to a decent hotel located right at the foot of a miniature hill. A steep flight of stairs began from our location and all the way to the top of the hill. We wasted no time in asking the broker for some shrooms which was the very gist of our journey. Initially he cited deficient rainfall as the reason behind the undersupply of shrooms but when we raised the price, he not only promised to deliver it to our room but also included a gram of the local variety of pot just to sweeten the deal. High altitude pot never disappoints and we were soon on our way around the main city. Kodaikanal, in colonial times was a summer rest house to British officials and American missionaries and the need to educate the growing English-speaking population contributed to the formation of the Kodaikanal International School, a fancy hill station school where once the sons and daughters of British officials gained education. Since independence the only thing that has changed there is that where once the British sat, the Indian elite sits now.

The most striking feature of the main town is the Jamia Mosque minarets that tower over practically everything else in that part of town. The mosque itself is recent and architecturally typical but its presence is immense, the long minarets look over the valley like a gate to Heaven or a silent guardian that is perpetually brooding. The towering presence of the mosque with the distant green hills make for a Euro-Islamic fusion, the kind of which that can be found only in countries like Bosnia and Albania. By 4 in the evening we had our precious commodity but it was a bit different looking than expected, it was clearly old and dried and designed to dupe first time visitors like me and my friend. We consciously fell into it letting desperation make our choices. We were just 2 guys sharing a living room limited by the money in our wallets and the size of our company and I wasn’t going to spend any of it sober if I could help it.

The dried shrooms, if anything, managed to kill our pot high leaving us sober and frustrated. After an hour of aimless walking around the Kodai bus depot we approached a guy who claimed to sell ‘‘1^st class’’ shrooms, we took his bloodshot eyes for authenticity. After a few downward alleys, we were lead to a staircase at the end of which stood a wooden shack. Inside the old shack we found a father-son duo, the father gave me the impression that he was ailing. The boy who looked barely 9 or 10 initiated the conversation maybe in a bid to take over his father’s trade eventually. We bought a dozen shrooms at a relatively cheaper price; this batch was fresher and looked closer to the real thing .I grabbed the first bottle of honey from the convenience store and headed straight for our room for the ritual. We chomped down the entire dozen in less than 5 minutes like a bunch of hungry homeless dwarves. In terms of taste, it’s like something between paper and communion bread but the honey made the shrooms surprisingly delicious to eat. It instantly flushed out all the lazy pot high from the afternoon and replaced it with extreme restlessness. It was restlessness coupled with anticipation. It wasn’t just anticipation for the hallucinogen to take hold but for something more than that. “Is the Hotel room big enough?” “Should we go out?” “Should we smoke more pot?” Thoughts started flashing in my head like the news marquee bar at the bottom of the TV screen. We stepped out of our room for the first time after eating shrooms, the sky had turned black but the night was still young.I picked up pace and walked faster to catch up with my mind. We continued making rounds of the town expecting the pop culture inspired symptoms of psychedelics to take control. After a few moments of resting on a rock near the highest point in the town, it suddenly occurred to me that we had been walking for hours and had already made 4 rounds of the hilly little town. Conversations had died out ages ago and my mind was fixated on what seemed like a huge purple cloud hovering over an adjacent hill. It was my moment of clarity. Our experience was far from the desired trip but I loved the moment. I remembered something a friend of mine once told me “to enjoy shrooms you need to be inspired” I wrote it off as ‘corny hippie crap’ back then but now it seemed true, very true. My moment of inspiration came in the form of a purple cloud over a hill, it was brief but it put my mind to rest.I was no longer looking. Overall the shrooms trip was very ambiguous and confusing. Unlike other drugs where the mind is merely a spectator, shrooms allow you to define your own high and I guess that’s where things like inspiration,happiness,sense of achievement etc. play their part.

The next day we were in for a rough journey. We had 400 bucks exact to make it back to Bangalore. We reached the coastal city of Salem by the afternoon after changing 2 Tamil Nadu state buses where we cursed our own foolishness for having invested almost all our money on 2 batches of shrooms. Salem came at the mid of the journey and home was still really far way .So we were in stuck in Salem for a while, depressed, dehydrated and hungry and sleep deprived. My friend's phone was already dead and mine was low on battery, so we decided to take a cab to Bangalore from Salem and then arrange the money somehow once we made our destination. The driver needed 200 bucks for fuel and we had none. Dejected and in despair, we stepped out of the taxi contemplating having to sleep at night on a piece of pavement, also I had a flight to catch the next day. In the heat of the moment, I took my phone, removed the sim card and sold it to the first auto driver i could find for a meagre Rs 300 (was not in a position to bargain).After re-hydrating we caught a Bangalore bound bus immediately just to find out that the Bangalore ticket price had been hiked to 160 bucks and we had had only about 100 bucks left each, which meant we could only travel till Hosur, the last major city in TN before crossing into Karnataka. Hours of travelling on the doorsteps of an Indian state bus can have a dehumanizing effect on any person .First we thought of catching a cab from hosur but as the journey progressed it seemed more and more impractical to do that, it was already 10 in the night and all I could see outside were little cubical houses, agricultural fields and the occasional cross(church).We chatted up a student from kodai returning to Hosur,to attract more sympathy we said we were exchange students from Malaysia. The guy offered to help us catch a cab at hosur.I let out a sigh of relief but our problems weren’t over yet, taxi drivers could still deny us their services on the ground that we had no money whatsoever for advance payment. The Hosur leg of the journey was the longest but it was the best chance we had, a taxi could get us to Bangalore within an hour.I was hoping to redeem our journey by making the final leg less excruciating. Disaster struck again, we couldn’t find a single cab near the bus stop which meant begging the shrewd little conductor to take us back in but then something restored my faith in Humanity, the college kid from Kodai who promised to find us a taxi promptly took out 2 hundred rupee notes and handed it to us. I didn’t know what the hell to say, I wanted to hug the fellow but the bus engine roared back to life and I finished with “God bless you man”. That little show of generosity or rather philanthropy raised our morale; we were going to make it home after all with our dignity intact.

From Hometown to Jew town

vavachan — Tue, 13 May 2014 14:15:00 GMT

Before going to Kochi one needs to have a good understanding of the cultures that made kochi and the cultures that are making it.This beautiful port city situated on the west cost of the country by the Arabian sea has not just harboured various indigenous and foreign cultures but over a period of time, it has taken the best of these influences to create a unique new. Traditionally a stronghold of the Vermas of Kochi, it gained great reputation in the international trade market by way of exotic spices that were an unknown ingredient in south Western Europe in the late 12^th century. This lead to an influx of traders and travellers from Portugal, Italy and Spain to this port wonder. Being a port city separated from the mainland due to the presence of inland waters, Kochi didn’t go through the same cycles and revolutions that the rest of the state had to. The result being, gothic churches dotting the landscape, colonial style buildings and communities that are as Indian as they are Foreign.

Hailing from Kerala it’s embarrassing to acknowledge the fact that you haven’t been to half a dozen places that your motherland is known all over the world for. Usually my trips to Kerala involve me and my family oscillating between my dad’s place and mom’s place but this time i vehemently protested against the traditional. I landed in Kochi on the 20^th of May and headed straight to my hometown, a small semi-rural settlement on the outskirts of what could possibly be called greater Ernakulum in the distant future.3 years of Bangalore and a lifetime in Delhi is more than enough to make anybody crave for some nature and air that doesn’t trigger cancer genes.Marady is what you would describe as the ideal idle village, it’s a district of Muvattapuzha which is a few miles further from the main city. People are friendly and curious but mostly curious. The best thing about a small town is also its worst trait; everyone knows everyone and the men are also indoctrinated in the art of gossiping along with the women. Reputations soar or plummet with each rumour like stock prices.

The most endearing thing about Kerala is without doubt its greenery, from Kasaragod to Trivandrum there’s something worth seeing in every district. There’s a picture of my hometown etched in my mind, the clean transparent river under the town bridge with thick patches of vegetation on either side. It was like a tamed amazon passing through a less dense jungle. I realized how modern consumerism has us convinced that it takes a tourist package to somewhere distant to find peace and nowhere do I see it more at work than in Kerala .I have seen Malayalis go to other neighbouring states to see the same things that are pretty much present in their backyard.

After spending 2 days in my hometown, I headed to my Uncle’s place in Kochi which at that time was empty. Entering a concrete jungle with all its hustle and bustle was slightly depressing and the absence of the nocturnal opera was quite profound. The next morning I took a cab to fort Kochi to go to the Jew town, a place I was looking forward to go to from a really long time. It’s the only concrete remnant of Kochi’s Jewish past, an alley with antique shops and odd looking restaurants leading to an old modest synagogue which seemed to have undergone many renovations. The most impressive bit about the Jew town is its relevance; a small family of Jews still continues to live there. The current occupants of the Jew town are the Sephardic Jews who migrated to Kerala to escape religious persecution and settled in Kerala for a considerable period of time. Even before the Sephardic movement, the rulers of cochi had long experience dealing with people of this faith; the Jews of Cochin are an ancient branch of far eastern Judaism whose myth dictates an eastward migration resulting from the destruction of the second temple of Jerusalem. A majority of the original migrants have either embraced the indigenized form of Syrian Christianity or migrated to Israel. Now only a handful of Sephardic Jews remain who over a period of time have come to embrace Malayali culture, their level of social activeness in the region is proof of that fact. Unfortunately for me it was the day of the Sabbath and the synagogue was closed to the public, but it made me happy realizing that in spite of all that fame and recognition, they still kept their sacred place sacred like nothing had changed in the last 100 years. While walking back I heard a Jewish lady from a nearby household shouting away in fluent Malayalam about cooking jackfruit for lunch.