The Lake

As I’ve said, Kodaikanal is on a ridge. Where ever the houses and buildings stops for a few hundred yards into vacant land, there stands eucalyptus perhaps two-hundred feet tall, which heel in a light wind like ships’ masts. The trees reach up into the haze and thick cloud coming over the ridge. When the clouds blow clear, you see that the trees rise over the cedars and broadleaved trees. The ridge is curved and forms a catchment or bowl, which funnels rainwater. The freshets run together to make a brook and other brooks collide to form a fast moving creek that used to run here. In 1868 Sir Vere Hentry Levings, an Irish gentleman, thought to dam the creek and a lake with long arms and legs sprawled out over the valley.

Sometime later they built a five kilometer raised walk, which discourages all except the most determined bicyclist from harassing pedestrians. The road just beyond the walk serves as an ample bike path. The bike riders share with a few automobiles, several motorcycles whose drivers want to feel the wind in their faces, and there are saddle horses to carry out-of-towners.

No special togs required for either men or women, but the women usually wear an “improper” sari, called a chuedahr. It works fine It’s improper because there was a case brought to court in which the plaintive was excluded from a part of or all of a temple because she was said to be dressed in a chuedahr, which the temple staff considered improperly. A traditional sari is a wrap around skirt that drops to the ankles. Because it is a wrap, when the woman steps forward, the wrap expands and allows for the step. This chuedahr, the “slacks” version of the sari, also reaches to the ankles thereby preserving decorum and modesty, which is the kind of sari that allows a woman to mount a horse. Now since she’ll readily admit that she doesn’t know how to control the animal, the owner comes to her aid. With the lady’s sandals tucked safely in the stirrups, the owner mounts a bicycle and with one hand on the handlebars and one hand on the horse’s halter, he leads horse and rider at a trot along the road. The woman holds onto were a saddle horn would be in a western saddle. (The British never progressed to that level of technology.) And down the road they go, man, bike, horse, and saddle all black and brown. The flower perched in the saddle can be of any color and were one watching for a day, every color ever thought of would come past.

On a walk around the lake you can spot a dozen different varieties of birds. The kingfisher with his fluorescent blue back will be one of them. Fishermen, after flinging out hook, sinker, and “cork,” drowse on the bank keeping one eye open to watch the sliver of wood, he cut for a bobber, duck under the water.

A partial walk, maybe not the whole five kilometers, is about standard for me. I meet walkers, who are on a school trip and prefer an ice cream to a horseback ride. I’d see a baker’s dozen of girls walk toward me. Half would break eye contact and watch for kingfishers. Two or three other would eye me suspiciously. I’d smile and nod and then one would remember a snippet of her intro to English, and say, “Hello.” I would ask, “How are you?” and that would lead to a “Hi” or “I’m just fine and how are you?” Well, by then I was just fine and said so and almost every girl would have a chance to practice pages one and two from her English book. They’d pass me but I could hear them twitter and giggle as they compared how much they said to me.

Out on the lake are rowboats and peddle/paddlers. The rowboats have their owner on the oars while the paddle boats will be rented out to a family with bored children or talkative friends. The crews are made up with a complement of clowns and conversationalist. If you can ride a bike, you can’t get into trouble with one of these craft. No one wears life jackets but no one horses around enough to fall over the side. I might stop along the walk to sit and read. At times a rowboat would come nearby and we might exchange waves and greetings; other times I become part of the tree I leaned back on and nobody says hello to a tree.

On the town side of the lake there are dozens of small food and curio stands. On the other side of the lake, you can look into well kept gardens and at large villas. Some belong to an individual while others are owned by companies and are get-aways for executives. Almost all advertise what their dog will do to you should you decide to take a walk on the grounds. I saw only one dog and many signs with peeling paint. The signs bluster is worse than a mythical dog bite.

The light changes with the cloud patterns and a five kilometer walk is long enough for me. About the time I looked around to see how many more kilometers I have to go, I heard. “Excuse me sir, but of what country are you?”

Two young men riding rented bicycles slow as they paced me. I answered, “I’m from Ah-med-di-cah.”

“And are you a tourist in India?”

“Something like that. I may stay for a while.”

“You like India?”

“Certainly! Look around you. The place is beautiful,”

“And in Ah-med-di-cah you have many lowers?”

“Lowers” was a new word for me but so once was Ah-med-di-cah. “’Lowers,’ what’s that?”

“Lowers, women. You have many lowers?”

Bombay student, Agit Sangvi was a close friend at Texas Tech. During the sweltering summer of 1955 we both attended summer school to expedite our getting a degree and getting out of college as quickly as possible. One memory of that summer was that the grounds keeper decided to go organic and to distribute a layer of pig manure (Tech is an agriculture and mechanics land-grant college) over the already green grass of campus. First you fling it, then you water it, and then you smell it. The grounds keeper lived off campus. Agit and I lived in Doak Hall. He had some dry cleaning to turn in across the street in front of the college. Long ago I forgot the street’s name but I still remember the name of the cleaners. The Wogue Cleaners, no the Vogue Cleaners. Agit had a “v” in his last name but English “v”s are not the same as Indian “v”s. According to him, his last name was pronounced Sangwe. “Agit, vogue, not wogue.” He answered with “Wogue.”

“Oh lovers! Perhaps tens, maybe a hundred, I never really counted. Now say ‘lovers.’”

It didn’t work. “Watch me!” I sunk my upper teeth into my lower lip and said, “Vah!”

“Vah!”

Again with teeth in lip, “Say ‘Vee!”

“Vee!”

“Good! Now say, ‘Voh!’”

“Voh!” and in unison.

“Say, ‘Vu!”

“Vu!” with perfection.

“Now say ‘Lo-Vers!”

“Lowers!” They rode on.

My plan is to empty the employment offices of Nebraska. Bring all those Johnny Carson speakers over here to India at something better than an American minimum wage with a housing and a food allowance. Then we can address the problem of “lowers.” The only difficulty that I can see is if they came to a place like Kodaikanal, they might never see Omaha again.

I walked toward the bridge and saw two or three hundred people standing out in a clearing. Nobody seemed to be the center of attention but clearly it was a demonstration about to form up. I hurried across the bridge and looking back over my shoulder, I asked a well-dressed man who those people were.

“Sir, that is a bus stand,” he explained.

I was impressed. Kodaikanal was large enough to have two bus stands!

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In this same catchment as the lake is Bryant Park and if a relation to Wm. Cullen Bryant, then probably by the distance from Kodaikanal to 42nd Street. Mr. Bryant, a forester, in 1920 for the price of fifty cents purchased twenty acres and began clearing and planting trees, experimenting with many varieties of pines. Twenty years later he or his staff began planting flowers as well. Two years later he handed the half-dollar purchase over to the Kodaikanal Municipality. The public has enjoyed the plant collections in and out of the greenhouse. Then there are the monkeys….

The park lies at the end of one of the arms of the lake and sports a horticulture station on the premises. I walked past the building and on to a greenhouse, which houses a whole zoo of plants. I climbed the trail that leads up the catchment. The land goes uncultivated about half way up the hill and there is where I encountered the monkeys. The troop could have numbered between fifty and seventy-five. Of course they were of all ages with some of the older ones with red faces and gray hair. They miss nothing and saw me before I saw them. I had shopped before coming into the park, buying an “Asian apple” and a papaya. These I carried in a plastic bag but it was of no interest to them. Monkey-watching is an easy activity. This troop had grown up around people and had long ago learned all there was of interest to them about us. I suspect they thought of me with no more curiosity than I would of a cow in the street. For the most part, they busied themselves with what was edible among the trees and in the grass. Whatever it was that they ate; it was too small for me to see so toss a coin, seeds or insects? There is something that at the same time is intriguing and disturbing about such a troop. They completely ignored me but were it from their having lived on the outskirts of our society or was it from their innate lack of curiosity, of having satisfied that they knew all that there was worth knowing about “the lesser side of the family.” The young ones, small enough to sit in your hand, played a grab and run game while their elders busied themselves with the grain-sized bits of food they found. Two or three groomed themselves. Slowly they moved on around the shoulder of the hill with no more speed than a cloud drifting across the ridge.

I climbed to the top of the hill and found an entrance/exit not far from my hotel but then decided I needed more flower/monkey time so I turned and walked down the trail again. When I came onto where the monkeys had been, I had the hillside to myself.

I revisited the greenhouse and then found a bench beneath a shelter where, were the sun to ever get overly warm, you could sit. No more than I had settled on a bench then a twelve-year old ran up to me and told me what was what. Self-confidence was not this boy’s short suit. And while I would guess he spoke Tamil, the rest I pretty well knew. There were a dozen monkeys within a few yards and another two dozen beyond them and anybody with a simian sized brain would know that that old man with the red face and white hair climbing down from that tree had something on his mind bigger than a bug I couldn’t see. What he couldn’t see but intended to investigate was what I had in the sack.

Then everything seemed to move in slow motion and that was possibly for the best, I was tired enough from my walk to lack any kind of craftiness ascribed to my species. The old guy casually ambled over to me and with one finger extended ripped open the bag. Both the “apple” and the papaya fell to the ground. He grabbed the apple and I retrieved the papaya. Possession being nine points of the law and every one of those points being backed by a sharp tooth, he went his way and I mine.

The kid was back with hands on hips, telling me the Tamil equivalent of, “I told you so.” All I could do was laugh and wonder how the Asian apple tasted. I’d never eaten one and the old guy wasn’t telling.

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