It was a rainy afternoon. And when it rains in the Sahyadris–the long line of hills that run parallel to India’s west coast–it only pours without mercy. We were biking from Gokarna to Sirsi and there was nothing protecting us from the rains. We kept riding despite being wet and dripping, despite the raindrops lashing on us hard. Somewhere, at a fork in the road in a thickly a wooded area, it stopped raining in a while. We came across a tea-shop nearby and decided to break the journey a bit.
There were two people at the tea-shop, one of them the owner of the shop and the other person seemed to be his acquaintance from a nearby village. They were conversing casually, which was interrupted by our arrival as the shop-keeper broke off to slice a tender coconut for my fellow rider. I glanced at the shop, which hardly had any merchandise on it’s shelves. There were a few biscuit packets, local brands of crunchies, stuff to make tea and omelette, and little else.
From the looks of it, the owner did not look like he was too keen to make some good money from the shop. He seemed to be only using the shop as a means to kill time in his otherwise idle life. A few minutes later, his acquaintance was ready to leave and he looked unhappy about having to spend rest of the time by himself. He tried to stay busy by arranging stuff in the shop and finding things to do where nothing existed. I then felt it would be nice to have a tea after the rainy ride, and asked him for one.
Ondu tea maadtheera? ‘Will you make some tea?’
He paused from his work of trying to appear busy, looked up to me slowly and thought for a short interval, while I stared at him and awaited his answer. He took his time to think about my question and pondered as though he is working on resolving all the serious problems affecting the universe. A few silent moments later came his response in a lazy and uninterested tone –
illa.. eega maadudilla.. No.. won’t make it now..
I was slightly disappointed about missing my tea, and we moved on. Later, discussing about his response on our journey further, we burst into a laughter. He wasn’t the least bothered about how much money he was making at the end of the day, nor was he probably dependent on the shop to make his ends meet. And the place he had chosen for his business was so deserted and away from habitation that a dozen customers in a day would be the peak business he can expect. His targets were most likely his friends who would drop by at the end of a day to have a good time together, even if they did not bring in any business. No revenue targets, no growth pressures and no interest in making an extra buck, but just an idle and contented life! And no managers to report to, no fussy subordinates to keep up with and no one to be responsible for. Naturally, at a time he was feeling lazy, he was least interested in spending efforts to make tea, and subsequently wash the glasses and utensils!
Seemed like a good way to live!
When I wrote about taking some time off from writing the usual travel-logs and asked my readers what else they would to read on this page, Mridula and Mouna asked for little things interesting that happened during the journeys. Here is one to start with.
A few months ago, I made a trip to Thadiyandamol with a friend. We deliberately planned it on a weekday to avoid crowds. When we were there we figured it was indeed empty and there was just us in the peak and the forest surrounding it.
Also read – other small incidences when travelling
* An encounter with a hermit
* An encounter on the ghats
* I thought you are going to fall..
* A Struggle between fear and love
* Encounter with the pachyderms
* Ask for directions and have some coffee
We were equipped well for camping for a night, and had carried tent, food and other things we needed, and shared them between us. My friend had carried food for all the days, I had picked up the tent, etc… Previous evening, we had discussed and checked that we had everything we needed.
Come evening, we pitched our tent and were ready for the night.
My friend said: Keep the torch outside, it will be needed once it is dark.
Me: Yeah, need to keep the torch out.
Suddenly something flashed in my head.
Me: Me keep the torch out? Haven’t you got the torch?
He: No, you were supposed to get it right? You don’t have it?
Me: umm.. I thought I heard you say you have picked up the torch.
Obviously there was some mis-communication and now we had to spend a night in complete darkness. We did not see the moon anywhere in the sky either. Anyway it did not worry me much, as comforts and assurances are usually something that I don’t look for. Pretty much same with my friend. An hour or so later, we figured that both our cell phones had all the battery drained, and the last source of light is also lost! brilliant!!
Come nightfall, we were there without any light but for what is granted from the celestial sources. And it so turned out it was one of the most beautiful night I have seen in the skies and wilderness. Stars were appearing all over the place and soon they were denser than the city lights seen from an airplane. Moon’s absence added to the resplendence of the stars. Complete silence but the for gentle and pleasant breeze and the silhouette of the hills complemented the glory of the sky.
We kept conversation to the minimum, managed to eat in darkness and wondered how do we wake up early in the morning with our cell phones out of action. Lucky for us, I managed to wake up and little before six and walked out of the tent. Nature had a lot more to offer to us beyond the beauty of the starry night. The scenic beauty of Thadiyandamol in that clear weather has few parallels. It was my fourth attempt in search of this clear weather in Thadi, and I had found what I had been craving for.
Views from Thadiyandamol in the morning
One of the most common entities on the Indian Highways, along with the dhabas, are the puncture shops. But when was the last time you saw puncture spelled correctly? The signs comes in various permutations and combinations, always ensuring that it is never spelt p-u-n-c-t-u-r-e.
There is punchur, punchar, punchur and a few other combinations. Some times it gets simplified and Indianized as panchar, which sometimes sounds right to me. Indianized because that’s how we spell our names. I remember a conversation that an American was having with a friend Roshan. He said, “the way your name is pronounced, it should be spelt R-o-s-h-u-n.” Roshan had some explaining to do about subtle differences in the way his name is pronounced and s-h-u-n gets pronounced.
Customization is the name of the game when it comes to English in India. It is not UK or US, but India that has the largest population of people who can speak English. Our love of English is well known, but we have never been able to accept the language as it is, and have customized it to our will to an extent that might often sound funny to a native speaker. Now we are even ready to claim some derived languages such as Hinglish, or Kanglish as we call in Bangalore. Can you believe it, a large number of slangs in Kannada are actually in English and the words hardly relate to their original meaning!
I am not sure how a British would comprehend the saying “yes, no?” And then we have some more well known phrases like “It is like that only.” There was a much circulated email which carried the photo of a shop selling Chilled Beer with a sign that read ‘child bear’! Some times it can get really interesting. I recall a lady speaking loudly and giving directions on the mobile phone in otherwise quiet queue in an ATM center, which went like this – “that no, you know that ice-cream shop in MG Road no, from there you go straight down and left, you will find a jewellery shop-pu, got it no, ya there only..” There was much more depth to her speech than what I have recalled and jotted down here. I felt it was more of Kannada that she was speaking. Kannada words were generously interspersed in the conversation and it was evidently a chat between two Kannadigas who were heavily processed by our English schools but refused to give up their real identity.
Coming back to the topic of puncher shops, from which I have now digressed very far, I tend to keep an eye on the spellings when I am travelling. Not because I am a purist, but it is fun to see the combinations that get used. One of the interesting things I have seen is – all those ‘puncher’ shops usually manage to spell a much more complex word like ‘vulcanizing’ correctly. That makes me wonder if there is a deliberate conspiracy against the word puncture. Or is it just that truck drivers prefer shops where the spelling is more friendly? Then there was a music shop in Tawang that carried some special offer for ‘cupples’ for valentines day. After punchur shops, the best place to look at is in the restaurant menu in small towns and highways. One such place in UP offered ‘cornflex’ and ‘mashroom’ to its customers. And another place offered Veg Pakodas but when it came to sandwich, they decided to make it ‘vage’. Sandwich itself some times come in many varieties like ‘sandwhich’ and ‘sandwitch’, all of them adding some fun to the food!
The last time I wrote something about such English in our country, some one got angry and grumbled – “It is a ‘phoren’ language and we don’t need to perfect it. I am very fluent and perfect in my mother tongue and I don’t see a need to be good in anything else”. I had then not replied to the comment. But I agree that there is no need to get perfect in English, or anything else for that matter, especially when there is so much fun in imperfections. In any case, I have no complaints or nothing really against corrupting English, and nor have I gone anywhere in search of perfection. Why take things seriously when there is much more value addition in the lighter side of things?
Footnote: One of the greatest writer that Kannada has seen – Poornachandra Tejaswi always had a tough time with English and always used to fail in English language tests in college. He once remarked something like this – “I don’t think I will ever manage to understand English or any language that uses spellings. These people write something and pronounce it totally differently. It’s crazy.”