matheran

i must admit to being more than a little obsessive about finding the home where i stayed for 15 days with rahul and a bunch of bratty teenagers the last time i was in matheran. that was when i was 12 and i remember the place only from very vague memories of a glazed verandah and a clearing surrounded by a forest where we used to exercise early in the mornings. there was just a such a clearing in front of the hotel where we lived and i kept wondering whether fate had brought me back to exactly the same place 25 years later. what would be the odds?

'the verandah in the forest' was the rather romantic name of the hotel. non-hotel- it was billed at; which meant no air conditioning, no television. kuntal, nandita and meha could not make it, though it was their find, because of meha falling very ill on the day that we were supposed to leave. very unfortunate.

the said verandah was a wide airy space that ran the length of the house as it shot over the contours. somewhere toward the middle it widened to allow you to look through a clearing in the trees to the lights of bombay. i kept wondering about the longing for the city of the man who built this. on the day that we arrived the sky was crystal clear and the skyline shone in sparks- further in the distance the horizon of the sea.

as you can imagine we spent most of our time lounging in this verandah, drinking earl grey tea, being waited on hand and foot, reading novels. in the garden were hammocks for afternoon naps.

in the building the rooms had high ceilings and in the living room lovingly restored with peeling wallpaper stained glass shone orange and green light in. dinner was on an enormous dark wood ostentatious dining table complete with candelabras and walls with framed mirrors and dead englishmen and parsis. in the verandah all you can hear is the chirping of birds and the distant toll of the temple bell. how we soaked in the period piece luxury of four course dinners and wine, living it up like nawabs in the raj. this nostalgia, not only for a colonial languor, but also for pure uncorrupted nature was felt by us along with a few other english speaking upper class travelers from the metros and foreign travelers looking for romantic exotic getaways. a yearning for a gentler past where the lower classes and darkies were kept safely away or serving you tea in silver trays. mold, rust and ruin are strangely comforting. and so is the silence. can i stop being so bloody smug right now!?

it was lovely, for god's sake! a far cry from most of the other hotels in the city that blare hindi film music and are adorned with party lights. veg only gujarathi thali specials with swimming pools and water fountains. none of the senses was left to just be. every hotel had to be a complete work of art and artifice, glorious in exuberance of sound, sight, form and texture. the world is adorned. experience complete.

caught between the wilting nostalgia of the old colonial, parsi or bohra bungalows that are slowly disintegrating from age and lack of maintenance and the new glitzy holiday packages of the honeymooning couples and the families n their annual holiday matheran still manages to satisfy both. there are enough places to get away from the hindi film music and more than enough photogenic points to capture romantic memories on camera or to watch your favorite aunt dance like madhuri dixit.

i hope i am not as naïve to suggest one kind of matheran to be more authentic than the other. but give me the former any day of the week. long walks down red mud paths with looming trees on both sides with sunlight that filters down sometimes through the leaves and discovering new roads and getting lost in the dark. the red mud lifts in waves with every foot fall and every hoof print. it begins to rise along the roads taking over the lower leaves of the bushes and the trees until they are covered completely. in the rains, i am told, they will be green again.

we walked from point to point – louisa, porcupine, alexander, one tree hill until we had criss crossed the city many times by foot. once we even mounted horses. mine was glossy black and the other white. the hills are craggy and muscular with tufts of forest clinging to the cliffs. in the valleys dry rivers run grey and rocky.

at alexander point sujay with his binoculars surveyed the terrain trying to figure out the new roads, new tunnels and buildings that were being built. he had never been anywhere but here but seemed to be intent on knowledge from his lookout at the top of the hill.

amar, the horseboy lived off the railway track from dasturi to matheran in indira gandhi nagar with a group of men who worked with him. his employer for the 4 months of the season were a group of matheran natives who ran horses in the derby. he leanr to work with horses when he was forced to find work in the hill after his father died. in the off season he works on the farm with his crippled mother.

gomdas on the other hand has a full time job in the verandah in the forest. his home is in the tribal village in the valley near alexander point. once a month he walks down to it for his holiday. two and a half hours by foot- for him. for us it will be longer.

on the way back, maushi carried all our bags on her head while we struggled alongside, all the way from the hotel to the parking lot.

i finished two novels lounging in the easy chairs- ‘arthur and george’ by julian barnes about sir arthur conan doyle and half parsi man falsely accused of murdering cattle; and ‘in the beauty of the lilies’ by john updike- an american saga of the last century, complete with preachers falling out of love with god and in love with cinema, to a rage to riches story of a hollywood diva and a grandson who finds himself in a religious cult.