Missive and Miss You

 Letter from Sumeet to Nikhil

Hi Nikhil,

                Please accept my apologies for writing in so late. I hope you are back from your trek with no bones broken this time. As for my absence, there were some issues with our Tokyo factory and I had to be there to set things right. I know the engi-nerd (if you still identify yourself as one) in you would be keen to know about the details – but trust me, I have nothing to share on the technology front. Our employees in Japan are far too efficient to leave room for any concern of that sort. It was all about good old regulatory compliance. A few signatures here and there magically lifted the factory back on its feet.

                Anyway, do not think for a moment that I have forgotten about our next step. My earlier hesitation aside, like in my last letter, I assure you again – we must meet. It has been a good seven years since we started this written correspondence (RIP dear findpenpals dot com). Over these years, we have shared so many details about our lives – from favourite songs and dreadful movies to forgiven enemies and dead relatives (again, RIP findpenpals) – that it now seems alright to exchange a few words with you in person.

                As for the terms of our meeting – I cannot seem to find any. For obvious reasons, you might expect my company’s security to have an eye on us – even while we meet at the said cafe. But do not consider them obtrusive in any way. I have grown used to their hidden presence in public and it’s a total non-issue. No gifts shall be accepted (certainly no trinkets from your treks) and you’d be wise to not expect any from me either.

                I shall have to cut this letter short for I have another meeting to attend – this time, it’s Toronto that demands my attention.

Cheers, etc.

S

Letter from Nikhil to Sumeet

Respected Sumeet,

                Thanks for writing such a formal letter. As I had suspected right within the first few months of bumping into you on findpenpals, you have been bitten, naah… entirely consumed, by the corporate bug within just two years of leaving college. My trek went fine and, even with my forty-two years, I am quite proud of having my every bone intact. You had to be there to feel the fresh air and the sound of the river. Well done on the Tokyo magic though! I am not proud or anything – all you did was to scribble your name. Can’t wait to read your company’s media release boasting about how you tackled this monstrosity. Also, well done on the engi-nerd pun – your wealth continues to offer no help to your wordplay.

                Not a day goes by when I don’t offer condolences to the blessing that was findpenpals. It gave me the superpower to express my thoughts, and more importantly, offered me a friend – someone who flies across continents and still pays attention to the blotted features of my eventless life. Talking of which, remind me to tell you about a calendar that I saw during my last trek – it glows in the dark! I would have bought it for you but naah – what use does a rich boy have of trinkets from poor me?

                As for the meeting terms, I won’t mind your bodyguards as far as none of them sits between us on the café table. Would they mind if I get them some gifts? I got some bug-shaped bookmarks on my way back from the trek. As for a gift from you, nothing less than all the stocks of your company would be acceptable.

                I would have told you how thoroughly excited I am to finally meet you in person. But then, like Toronto operations wait for your attention, my pile of unwashed clothes waits for mine.

Yours in anticipation,

Nikhil

Meeting Day

Nikhil had been sitting at the café for about fifteen minutes since their designated meeting time. It was a small café offering nothing more than sandwiches, tea, and coffee. He had decided to reveal everything to Sumeet in person. This seven-year façade should not go on forever anyway. Having ordered his second cup of coffee, Nikhil’s anxious excitement was drifting out to give room to empty frustration. His eyes wandered to the café’s door once more. And yet again, he was disappointed. A girl in her late twenties was walking in. He wondered if maybe avoiding looking at the door would bring Sumeet in. He looked down at his cup of coffee and let out a small chuckle at the silliness of his thought.

“So you had not lied about laughing out aloud to yourself,” said the girl standing next to him.

“Excuse me?” Nikhil looked at her in surprise. She was wearing a rather plain-looking outfit with an ordinary bag hanging off her shoulder.

“You weren’t the only one making things up, Nikhil, if indeed that’s your real name. It’s me – rich boy. Not a boy, and not rich either – as you can guess from the absence of my security personnel,” said the girl with a grin.

“Wait, so… You are Sumeet? I mean you are... whoever you are? You were lying to me, this entire time?” asked Nikhil, still struggling to figure out his thoughts.

“Just as you were to me! You certainly aren’t the chirpy forty-two-year-old adventurer you claimed to be. I’d put you around twenty-eight? Did you really leave your job and go on solo treks funded by borrowed money? Also, this stunned silence speaks nothing about the quick-witted Nikhil that I was promised in the letters,” said the girl taking a seat opposite Nikhil.

“Stop making observations about me… and wait, what’s your name? Also, what do we do now?” asked Nikhil.

“We do what we have done in the past – share stories from our lives. Are you okay with that? And it’s Smita. Sumeet is my brother and it was our collective idea to sign up but then he lost interest in a matter of a few letters and it was all me after that. Shall we spend a moment in peace to pay respect to the death of the findpenpals website?” Smita asked and beckoned the waiter. “One coffee please.”

“Without sugar please,” said Nikhil still eyeing her suspiciously, “Yes, we can do all that. And yes, it was quite sad when they decided to shut down the website – I mean the fact that we’re both here after seven years of letter writing shows that what they tried was not an utter failure and yet…”

“True, and sad indeed. Not all things that work live forever, right? But hey, you remember about how I like my coffee. Now tell me all about the adventures from your last trek,” asked Smita.

“Umm, as for that, there was no trek – not the first, not the last. I work at a government-run library for poor kids – all my ‘adventures’ were snippets from the books that I read in the silence of the library. Sorry, but you can sue me – I guess that’s what a corporate type like you would do, right?” asked Nikhil, not quite eager to leave anymore.

“That can be arranged. But the corporate type sitting in front of you is actually just a struggling painter. I paint landscapes of cities and try to sell them at an art shop. So now you know what I meant by our operations at Tokyo and Toronto,” Smita smiled as she took the cup from the waiter.

“That was smartly done,” said Nikhil with a nod. “Talking of art, I know we had agreed on no gifts but still… here.” He took something out of his bag and kept it on the table. In the funkiest font, written on a table-top calendar were the words, “WHEN THE LIGHT GOES LOW, I GLOW!”

Smita took the calendar in her hands and let out a hearty laugh.

Goa Trip

Somewhere around in June, a friend whom I had last met around five years ago, messaged to ask if I am free in the last week of July for a three-day road trip with two other friends. I instantly decided to join in. We kept going back and forth while finalizing the plan. Eventually, the full-fledged road trip plan was cancelled since a soon-to-be-married friend's family/soon-to-be-family told him that a road trip might not be safe. Finally, we decided to meet in Goa and take things up from there. Meanwhile, we asked friends on social networks about the best pubs, places to visit, etc. knowing fully well that we won't be going to any of them.

The anticipation for the trip showed itself in the form of countdown messages like 'Only a month to go', 'Just a fortnight more', and 'Next Saturday it begins' that we sent each other on the messaging group.

I had a stopover at Mumbai airport for a couple of hours. If you're looking for an in-your-face scam, look no further than the prices at an airport food-court. The ideal place to sit at the 1A terminal food-court is the long table that has charging points. It's an enjoyable experience to watch people roam around looking at the foodstuff, checking out the prices, getting disappointed and going back hungrily to their seats in the company of their gadgets. If only WiFi connections could feed us... Look out of the window and there's a thoroughly contrasting life of slum-dwellers.

"Can I make a call from your phone? I don't have STD on my phone," somebody said while I was lost in the dark world of A Feast for Crows.  "Sure," I said and asked him the number. He turned out to be from Hyderabad as evidenced by his Hyderabadi accent. I chirped a bit with him in Hindi only so that I could amuse myself with his Hyderabadi accent.

The flight was as bland as the cookies that it offered. The only chuckle arrived in the form of an aunty's question. She asked if she could have a look at the book that I was reading.
"Which number book is this in the series?", she asked.
"It's the fourth book," I answered.
"Have you read the previous three too?", she asked.
I was stunned as my soul rolled in laughter.

I had heard that summer and monsoon are off-seasons for Goa. However, the Dabolim airport didn't bear any testimony to this. It was abuzz with passengers. I remembered what our pilot had said after landing - "There's no off season in Goa." The toilets were full and there was at least a kilometre long queue at the ladies' toilet - a rare disadvantage of being a lady.

The taxi rules seemed to have changed at the airport and I could take a taxi only through the prepaid counters. I remember the last time I was there, I had ventured outside the airport building and the drivers had offered cheaper fares.

"So when are you leaving?", the taxi driver asked me as soon as I sat. Of course, he was desperate for more business and I managed to extract a Rs.100 discount on return fare. He asked if I wanted a place to stay or a vehicle on hire or cheap alcohol or some company of girls. Such a diversified business was last displayed by the Tata group. Traffic is a funny business in Goa. The taxi driver brought excitement into the seemingly boring task of driving by engaging into smoking, talking on his phone about getting a Portuguese citizenship, and leaning out of the window to clean the windshield. There was a time when he did all three of these together and I was thinking which of my possessions would interest the first person who finds my body. Then the taxi-driver asked me where Nagpur is. When I told him that it's near Hyderabad, he asked if there's no direct flight from Hyderabad. I was on the verge of drawing the map of India in order to explain him that Nagpur and Hyderabad are two different cities.

By the time, I reached the hotel, my friends had left for a beach. They promised to return within thirty minutes and asked me to freshen up. "People with clean souls don't need to freshen up," I told myself and roamed around the hotel to see if I could dig into some fish and pacify the parched throat. Alas! Goa off-season struck. Most of the places were closed. Fish was at exorbitantly high prices. Thankfully, friends arrived soon after. Meeting somebody after years comes with this extra discomfort of hesitant hugs where you don't know if you have to hug or shake a hand and land up awkwardly somewhere in between.

We went to Chapora fort to revive the memories of good ol' Dil Chahta Hai. Parking a car outside the fort is a bitch thanks to the steep slope and I had to struggle while making the car stop. It was so damn difficult that I almost decided to jump out of the vehicle while it was still rolling down. Thankfully, a friend took the reins and parked it as desired. The friends who had gotten down kept giggling throughout my battle with parking.

Chapora fort, did I say? More like Chapora wall. There's nothing that resembles a fort except a keep in one corner and a mighty gate. Well, whatever it is, the view from the top is amazing. We spent a few moments looking at the sea and pondered over thoughts like if one starts swimming from here, how long will it take to reach Africa. We got out of a small door of the fort and walked down a bit further into a flat area that looks into the sea. A friend decided not to come down because he'd had a 'life-threatening slip on the pebbles because of his slippery slippers'. This became our teasing weapon throughout the tour and we kept asking him if he's comfortable in the car and is sure that he won't slip.

The off-season ghost haunted us during dinner too as most of the roadside little eateries offering nice yet cheap meals and accompaniments were closed. I asked the sea-food craving monster inside me to go to sleep and not to wake up until this trip is over.

The next day we decided to go beach hopping in South Goa. Our hotel had a complimentary breakfast. It included the cheapest and worst tasting jam and butter. Anyway, we had to have something to replace hunger with food.

We started off with Pallolem beach. It was quite breezy and the sea seemed upset. We saw a few fishermen taking their boat out of the water. It was a struggle to keep it calm in those restless waters. They had a long rope going into the sea. A fishing net was obviously at work at its end. We asked a fisherman how quickly the net would be drawn out. "An hour," he told. We walked around with the aim of reaching a group of rocks at one end of the beach. The walking trail took us through a small village and we were lost for a few minutes. Walking through densely grown plants showed us that the mosquitoes weren't having an off-season. The rocky place turned out to be surrounded by extremely dirty water. The villagers had been clearly using it for purposes other than fishing.

Dudhsagar falls were on our plan but we were not quite sure about how to reach there. We met an uncle while looking for the way back from the rocky part of the beach and asked him about the way to Dudhsagar. First he said, "You have phones, right? Look up the maps in your phone and go." Wow! Then he said that he provides jeep for the tour but not in this season. More uncertainty. By the time we made it back to the beach, the fishermen had taken their net out and it was full of fish and crabs. It didn't seem to be a big loot though.

We left the Pallolem beach to reach Agonda beach. It was quite remote and there was absolutely nobody except for the four of us and the lifeguards. This one was more beautiful and serene than the Pallolem beach.

It was late afternoon by the time we reached the town of Margao. We parked the car near a sweets shop that also offered samosas and kachoris. The search for a decent eating place turned out to be rather disappointing as almost everything, except the bakeries, was closed. We decided to stick to the sweets shop. Being so starved meant that the first few sips of tea seemed like the first drops of rain on a sap in a desert. The shop had run out of samosas. But the kachoris were quite decent too and turned out be our only lunch.

Next, we headed our wheels towards Aguada fort. We saw the Kingfisher mansion on the way. A couple of us toyed with the idea of having a look at the vintage cars inside but then rain and our tired bodies made us decide against it. It was almost sunset when we made it to Candolim beach. This one had a few people. The breeze was extremely pleasant; one that'd make you look deep into the sea and think about useless things like the purpose of life. We decided to eat a little something at the 'Sunny Side Up' restaurant at the beach. Here we learnt that fishing is prohibited at many beaches during monsoon and they have to transport seafood from the beaches where it is allowed. This shoots up its price during the off-season.

After our dinner, we roamed around in the seemingly hip areas that host pubs like Titos, Mambos, Mambas and similar sounding words. The streets were full of guys. The looks on their faces suggested that they were expecting to be swooped up by girls in bikinis arriving straight from heaven. We kept driving until we reached a place that was so deserted and had the airs of being haunted. The walls around had words like tantra/mantra and we hurried back to the hotel. Dudhsagar was on the cards for the next day and based on inputs from rather untrustworthy sources, we decided to leave for Kulem station early morning.

The dread of the horrible breakfast was soon overtaken by the joy of the lovely road that leads up to Kulem. It was surrounded by a dense cover of trees on both sides and had frequent ups and downs that made the ride thoroughly delightful. Even when we reached Kulem, we didn't quite know our way to Dudhsagar. A few locals offered to take us pillion on bikes for around Rs.700 for a two-way ride. At the Kulem station, more uncertainty followed as there was only one train to Castle Rock and it didn't even stop at Dudhsagar which was inconveniently located mid-way between Kulem and Castle Rock. The only solution was to take the train to Castle Rock and take another train back that halted at Dudhsagar. But from there, there was no other train and we were to walk back 12.5 kms.! The stationmaster heard our disappointment at the prospect of walking and gave us a line to keep our hopes high - "Kuchh paane ke liye kuchh khona bhi padta hai."

We pleaded the train driver to make a stop at Dudhsagar. Some dude quoted a figure of 200 people who wanted to get down at Dudhsagar but the train driver refused plainly. During our journey to Castle Rock, we got a good look at the falls. It was funny how people at the falls hi-ho'd at us train passengers as if they were teasing us. Castle Rock station seemed to be on the verge of being taken over by plants. Almost every exposed area was under a carpet of algae. We had tea on the station and got the much needed tar-o-taazgi. We asked the stationmaster if there'd at least be a goods train to carry us from Dudhsagar. He said that there won't be any more trains in the day after the passenger train that dropped us off at Dudhsagar. The unreserved compartments of the train from Castle Rock to Dudhsagar were completely packed and utterly filthy so like law-breaking posh citizens, we entered the reserved compartment  The ticket checker dutifully asked us to go to the unreserved compartment. We merely switched from one reserved compartment to another.

We reached Dudhsagar falls and what a sight it was to have a look at it up close! I have never seen any waterfall as big as this one. It was big not just in height but also in width. We oooh-aaah'd at the fall for sometime. Now the toughest task began - walking back to Kulem for 12.5 kms. There is no separate walking track and one has to walk along the train tracks which is full of rocks.

Walking through tunnels is a different experience altogether as they're pitch dark in the middle portion. Also, their narrowness doesn't make a happy experience. If you're on the side of the track and a train approaches, all you'll be able to do is cling to the nearby wall (which might be soaked or worse still - have snakes or rats on it). While we were about to enter one such tunnel, we heard a train's horn. We thought that it was far way away. But towards the last few meters of the tunnel, it became clear that the train was quite close and was coming at us at a scary speed! We dashed out of the tunnel just in the nick of time and had a hearty laugh about it. Talk about being Aamir Khan in Ghulam!

We saw a small automatic carriage carrying a bunch of people on the track. We asked them to let us get on it but they turned us down. "You're too many," one of them said. Four of us? Too many? In India?

Sonalim is a station between Dudhsagar and Kulem which offered us the much-needed shelter during a slightly harsh rainfall that appeared just as the automatic carriage ignored us. The stationmaster told us that the falls had hardly any visitors until they were recently featured in the movie Chennai Express. He also told us that the automatic carriage is only for saahibs. This one had come from Hubli. May his shoe lose its sole for not taking us on-board! The writing was clear on the wall of this small station. Kulem was a good 8 kms. away. The stationmaster then asked us to go away because our talking was disturbing him in his communication with the aliens.

After walking a few more kilometres (around 4 which seemed like 400), an old man was walking with us. He asked us to stop the approaching goods train. The goods train passed us and we requested the person in the last carriage to make it stop. But it kept running away from us. We had gotten used to this kind of disappointment by now. But then it magically slowed down. We unleashed our inner Usain Bolt and started running towards it. Then it picked speed again. Bloody hell! We thought the train driver was playing a trick on us. And then suddenly it stopped. We made a dash towards it again and caught it. Phew! After walking 8 kms, the joy derived by catching something that would carry you for 4 kms is difficult to put in words. The crowd on the train had a cruel laugh at us. They had walked back to Dudhsagar station and had asked the station master to flag down this goods train. We reached Kulem, made it back to our hotel, dined and slept.

The next day was the day of departure from Goa. We talked about going for a similar trip again. We all knew that it won't happen any time soon. May be it won't happen ever. But if a chance arrives, I'll definitely be in.

Besides the whole experience of visiting amazing places, this short trip was memorable because of the endless talks that touched important topics like why are there no girls in bikinis in this season, why's this an off-season in Goa, how can we improve access to remote touristy places, evolution of life, end of world, etc. All the talks were kept alive and kicking by random lines from Andaz Apna Apna, Vicky Donor, Khosla ka Ghosla and Dil Chahta Hai.

Wish there are more such fun times with friends. With a nice company, there can be no off-seasons.