(9
May 2010)
After a very, very long
time, we spent money to do nothing at all. Very refreshing.
Compared to the years gone by, we seem to
have more money to spend, with two salaries coming in and the old frugal habits
still very strong. We’re nowhere near rich, but we have enough to go out on the
rare two-day weekend.
Over last Saturday and Sunday, the
Mumbai-Pune road was clogged with cars of all shapes and colours. We drove past
Lonavala to Karla, and at the bottom of the hill where the caves are, we stayed
in a hotel. Tiny, windowless rooms called villas, about six of them and, praise
the Force, none occupied by trumpeting, drinking nuisance-value louts. They
were all occupied by silence lovers. Well, except one group of women,
office-mates it appeared, who laughed and giggled endlessly through the evening
and at dawn the next morning. But it was healthy, chirpy cheer, quite went with
the surroundings. The ‘view’ was the hill that rose in front. Above was a
cloudy sky and a gentle, almost continuous breeze fanned us as we sat outside
on simple plastic chairs, playing an old game called Uno.
There are some things I miss
in Mumbai: a carpet of black ants herding two insects to the former’s home. The
sound of real cockerels, real koels, not mobile phones imitating them. And when
it drizzled for a couple of minutes in the afternoon, the soothing smell of not
just the earth, but the gobar that was all over the fields. When the sun dried
it again, one woman came by and collected the dung cakes: they were full of
straw and would make good fuel. I’ve seen these things in my childhood in Palolem.
My son won’t miss what he’s never known.
It’s the done thing to visit
the Goddess Ekvira if one comes to this neighbourhood. Indeed, most people come
here with the singular intention of going to the caves and the temple to garner
some grace, some virtue, something. Those who’ve kept ‘navas’, who have
promised to ‘meet’ her if she fulfilled some desire of theirs, come by the
busloads. We discovered the discarded plates, bottles, polythene bags that
they’d left behind as evidence. Wonder what the Goddess thinks of the garbage.
In an area where water is a perennial problem, boricha pani, or water from the
bore-wells sustains the locals. My wish to see the caves was thwarted by my
husband and our other ungodly companions saying “too much crowd” and “what on
earth for”. There goes tradition.
Like we’d seen oos-juice
(sugarcane juice) stalls dotting the highways in Goa, manned by bhaiyyas from
UP, we saw similar government approved neera stalls along this highway, again
manned by the same people. Someone’s started a chain, organized a franchise,
for everything is standardized from the measure, the prices, the taste to the
young fellows at the counter who speak not a word of the local language.
Enterprise knows no boundaries.
The best example of the
last sentence was the Celebrity Wax Museum. We saw the boards on our way out
and on the way back, finding that it was on the same side of the road, we
bought the (rather steeply priced) tickets to see some seventeen odd statues of
Kerala-Malayali heroes. Two chief ministers, two film stars, two holy men, two
sportsmen, Rajiv Gandhi (but of course he had to be present), the artist’s
father… and most incongruously, Adolf Hitler and Benazir Bhutto of all people.
The girl who was guide come guard inside, who told us that the heat doesn’t
harm the wax unless it’s over 53 degs, and therefore air-conditioning wasn’t a
priority, told us other interesting things. The plot of land originally
belonged to a local, bought over by an Agarwal, taken on rent by a Shetty and
now run by this bunch of white-toothed, black-skinned, strange accented Mallus.
By a stroke of luck, we met the artist, who looked like a gym-instructor,
well-fed, well-muscled and clad in tight jeans, tight t-shirt. He told us he
made the statues by hand, all by himself, in Kerala, at home, and transported
them to Lonavla by truck. I’m not surprised that many builders and the richie
rich of Mumbai have tapped him as a ‘source’ for immortalizing their dead
grandfathers in wax, to be displayed at the entrance to their offices. Mark my
words: this is going to be the latest fad in the next one year.
Back home, I wonder why
we aren’t doing these weekends out more often. Then I see the pile of clothes
to be washed, envelopes to be opened, columns to be written…. And I know just
why.
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