Indian Writing

Though our short break in Kodaikanal was anything but quiet, with the two boys making a racket through most of the day and well into the night. Highlights of the trip:

- the children’s delight at seeing the mountains for the first time. D, on seeing a pine tree in the cottage garden: “Very long tree… very nice!” And he loved collecting the pine cones, which he initially thought were a kind of pineapple. M, with his more limited vocabulary: “There! There! There!” pointing to the lake and the boats.
- the peace and calm. Kodaikanal is one of the quiet secrets of the south. Of our five days, we spent one day getting there and another getting back: it’s a two-hour flight to Coimbatore and then a four-hour drive to Kodai. The drive up from Coimbatore is flat and uneventful, except for a series of lazily turning windmills, until we cross Palani. After that, it’s about two gorgeous hours and 14 hairpin bends up the mountains, through some lovely tall green-brown forests.
- the weather, which was completely different on each day that we spent there: actually hot the first day, cool and cloudy the next, then wet and grey, and finally, on the day of our return drive down the hills, clouded with mist.
- the very child-friendly Carlton Hotel, our two adjoining cottages, the spacious grounds, the lovely lake view; the boating, and most importantly, the children’s play area;
- the quick and painless round of sightseeing (Coaker’s Walk, in bright sunshine; the 500-year old tree in the forest; the pine forest; the Suicide Point; the Pillar Rock; the Guna Caves; and, one misty afternoon, the Kurinji Andavar Kovil);
- the slow, winding drives to nearby villages, the superb views, the colours of the forest, the deep valley filling up with mist;
- the home-made chocolates (at Fays); the fried momos (at Tibetan Brothers); the cheese (from Cinnabar, at the Potter’s Shed); the filter coffee and idli-sambar (at the very down-to-earth Astoria, don’t be fooled by the posh-sounding name);
- the bright cheery stuffed toys and stuff, at Kopedeg (especially a large green toy parrot on a wooden perch) and Re’s (little toy animals in Kalamkari fabric);
- hand-knitted sweaters, lavishly embroidered sarees, and handmade jewellery at Corsocks. I even found a little something, embroidered all over with flowers, that was apparently meant to be a dinner roll holder. The saleswoman told me it’s a favourite among their visitors.

*****

As for the title of this post. I managed to catch up with some reading, and one of the books I read was “A Nice Quiet Holiday”, a debut mystery novel by Aditya Sudarshan. The narrator, Anant, is a young law clerk on a hill break with his boss and mentor, a Sessions Judge. But their holiday in the fictional town of Bhairavgarh, in Uttarakhand, is anything but nice or quiet: with a murder, much blood, a court scene, and the town simmering with resentment about an AIDS report published by an NGO. Not sure why the novel is being described as a literary thriller though. It’s a nice quick read at 224 pages. Well structured, with short crisp chapters, an intelligent narrator, and lots of house guests sitting about in a large house on the hillside. I look forward to reading about the Judge and his law clerk again.