August Rush

Life is even more monotonous after a woderful break.

Its August again. Don't know what to do.

I think I'll finish off the book this time, a major part of it consists of ill-effects of de-forestation!!

Lets say it is indeed stupid to chop down the thing that gives food, liquor and intoxication to human beings.

Day -1 :Phase -1 : Hitting the road:

Hitting the road was always fun. Especially when you are not really sure where excatly you are going. I was under the impression we were headed somewhere in the jungles, atleast that was the initial 'plan', but thanks to the rather heavy burden that it imposed on our pockets, we headed off to a more unchartered plot of land - poor, wet and damp, it took a good number of retries to get the name right - Kasaragod. A rain-damp piece of land by the ocean on the other side of the Ghats, speaking an incomprensible language with damp beaches and damp forts and damp coconut groves.We were pensive about the kind of road that lay ahead of us when we had our first flat tyre, later, by the time the trip ended, we were looking at two flat tyres, one damaged headlight, a non-functional car horn and a twisted rim of the front car wheel.The drive was long and fun, and we had the most unique driver on this side of the country, who tends to forget that he is supposed to look at the front through the windshield while driving a car and had a keen urge of asking for directions in a strech of absolutely straight road. The Ghats were nice, with green covers of thick dense vegetation, overshooting in all directions in the perpetual company of rains. There were bouts of rains, it would drizzle for a little while, then it would pour in thick transluscent sheets, it would come from all directions, even from the ground, and then it would suddenly disappear only to return in its usual calculative self after an hour.Not that we were complaining much about it. Why should we complain? We got time and nowhere definite to go. Our vacation had started.

Day - 1 :Phase-2 : Raging waters:

After around eight hours of drive, we had reached the brink of the State. We reached our first checkpoint. Coupleof back-to-back beaches with hurling waters and thick wet sands littered with brown-black rocks and dense vegatations. It was an absolute opposition to the picture of the white sandy beach where you would roll down in slumbering laziness with a bottle of juice in hand.The sea here was rough, insane and distraught, and big waves would snap at the land with a deep resonating rumble. Waves that would, in an instant, hurl at you like a giant whip if you get too near for too long, and when it receds, it would drag you along, and bury you knee-deepin the lurking wet sands. It was evident that the sea would not tend to our frolics and whims, neither did we intend to. It was a place where you need to sit and surrender at the greater might of nature, its overpowering grandeur, regal, ruthless, driven by dark rolling nimbus clouds merging with the waters in near infinity. It would fill you with refreshing tiredness, you would forget, for a while, the pending deadlines looking ruefully at you in coming weeks. You would look up at the sky as the first drops of rain hit your face with its stinging comfort and you would stare at the absolute vastness of raging waters from the top of the rock-face, jutting right out from the sea and fightingits eventual annihilation with equal defaince. It was a place where you are no more than a tiny audience.It was what you would call a dark and grim beauty.

Day -1 : Phase-3 : Crystal Ship:

It was twilight by the time we left the beach and headed to cross the State border. The sea had infused a subdued sense of overwhelm. It had started raining again. This time it broke its usual routine. This time the sky broke. We were stuck in the small car, among the dense foliages and the Ghats all around, now only an irregular shape bending down at us like a giant pre-historic monster. Our driver was at the small hamlet thats being used as a make-shift cross-border check post. And we sat silently, windows rolled up, listening to the intoxicating drumming of the raindrops on the roof of the car, staring at the patterns made by the pelting waters on the frosted windsheild. Many of them leaving a winding trail as they made their way to the bigger droplets. The air outside was heavy,inside, it was heavier. All the four windows now had a thick layer of moisture, and whatever little daylight was left casted a weak bluish glow as we kept on listening to the deep rumble of the shifting clouds and pouring rain. It was almost eerie, as if we were trying to look at the world from the belly of a small blue crystal ship.

Day -1 : Phase -4 : Kasaragod :

It was a good fourty-five minutes after which the rain had mellowed down to a drivable downpour. And the last twenty kilometers tookover an hour by the car. There was a particularly scary moment in the drive, when I saw from the backseat nothing but dark infinity in the pale cone of light comingout from our singular headlight. The trees were gone, the road was gone, lost in the anonymity of darkness, and the weak beam of light revealed nothing but sheets of water and twirling vapours of fog. It was as if we had reached the edge of the world and was about to fall down in the sea of nothingness lying beyond. It was night by the time we reached Kasargod. Cold and rain-drenched, we had a sumptous meal and fell down and slept like dead soldiers.

Day -2 : Phase -1 : Kasaragod :

It was daylight in the town and still cloudy. The rain had stopped pelting though. It was more of a gentle drizzle now. The town was a little hard to comprehend for absolute city-folks. It was a town that cannot change, it was a town that has its own way of life, it was almost eight thirty and the streets were stll not fully awake, and peoplewere slowly opening the shutters with sleepy red eyes. The town is trapped within the Ghats and its rains and its clouds. The streets were heavy with vapour, and thick smoke coming out from the stoves of the tea-stalls by the dank and mushy strech of broken asphalt. The very odour of the town will drive you into a slow, satisfied, zombie-walk in that air, filled with moisture of the clouds and reeking dense foliages. While it is undoubtedly true that our appearances and gait must have screamed "total strangers" but it was a wonderful feeling to be lost amidst that incredulous collection of humanity. It was almost just the place I wanted to be in.

Day -2 : Phase - 2 : The Countryside :

The interiors had, other than the perpetual sheild of vegetations and coconut groves dripping wet in the moist air at the left and almost a continuous strech of rolling sea water on dark sands at the right, couple of old forts moderately tarnished by generations of green ferns. The two forts appeared almost replicas of each other in my eye, with a slight difference in size and the larger fort that was right at the edge of a rock-wall overlooking a good hundred feet fall almost directly into the sea, had a pair of tall elevations that must have been used as watch-towers staring right at the restless sea.There was also this sufficiently large stretch of much quieter and darker backwaters that lined the southern part of the district that flows around a collection of closely packed islets thrown carelessly like large green bubbles on the surface of the water. It was then when we had this urge to find a place where they serve oysters.Ultimately we found that the resort ( whose name was also 'Oyster' incidentally ) needs to be reserved and pre-booked. We had to comprmise finally with some snaps of sea-shells littered all over the place.

Day -2 : End of the line:

The trip ended there. Essentially after the last of sea-shell snaps. Everybody knew it, and were making merry the way they should after a wonderful two day break, for old time's sake. The return jouney was scarier. As it was dark, and the new route had a good fifty kilometers more to drive, and our driver was a stepcloser to insanity by that time. It was also by that time it was evident that there was something funny going on with the mechanics of the car. Visibilty was low and cars fromoppsite direction appeared dangerously close behind the blinding glare of the headlights in thick fog. We grabbed on to our jackets against the sharp air. It was time for meto get slouch back and turn the music on. It was close to dawn when the first gleam of city lights appeared at the horizon.