Mountains and Temples

Once in Chikmagalur I found my driver, with the always helpful description “I have a blue backpack.” When I arrived at the homestay, the owner greeted me over a fresh glass of buttermilk from the plantation’s cows, and shared how his family acquired the 100 year old British estate after independence, his heritage as a 6^th generation coffee grower, and his recent 1 year anniversary at the end of the month to his wife.

Except for the company of their four cats that begged me for chicken curry, I ate lunch in the courtyard alone. Afterwards the owner had the house servant walk me through the 400 acres of coffee plants, over foot trails carved by the estates laborers, as the family called them. They floated through the coffee plants silently and would disappear. I briefly lost the servant and turning down one path, saw a lady with a jug of water in the distance, made eye contact and then turn and I lost her amongst the forest.  

On returning I found the owner’s bachelor friends from Bangalore all circled around in the courtyard. I accepted the owners offer to join them for a beer saying “Just one” and he told the servant “bring him two.” The friends were rising government players, traders and one a Kannada actor, that I did not believe until he showed me video clips. Soon the owners uncle joined and a niece, some of their nine dogs, and I tried to follow as I best I could to a good natured political debate spoken in Kannada with sprinklings of English.

After not having slept on the bus, my second cup of coffee gave me a second wind. Later that evening, they asked if I wanted to join them for drinks at their hangout, an outdoor roadside shack isolated on a mountain ridge. “How many beers should I pack you?” the owner asked. Just x would be good. “No, no I’ll bring you more.” We took two separate cars and I rode with him and his beautiful young wife who once in the passenger seat, turned around to introduce herself and ask questions about my travels, family, love status, and the peculiarities that strike many Indians around a solo traveler. “We Indians like to travel and be in big nosey groups, you are only the second solo guest we have had.”  

“You like spicy food?” she asked surprisingly as I ate from the side dishes we ordered over drinks, as more of their friends from neighboring estates joined us on wooden stump seats. “Of course, I’m Mexican!” I said, later feeling a heat rise in the side of my mouth where I was chewing, and mixed with the cold mountain air, left my jaw feeling like it had been shot off and was just hanging by a few tendons.

The party spilled into the parking lot, and when the yellow lights from the shack cut, and we all were standing there with just the light of the moon and one or two estates on the opposite side of the valley. In the car the wife sang a song perfectly in the direction of her husband as he swerved around the mountain roads with one hand on the steering wheel and another pounding the roof of the car to the music. I sat in the back, riding the rollercoaster brought on by the road, drinks, and closing my eyes, I laughed. At the estate gates we found his alcoholic guard slumped over and the owner playfully scolded him that he needed to quit. “He can’t support a wife and his thirst on his allowance” he later told me. This was but one of many impassioned speeches he went into, one preceding being to his friend who had an accompanying servant/driver/body guard with him and his friends need to recognize his worth. That this man was an extension of him he said, and he owed his livelihood to him, just as the man owed his to him. I stood there as an observer to that one, the owner, the government friend, his servant and myself. Together with a conversation about the lives of the laborers on his property, an intimate insight into notions of servitude, workers and caste that I had long observed without insider commentary.  

Over a fire in the courtyard, the drinking continued with his bachelor friends and those that followed us back from the shack. The friends were happy to welcome me in, and on a comment on one’s gratitude for the surprise in having met me, another’s on the path that was leading me to this place, the owner launched into another speech, this one aimed at dispensing wisdom to me. About concepts of Hindu beliefs in fate, friendship, the guest is god, the necessities of a man in his twenties (with the playful disapproving looks his wife sent us), advice and commentary on the parts of my story I had shared with him earlier, responsibilities he has to those who depended on him, and that we are but simply playing out our lives. It was planned our paths would cross. Though drunk I listened intently as I starred at the fire. Thoroughly convinced in all parts, if in part owed to the high spirited energy and mood of that night.

“My wife will accompany you to dinner,” he broke off and I don’t remember what he said before that. “You have a long day ahead.” And so away from the party and fire, we sat over dinner talking. In the shack there was but one light from the roof that cast all our shadows about. In front of the fire I could only partially see faces shown briefly by the flickers of flames. Now as I sat with her I could see all of her face. I imagine this is what it likes to feel like a don juan on a hacienda, I drunkenly thought. She was happy that I liked the dessert she had made and after a glass of water from their spring, I went up to bed. 

The next morning after coffee and idly dosas, I hired a driver and Mahindra Indian Jeep. He grew up in Chikmangalur, left for Bangalore in his twenties for a job and quit within a week “I can have money or I can have peace, I want peace.” Through the trees, past fruit and overhead birds I have never seen and did not know, we drove through coffee estates and their accompanying villages of 10- 20 buildings that housed the laborers. They were all working and empty now except for a few elders, running kids and dogs. .

The first stop was a waterfall. He dropped me off at a trailhead that wove in and out of a path wrought by runoff and erosion. Convinced I was lost after sometime and having not seen a single soul except a few curious monkeys above, I finally heard screams and laughs ahead, and then the waterfall. I returned with a photographer I met on the trail and bracing a tree and extending his tripod, helped pull me up an embankment. He showed me how to eat the ripe coffee cherry  skin and tossing the tan seed. “We use to add salt to this as a kid, never concerned with the value of the seed.”

I trekked Mullayyanagiri next, the highest peak of the state, and part of the Western Ghats that stretched from Mumbai to the backwaters of Kerala . Atop was a temple. As customary, I took off my shoes. The approach to the temple was slow as I tried to navigate the rocks barefoot. Inside the temple I sat on the cold stone floor and listened as adults rang the bell before the diety and children added to the sounds running around, sending their anklet chimes ringing.    

I spent the rest of the day touring the quiet hill station with my driver, before ending with a swim in a lake at the base of Mullayyanagagiri. On the way back to the homestay we picked up a couple going our direction, and the three us rode in the back as the jeep climbed a rock face for sunset. On the way back the sounds of the night bugs reached a fervor, and against the wind and roar of the jeep, we sat in the backseat. We abandoned our attempts at conversation and sat listening contently quiet.

Another party with the bachelors ensued that night. Exhausted from the day and perfectly happy, in predictable manner I followed. One showed me that before drinking it was customary to dip three fingers in the night’s first drink and cast the drips to the ground, “to stave off the three vices.”

“What are those I asked?”

“It all depends on you. They are your three demons.” I immediately saw mine.

Guests came again and I recognized one from last night who had talked of his estate in the interior, and soon he invited to move the party there. Deep into the tiger reserve. With the mention of a night hike there, this little part of tigers was lost on me, especially when someone had said there is the chance to stumble upon sleeping elephants. I must have also missed the part about boar hunting too because as soon as some from the party opted to join and we piled into a jeep, British surplus rifles and double barrel shotguns were loaded.

The second time I had been involuntarily dragged into a hunt. Though the idea of boar bacon did seem like an appealing addition to my meat diet of chicken and goat.

We went deeper into the interior and the trees grew larger and all their roots that cut across the dirt path and gripped boulders, looked of snakes that were waiting to wrap around our jeep. The sound of the bugs drowned out everything and the only light came from the headlights and the pair of lights behind us from another jeep that joined us.

At the estate we waited and drank. I was not sure of the legality of what we were planning, much less was I sure what was even unfolding. I simply heard sleeping elephants and jumped in the car. We were waiting for it to get later, it be safer they said. But shortly after 2 am forest department officers came. Shots had been heard earlier and they were looking for poachers. They searched the owner’s property for registered guns, and when they found a pair of antlers in one of the laborer’s homes, an argument began between the accused, his pleading wife, the liable homeowner and the plumb forest officials.  He was taken away for questioning and the homeowner was obliged to attend.

Five of us were left alone in the house. Soon the power cut and sent us all into darkness. The dogs went beserk and we sat in silence. Tiger! I thought. They went out for a smoke soon after and I followed. I made way to the edge of the property, along the cement clearing where the coffee seeds dried up in the sun dropped off to the mountain face below. I sat there with the company of one of the dogs, and resting his head on my lap, we watched the moon through the trees. 

The bachelors and I were dropped back at the homestay around 4 am. That night, as the night before I listened to the intermittent calls of peacocks coming from the sloped coffee grounds around me. I imagined that blue moon and the colors of their feathers in that light, as they slipped and silently darted in and out of the plants, their plumes shaking the coffee leaves and cardamom spices.

The owner and his wife left for business in town before I woke but left me a message. I hired a driver to take me down the mountain, through the valley where the coffee was roasted, and to stop in the temple cities of Belur and Halebid before dropping me off for the night in Hassan. He spoke very little English but sitting in the front seat with him, through points and words of “corn” “ginger” “wheat” “sugarcane,” he identified the fields we passed over. He was 24, a student, lifelong resident of these parts. He accompanied me through the temple grounds of the twin city and as we exited each, helped navigate me back to the car amidst the rush of sellers that would greet us.

“Look look! See see!” One man who managed to stop me by jumping in front of me and blocked my path said, pointing to an open page of the Karma Sutra. “Hair hair!” he shouted, with his long pointed finger highlighting the depiction of a man pulling a woman’s hair while in the act.

“Yes, yes. Nice, nice.” I took off my glasses and looked to my driver and we both just started laughing. 

At dusk we made our way through the small villages to my night stop in Hassan. I motioned him to stop for bhutta, roasted corn, and we ate while learning on the hood of his car. I dozed off after and woke up in Hassan. We spoke about a hundred words that whole day together, but for some unexplained reason I felt it hard to say goodbye.

Within fifteen minutes of my hotel room I was restless so with the 250 rupees I had left, wandered around looking for food but found a bar first. On the way back I passed street stalls and stopped to watch the clamor of shouting orders, extended hands, and the preparation of dosas and scoops of rice from the ping of stainless steel vats. The commotion excited me and I was joined in shouting “Dosa dosa!” to place an order. A man next to me noticed and helped me. Despite not speaking a shared language, we managed a small conversation of parts. To my animated objections, he paid for my plate. As we pushed through the throngs of people I motioned for him to sit with me on the side of the road over our dinner. He pointed to his car and his waiting wife. I understood he had to go.

I walked back and stopped at another quieter stall. I was still hungry. As I sat with the other three men on our stools surrounding the cart, a family pulled up. “The pretty girls are always with their families” I remembered a coworker saying. We made eyes a dozen times as we sat there eating our dinner in silence but for the sounds of the street, clanking of the vendor’s pots, and soft talk of the standing men smoking that blocked my sight once or twice. A path cleared and we stopped breaking away and finally I got to see those brown eyes. I motioned to the vendor I wanted to pay and how much, and he did not understand me. She overheard, spoke to him in Kannada and he turned to me and said “30.” I paid him and turned to her and said thank you, she simply nodded. As I was walking away, her family passed in their ride, I looked up just in time and we both gave each other the biggest smiles we had never given to anyone else. Mine complete with a gap and rice all over my shirt. I looked down and had to bite my lips from breaking into a childish giggle.  

In the morning I threw my stuff together, slapped some sambar into a chapati, rolled it up into a banging burrito, grabbed the paper, ran to wave down a rickshaw, gave him my remaining rupees, caught a bus and headed back to Bangalore.