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 2nd 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.
