A Trip to Ootacamund

(My Indian story continued).

After Saroja and Krishna, our first maid and gardener, left we employed Muthu as a new gardener but didn't bother with a maid as there really wasn't enough work to warrant one. The only reason we had one in the first place was because it was expected of us. However, when the guesthouse was ready to open we did need a cleaner and general house servant and so we hired Jane, a spinster in her forties. Jane had the advantage of speaking English but the disadvantage of being very bossy though she was also kind-hearted. She regarded it as her job to make sure no one took advantage of us, and many people tried. She herself was honest but had a low opinion of most of the rest of humanity whom she regarded all to be on the make in one way or another. When Michael's cousin came to visit us in 1981 he described her as a female cockerel which was a little cruel but not inaccurate. Even so, I liked her and she liked me. She called me Chinna Durai which means little master in Tamil, Michael being Periya Durai or big master. Here is a picture of Jane and me. It was taken when I returned to Yercaud briefly at the end of 2003. I was just walking through the bazaar and she came up and greeted me. She hadn't changed much in 18 years. I was pleased to see her even if we had eventually had to sack her for reasons I will come to at some point.

I look like a giant here but that's because Jane and the woman behind us were very short.

Here is a picture of Muthu on the top lawn with what I called his snake charmer's basket, actually to collect grass cuttings. We had no mower and he cut the grass with what was effectively a pair of scissors. Those were the days.

I mentioned Michael's cousin. This was Hugh Christie, a retired army colonel 12 years older than Michael so aged 73 when he came out to visit. Michael and Hugh were both only children of two sisters, one of whom, Hugh's mother, had left her husband, while the other, Michael's mother, had been abandoned by her husband after he had an affair with the actress Gladys Cooper when Michael was only about a year old. Neither of these two cousins had known their fathers, and because there were no other family members they were closer than cousins normally are. I liked Michael's cousin but he was unsure what to make of me at first which was understandable. Once we got to know each other he was friendly enough even if he clearly could not comprehend what Michael and I were doing together. But then nor could most people, and even I found it odd on occasion. On the face of it, it made no sense. The Masters told me it was intended for a while in my life but they only said this after I had made the decision to do it and it had become a settled thing. There was no coercion. I could not expect anyone else to understand the rationale behind it, and although I tried to explain it to my family they didn't believe my explanation that there was a spiritual justification for it and I couldn't blame them for that. In the context of a human life being about worldly achievement and success it seemed a terrible waste. Meeting the Masters goes into this in greater detail.

Colonel Christie, as I first called him or Hugh as I was permitted to call him after a while (he was, after all, 15 years older than my own father), came out to India to visit us in the spring of 1981. He had been in India for several years during and just after the war, but when we met him in Madras it had been 34 years since he was last in the country. It had still been a British colony then though was about to gain independence. To put it mildly, he was not comfortable with the changes. The noise, the smells, the dirt, the chaos, all the usual things. These had been there before but, according to him and I'm sure it's true, they were controlled by the British presence. Now they had been let loose. While we were in Madras you could see he was questioning the wisdom of his visit, but once we left the big city and went to our bungalow in the hills he could relax as the assault on his mind and senses abated somewhat. Here is a picture of him in our garden in Yercaud.

And here's one of Michael and a bit of me taken at the same time. Michael is in a planter's chair which has extendable arms on which you can put your feet which might seem a good idea but is actually very uncomfortable.

Here is one of Hugh, Muthu, Jane and me.

There was no point in Hugh coming all the way to India just to sit in our bungalow for a couple of weeks so we planned a trip to Ootacamund as it was then known. Now it's been renamed Udagamandalam but everyone calls it by its traditional abbreviated name of Ooty. Ooty was one of those hill stations developed by the British as an escape from the heat of the plains. It had a racecourse, a golf course, an artificial lake and there was even a hunt with imported hounds chasing local jackals. The cream of Indian society visited it in the season which would have been during the hot weather, and it is still popular though down on its luck from its British heyday. Situated in the Nilgiri Hills (Nilgiri means Blue Hills) and around 7,000 feet above sea level, it is also known for its extensive tea plantations as well as eucalyptus and pine, all introduced by the British.

Hugh hired a car and a driver and we drove the 150 miles to Ooty. The climb up the hills was similar to the one from the plains up to Yercaud though grander with 36 hairpin bends as opposed to a mere 21 and with tamer monkeys who would come to be fed bananas when we stopped at one of the rudimentary halts along the way. As always when ascending, the air became fresher, the temperature dropped and the light acquired an intellectually invigorating clarity. Michael and I had been to Ooty before so knew what to expect when we arrived at the town but poor Hugh was once again disappointed, having been raised on the idea of Ooty as the Queen of the Hills and a shining light of civilised elegance. Now much of it was little more than a shanty town but there were bright spots such as the Ooty Botanical Gardens, still beautiful. However, our hotel, a recently built government tourist affair, clean but basic, was not to Hugh's taste, and on the first morning immediately after breakfast he went off on his own without informing us where he was going. He came back just before lunch with a triumphant look on this face. He had managed to get a room at the exclusive Ooty club. This was a members only place but he had talked his way in by flaunting his colonial antecedents which seemingly still carried some weight. He graciously invited Michael and me to dinner at his club that evening, and we grateful accepted.

The Ootacamund Club was founded in 1841 for the planters and convalescing soldiers who came to the more salubrious climate of Ooty to recover from whatever might have been ailing them and there was a lot to do that for Europeans in the tropics in those days. It's been described as a relic of the Raj and certainly was that in 1981. You still had to wear a jacket and tie at the bar which Hugh, being an English gentleman of a certain era, had no trouble in doing. Michael had a tie but no jacket and I had neither. But they let me into the restaurant which looked exactly then as it does in this recent picture from their website.

Below is a picture of the Club lounge, also unchanged since I was there and no doubt from long before then also.

The most famous story relating to the Ooty Club is that this was where the game of snooker was invented, and the Club Secretary kindly let me knock a few balls about on the very table it was born or so he said. Perhaps he was persuaded to let me do this by the fact that Michael too had been a Club Secretary, in his case of the Carlton Club in London between 1960-1969, and they could swap notes about difficult members.

I also remember visiting the old church of St Stephen's, now rather forlorn as though the tide had gone out and wasn't ever going to come back. It was heart-breaking to see the number of tombstones in the cemetery marking the graves of children who had died young, often very young. One forgets how illness and disease laid low the Europeans of those times who are now denigrated as exploiting colonisers but who made many sacrifices, including of their lives and those of their women and children.

Ooty is famous for its tribal communities. These were the original inhabitants and their remoteness left them untouched by general Indian culture from far back, never mind the more recent British incursion. The main tribe is that of the Toda for whom the buffalo is sacred. We went to a Toda village and Hugh chatted to an elder who spoke basic English. It was funny to see the two men together, chalk and cheese in terms of their human types but bonding by being of a similar vintage and getting on well. I wish I had a photo of the two of them but I don't.

I do, however, have one of me and Hugh on the steps of the Ooty Club.

and another of just me.

and one more of Hugh and the club servant who was assigned to him during his stay.

I think they appreciated having someone from the old days there.

After a few days we left Ooty to go to a nearby national park called Mudumalai which was (and still is) a wildlife sanctuary covering about 120 square miles, and home to a wide range of flora and fauna. There were leopards and tigers, elephants, gaur (Indian bison), chital and sambar deer with sloth bears and wild boar among the larger species. Then there were dhole (wild dog) and jackal as well as mongoose, pangolin and porcupine. Various types of monkey were also present, including langur and macaque. The list of birds is even longer, 266 according to Wikipedia. Having had a bird-watching grandfather these interested me as much as the animals. After a bumpy ride we arrived at the visitors' camp in the early afternoon, and at sunset did the first of our two trips into the jungle. For this excursion we went out in a jeep and saw mainly deer and monkeys, with hornbills and eagles among the birds I can remember.

The next day at sunrise we went out again but this time on an elephant which was much better. The three of us sat on a howdah with the mahout perched just behind the elephant's head guiding the animal by pushing on its ears with his bare feet. Hugh sat on one side of the howdah with Michael and me on the other and off we went moving in a slow and stately fashion through the forest. This was a far superior way to experience the jungle as you became part of it. With no engine noise you could hear the sounds of the forest undisturbed, and sitting on the back of an animal that was a natural product of this environment you too became attuned to it in a way that wasn't possible in the artificial confines of a motor vehicle. You didn't even need to see any animals to feel a sense of participation in the natural world around you.

Luckily though we did see some animals, and the first we saw after more deer and monkeys was a male gaur, a magnificent beast packed with muscle that paid no attention to us as it grazed on a mouthful of some vegetable substance. Looking at it you could understand why primitive peoples might have worshipped such an animal as a god. It exuded an imperturbable calm and grave dignity, as if it were an incarnation of archetypal male power and authority from the time when the bull was regarded as a divine being. Many early religions worshipped animals in some form which we now regard as superstitious nonsense, but we don't understand that both the world and the mind of man were different in the past. There may well have been some basis to this approach to the immaterial worlds on some level. Who, even now, would deny that certain animals carry a spiritual force of some kind, the lion, the eagle and the bull to name three of the most eminent?

As we proceeded into the jungle I noticed I was getting a better view of the canopy than the floor. There was a reason for this. Hugh was a big man. I was 6 foot 2 back then (less now), and Hugh was an inch or two taller than me. He was also quite a burly fellow whereas I was already slim and had lost quite a few pounds since arriving in India. Look at the photo of the two of us on the club steps. Michael was of average height and build but Hugh's weight had been more than enough to pull the howdah down on his side to the point where what should have been lying flat had tipped over to a sharp angle. The mahout jumped off the elephant and tugged it back into position before Hugh fell out and we carried on with him leaning back and Michael and me bending forward to balance the thing. I have to say if it had been attached properly in the first place this wouldn't have happened but that's the charm of India.

We didn't see any tigers but we did see elephants, lots of birds and more deer but the most exciting part of the trip was when a wild boar came crashing through the undergrowth heading straight towards us at speed and changing course only at the last moment. Even the elephant was alarmed by it and had to be calmed by the mahout. It was much bigger than any pig I had ever seen and its coarse hair, fierce eyes and prominent tusks gave it a savage appearance. British army officers in India used to hunt these animals on horseback with lances in the sport known as pig-sticking and, though it's easy to disapprove of such practices now, the fact is the wild boar is a ferocious and dangerous animal and the sport requires both great skill and courage. If you came off your horse you would be in trouble.

Pictures from Wikipedia which has a good article on the wild boar

Fortunately, despite the loose howdah, we stayed on the elephant and made it safely back to camp.