Virajpet - April 08

I sit on the steps in front of our room and listen to Red Whiskered Bulbuls singing and Jungle Myna's quarrelling. The walk on 4th from Maukut Forest check post to Arabithittu was in many ways very memorable. The ground was wet so we could see many tacks - wild boar, sambar, elephant. I was carrying my backpack with three day provisions in it. It was heavy and the incline became quite tough. The forest was hot and humid. It was up up up all the way to Arabithittu. Each step was a big chore with the bag weighing me down. I thought I wouldn't be able to take it any further when with a few more heavy steps I looked up to see a lot of light further up the track - it looked like some sort of a clearing. There was some kind of a construction there - one room and a shack. It was Arabithittu, the forest cottage, right at the border of Karnataka and Kerala. A neat little aangan with tulasi in the centre and a wooden bench overlooking the hills beyond. There were 2 or 3 people there. I took off my backpack and crashed on the bench. What a relief! I didn't want anything else. Under the shade of trees, cool breeze, the heavy weight off my shoulders...it was heaven. We were quickly offered cold water by the forest staff. The forester was from Tumkur, a computer science graduate who decided to be a forester. He was living in this room in this wilderness with a couple of forest guards, no electricity, no telephone, no jeep. They could reach civilization only on foot, a few hours walk through the forest. And yet he told us he liked it there and wanted to do a video clip on elephants. We had seen a herd of 4 on our way there. Inside the room, there was a thick 'An Introduction to Algorithms' kept on a table. It seemed incongruous - in the middle of the forest, no phone, no electricity, and that book on the table. It's encouraging, and inspiring, how some people shun a more regular, a more comfortable life and choose to do what they want to do.

I stayed the night with a Malayali family in Kerala - not from the forest quarters - a lady living with her daughters. There's was a small little brick house, unplastered. A neat little aangan and a garden - banana trees and rose bushes. In just a few minutes, the entire village seemed to gather there - to take a look at the spectacle that I was - sweaty, dirty, tired, in shirt, trousers, cap and a backpack. All the ladies were related to each other - aunties, cousins, nieces, in-laws and so on. I was bombarded with curious questions. I was tired and I wanted to take a bath but I enjoyed their simple curiosity and in a mix of broken Kannada, English and Hindi with lots of gestures I tried to answer their questions - my name, where did I come from, what did I do, was I married, did I have children, what does my husband do, when am I going back home etc etc etc. More women poured in later in the evening as we sat in a still, breeze-less, humid, candle-lit night inside the small room. I remember one of the ladies even came quite late in the night, when I was in semi-sleep to see what a sleeping bag is like - how does it work. I am sure this Mallu family got more visitors that evening than many months put together. I also realised that they were enjoying the importance they were getting from all their envious neighbours, flaunting the chance visit of this speciman from Mars that had suddenly appeared on their veranda that evening! :)

In the morning I was given a warm farewell, some of the aunties I was now familiar with also came, contact numbers were exchanged and I was given a plastic bag full of guavas and bananas from their garden. The lady came with me to drop me off at the forest cottage, I looked back to see her daughters Soumya, Sindhu and Gobiga(Gopika). In a sense, I was happy to be getting out of there - it was suffocating being surrounded by all these women, being watched and being discussed - and yet somehow, the 'stay' at this Mallu home has touched me somewhere and has become a part of my experience.

The house and it's inhabitants

Gobiga