We took a train to Mysore and spent the night with Venkatesh’s, sister’s, in-laws for the night. While there we went to see the Mysore Maharaja’s Palace. The King of Mysore (Wodyar dynasty) lived in this palace and even continued to rule during British control of India until 1950. His family continues to live in a portion of it, and the rest is controlled by the State of Karnataka.
While there it began raining, so we decided to go inside the palace, but everyone else had the same idea and it became quite crowded. When we realized we had to remove our shoes and check our bags to go in, we lost interest and left. We waited on the sidewalk for Venkatesh to call an Uber to go home, when a black and white cow started heading straight for us. It stopped right behind V to eat some garbage under a tree and I thought we were fine, but then it decided to move on. I began telling Venkatesh to move but I wasn’t quick enough. The cow budged him to the side and people near us started saying ‘EXCUSE ME, EXCUSE ME’ to get us to move, but we couldn’t move fast enough. I had Ashwin and my niece with me, so I grabbed their arms to yank them aside as the cow passed within an inch of us. Sila fell over and she thought the whole thing was very funny. She couldn’t stop giggling and talking about it. ‘What that cow do Mardy Auntie?’
Mysore Palace
The next day we hired a taxi to take us to Tranquil Resort, on a coffee plantation in Wayanad, Kerala. We drove through Bandipur Tiger Preserve on the way and were very lucky to see an elephant family, as well as spotted deer, peacock and rhesus monkeys.
Mama elephant in Bandipur Tiger Preserve
We stayed in a beautiful treehouse and were woken up on the first morning by a curious monkey who was trying to peek into our room. He jumped on a deck chair and nearly knocked it over, then when he couldn’t see well enough through the sheer curtains, he climbed up to look through a small window above our slider. We just checked each other out for a bit until he ran over our roof and disappeared.
After breakfast we took a long walk through the estate. During the monsoon season we were told to watch out for leeches, so we wore socks and sneakers. When Ashwin heard his Auntie Vinuta talking about the leeches, he absolutely refused to go hiking, until Uncle Ram offered to carry him on his back. We walked through intermittent rain and sun, looking for wildlife and saw many birds, including a beautiful Greater Racket Tailed Drongo. Of course, right about that time I felt a slight itch on my calf and when I lifted my pant leg, there was a leech attached. Luckily, Vinuta was prepared with a bag of salt and she got the leech to release from my leg.
We took the long trail through puddles and muck and when we finally reached the end, we realized the trail wasn’t a loop and we had to turn around and go all the way back. The trail was truly beautiful, and I don’t want to sound ungrateful for this experience, but I also don’t want to gloss over the reality and paint a perfectly enviable picture. When I found out that we had to retrace our steps and risk picking up another leech, not to mention the fact that Ashwin was now walking and I was worried for him, I was not feeling happy. So when Ashwin said ‘ When are we going to leave this fucking forest’ – I cracked up laughing because he was speaking my exact thoughts. Anyway, he did end up finding a leech on his leg too, and he handled it in a very calm manner. I was very proud of him. We also saw a peacock on the way back, that we had only heard on the first leg of the journey. We even saw him take off in flight, with a surprising flash of orange on his back. It was truly beautiful.
Happy 50th Birthday Venkatesh – this trip was his gift.
I have thought about this almost every time I visit India, how death is so close to the surface here, and yet India is so full of life. In the West I feel that we gloss over so many things that are difficult to deal with; from where we get our meat, to illness, and death. We want to package things up neatly and we don’t want to discuss our true feelings. But India is not neatly packaged. Perhaps this is a stretch, but I think this can be compared to our sense of smell. These are the tropics, and with heat and humidity everything smells more pungent.
It’s monsoon season and I am listening to a rushing stream down below as I sit on our deck in the tree canopy. It continues to rain this morning but I am enjoying the storm. I woke up to a rhesus monkey peering in our window and everything smells lush and green. How much better does it get? This is life and I feel lucky to be able to experience it. But underneath the freshness of life is danger, decay and death. My son fears snakes, but it’s the leeches we have to look out for as we walk the trails. India is messy. We actually took a walk today. Ashwin and I both got leeches but Vinuta Auntie was prepared with salt and they came off easily. See? Not so bad after all. They are also just trying to survive.
Thinking back to Bangalore, when we landed in the early morning in the dark and quiet, there was the telltale smell of damp and spice. Gopal, at 84, is there to meet us as usual. We drive through the streets which are already busy at 3 a.m. and smell early morning fires and exhaust from vehicles. The streets already have a fair amount of traffic. Upon entering the ground floor I’m faced with the smell of dog, Bubble has become old and smelly. We walk up the stairs to the Cloudhouse for a nap and as we walk by the door to the apartment on the first floor I smell cats. While eating breakfast there is the smell of death on the breeze. There it is – death, never far away. An animal is decaying somewhere on the property next door. We know that Saras Auntie died in the room off the living room. That room also had a pungent smell when she was alive, and Ashwin is still nervous to enter. Then there is the smell of compost. It’s all vegetable matter breaking down, but it smells like the manure that’s spread in the fields of Indiana when Gopal turns it over. It wafts through the living room. Then suddenly, a strong smell of ripe mango as the breeze blows across the fruit basket on the window sill, or jasmine growing outside the kitchen window. The strong smell of incense is suddenly on par with everything else, not overpowering as it is at home. Does any of this make sense? I’m not sure. They are just my thoughts and this little corner of the India I know.
indiacloudhouse 