One Day Trip to Yelagiri And Lessons On Spirituality

For a long time I had been planning to go to Yelagiri (in Vellore district) which is about 200km from Chennai. Since there is no direct bus or train to Yelagiri (there are trains to Jolapepettai or Vaniyambadi both of which are on the way from Madras to Coimbatore/Bangalore. From these places, Yelagiri is about 25km up the hills) and since it is not far away to be fancy enough, I never had been to Yelagiri.

Now a cousin of mine came home the other day with a friend of his. And it turned out that they were ardent travelers like me. The difference being that I travel alone while they travel in groups. We shared our experiences and soon we were discussing that we should travel together. Maybe a bike trip. Since I am an accomplished pillionaire (Pillion rider is the person who sits in the back in a bike, he is not the driver), I was all for it.

And suddenly the call came from my cousin. They were planning to go on a bike trip and would I like to join them. I kept nodding like a chettiar bommai (it's a doll whose head keeps nodding). He said he will come around 2-3pm with two other friends of his. So please be ready.

Now I am usually very particular about time. I was ready at 3pm. 4pm came, then 5pm and then it was 6pm when the gang arrived. Turned out that there were a lot of issues, it being rainy they had decided to go by car and not a bike. And one of the guys had some work etc etc. Meanwhile I already had had a small and quick dinner of curd rice. 

By the time we would reach our destination it would be 10pm. I picked up some hot samosas and kachori and pani puri from a chaat shop nearby. The guy who was driving, I would learn in the next couple of hours, was an accomplished and extraordinary driver and he had traveled the route from Chennai to Yelagiri more than a hundred times. He knew every exit there was, every good hotel - the name, what they served. Nice to have an encyclopedia around.

Apart from my cousin, the driver and me there was a 4th person who is a muslim who also loves traveling. He also loved old film songs and he made me listen to a lovely song "Sunayana, Aaj In Nazaaron" by Yesudas from the movie Sunayana. I realized i didn't have this song in my collection  so then I made a note to add it to my collection. When I added this after I returned from the trip, I learned that the heroine in the movie was Rameshwari who is apparently a look alike of Rajshri, the very good looking daughter of Shantaram.  

I learned during the drive that the four of us would stay in a hotel room which had been booked for us by a 5th friend. And that this friend would come to meet us (remember 10pm ETA) when we arrived there. A 6th friend would come to the hotel at 5AM at which time we would leave for Yelagiri, which was about 25km from the hotel. A 7th friend had planned to take the morning train from Chennai the next day and he and the 5th friend would meet us in the hills.

We reached around 10:15PM and then checked in to the hotel. We then went to have dinner at one of the joints which apparently served good biryani. The town is a tannery center in Tamil Nadu and I came to realize that the town had a relatively high muslim population. I found a lot of women in abaya. So I asked the 4th friend, the question that had nagged me earlier (http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2009/09/how-does-child-recognize-his-mom.html): how does a toddler recognize his mom who is wearing an abaya?

He looked thoughtfully at me for a moment and asked me "what is abaya?". I exploded in anger: "I am sick and tired of explaining and teaching Urdu to Muslims". He smiled at me and said that he used the word "burkha" and that he had never come across the word "abaya".

He then gave me a very interesting perspective on how to recognize the woman in abaya. He asked me "have you ever seen how a woman immediately identifies her child among hundreds of other children in a school?" How does she do it? In a similar way children and men identify their mothers / wives easily. The gait, the figure, height etc are very telling. Hmmm, I said to myself. That's a thought. But somehow I didn't like the idea of children and men being used in the same context in the same sentence. But I let it go.

After we had dinner, we returned to the hotel room. We were four in the room along with the 5th friend who had joined us for dinner. And there were 2 beds. So we asked for extra beds and pillows and linens. And these were brought in. It was about 11PM. And I thought to myself we had to be ready to leave in 6 hours. If you wanted to see the sunrise from the Yelagiri hills you had to leave by about 5AM. 

The five of us in the room were a motley mix of guys. I was a stranger to all of them except to my cousin. The 4th friend (Muslim) was known to my cousin for the last 15 years or so. All the rest of the people were known to the driver (3rd friend) for the past 25 years or so. They had grown up together in the same town. So then the driver, who is a good raconteur, told me anecdotes about his various friends some of whom were in the room and some who were not. An important character in these anecdotes was an eighth friend (let's call him the 8th friend) who was seriously into spirituality and was living in another town which is famous for spirituality. He would not be joining us for this trip though he had earlier expressed a desire, to join us in this trip, to the driver. 

Apparently the 8th friend had asked the 6th friend (they had been friends since they were this small) for a loan of a largish sum of money. Since they were good friends and since the 8th friend's family was fairly well off, the 6th friend lent him the money in cash. There was no record of this transaction because the 6th friend trusted the 8th completely. After some time, when the 6th asked the 8th about the return of his money, the latter looked at him blankly. It turned out that the 8th had lost the money loaned to him in some business enterprise. So the 8th didn't think that there was any money that needed to be returned to the 6th friend. Unfortunately the 6th friend expected the money to be returned. Now as the 6th kept building the pressure up on the 8th for the money, the 8th who was now on his path to spirituality said to the 6th in what looked to be like a today's geetobadhesam. "Look man, if I had the money I would return it to you. Now I don't have it. So don't pester me. This, I am telling you in the position of your friend. Now if you want to take legal recourse, you don't have a foot to stand on since there is no proof of the loan. So forget about it".

We were aghast. The raconteur (the driver) paused here for a moment and then he continued. Apparently 5 years ago, the 5th friend and the 8th friend got into a partnership and started a business. The business started doing fine. After some time the 5th friend decided that he wanted to get out of the business and so he did with the concurrence of the 8th friend. After a few years the business started making losses. The eighth friend asked the 5th to partake in the losses. The justification was that they had started it together and now that it was making losses the 5th friend was expected to make good the losses. The 8th friend got hold of some goons with political clout and together they met the 5th and arm twisted him. The 5th paid him the money that he wanted. As we were listening to this story our jaws dropped again. Here I have to explain the thinking of the 5th friend.

I asked the 5th why he paid. He explained. "What is the big point of refusing. The 8th would stoop to any level which he, the 5th, wouldn't and couldn't. And more importantly, the 8th had provided him a lot of support earlier in life. So why can't I just repay and just let the whole thing pass? Why harbor ill feelings?" 

Hmmm. There are people and then there are people. So much for spiritually inclined people. And so on the night passed by. Soon it was 4AM. We started getting ready. At 5AM, the 6th friend arrived. The 5th went back home to get some sleep. He would go to the station to pick up the 7th friend at 9AM who was coming by train from Chennai and they will meet us in Yelagiri later in the day. 

And then we packed into the car with the driver at the wheel. It was cool, dark as we left. Soon we were climbing the hills, there were 10 hair pin bends. We stopped at one or two places to take pictures. And soon we arrived at the top. It was pretty, the weather was nice. We had tea at a place which the driver suggested was good. The 6th friend kept me company. He showed me some houses and interesting anecdotes (a little too spicy to be mentioned here) about the people who lived in those houses. 

The 6th friend said he belongs to a community who were non-vegetarians. While he just liked meat, his wife had an intense desire to eat meat. Saturdays were considered auspicious in his community so people abstained from meat on those days. But his wife had to have meat even on that day. And one day she read a book written by a doctor which explained how bad eating non-vegetarian food was. And from that day, the entire family including the wife quit eating meat. I asked him exactly what was written in the book written by the doctor.

He waited for a minute or two recollecting his thoughts. Then he started.

"

1. Non-veg food no matter how fresh has a smell (meaning bad odor) while vegetables no matter how old usually don't have a smell.

2. When a part of a vegetable is rotten, you can cut out that portion and throw it away. While in case of meat, you can't do that.

3. Poultry and meat are given some given vaccinations and when we eat them, the medicine reacts with our blood adversely.

"
And so on. He gave examples.

I am still awed that his wife could just stop eating meat one fine day. Just like that. Wowowow.

And meanwhile we were walking around the place. The place is not well known and hence not crowded. It even had a lake where people could go boating. We went to the nature park which is a beautiful place. Lots of flowers and plants and an artificial waterfall. We asked the caretaker to switch on the falls which she did. We had a lovely time in the falls. The weather was cool, the water was cold. It was amazing.

Later as I was walking alone, I saw a cute girl. She was speaking in Bengali to someone. I chatted with her for sometime. I asked her name, where she was from, how long she had been here. She asked her mom and then showed 4 fingers (meaning 4 days). She was about 3 years old. I said tata to her and returned to where my friends were.

A little later the 5th and 7th friend arrived. After lunch it was time to return. We went to the 5th friend's house. He and the 7th friend made tea for all of us. After tea, we returned to the hotel, checked out and we were on our back home. We stopped en route at Arcot where there is a great shop which sells sweets and savories. It's the The Arcot New Sweet Stall, Opp Bazaar Pillyar Koil Street, 136 Bazaar Street (Tel: 99946 95777). The stuff there is good.

We returned home late. The driver had driven us the whole way. And we hadn't slept a wink on Saturday night. Amazing guy.

Updated on 27-Nov-2012: http://m.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/article3752265.ece/