From Vazhimutti to Meenmooti!!!

And so it came to pass that eight lazy souls who were the only surviving relics of an unbelievably eventful schoolife had an xmas vacation to spend in trivandrum. The year was 2001 and our final semester of engineering college life was winding its way to the finish line. Thomman, the most dreaded and loved loyolite ever in the annals of the school's history arrived in trivandrum from the NDA. The scars of a disastrous trip to Ponmudi, six months back had barely begun to heal. Under pouring rain seven of us had set out on 4 bikes, but Naga, G-Sec of the CET College Union, the redoubtable SFI leader of a dozen strikes in college and enfant terrible to the College Principal had his reputation in tatters as he fell of his bike thrice with the aid of the rain and a little extra beer to go with it...and the bike he loaned from ponnan looked just a shadow of its old pristine self. To add to it the bike thomman and i were on ran out of petrol and we pushed it in the rain all the way to Vithura which luckily happened to be "only" a few kilometers away. And motta escaped by the skin of his teeth when a flying squad jeep caught him and asked him to blow into the balloon...it wudnt inflate and since then our confidence in KP methods hit sky high. And so Thomman, Muthu, Paili, Raman, Khaja, Motta, Naga and I set off stopping on the way to buy supplies of barotta, beef, kuppis and water.

And thus we set off to the proverbial Meenmooti aided by descriptions of the place from Muthu and me which seemed to coincide. I started having my doubts when we got off at Kallar and began the trek as my earlier visit to Meenmooti had been from the Neyyar dam. Anyways we set off and in 45 mins reached an imposing single peice of rock towering almost 200 feet into the sky at an angle of 60degs. It almost looked like a cave inside and the Kallar river flowed by its side. We wondered for a sec if this was Meenmooti...but the place I had been to with the same name needed 2 hours of trekking thru the forest and there was a waterfall and a TB nearby. Muthu was doubtful as his cousins description of the place they had been to didnt seem to match exactly. And so we walked until we reached a clearing and on two sides there was a deep gorge and a vague path leading into the deep forest. Against our wiser counsel we set off and entered the jungle cracking dialogues like jagathy's in yodha..."ee forest muzhuvanum kaadaanallo" and like. By now it was well past noon and the jungle grew thicker and thicker, the sun's rays barely made it to the ground, and after a while we srarted seeing stones assembled like milekuttis... somebody remarked that this was the tamil nadu-kerala border and we dimwits shook our head in agreement.

Soon the path disappeared and again we kept troding...thoughts of the mythical meenmooti tempting us further and further into the thick rainforest. The tree barks had become so thick even clasping two of our hands around it wasnt enough to cover the diameter, we started seeing giant spider webs with a span of a meter. And then it happened...a load of fresh anappindam!!! A shout of unison was heard among the boys...ente amme...and the next second we ran ahead at breakneck speed(i wonder now we didnt run back!!!)...but it was increasingly becoming clear to me that my meenmooti was elsewhere and we were heading for the wrong track...i made a tepid suggestion but was dismissed rudely...i looked around to build my case and found support in motta and muthu. Khaja and Naga became fencesitters while Thomman, Paili and Raman wanted to push ahead. In normal circumstances with Thomman around I would have kept my cool but I got pissed that his Armyman's bravado was coming in the way of his seeing reason. In a fit of rage I threw my bag to the ground and said I wont move an inch and we had to head back the way we came. Soon sides were taken and a war of words began(I always thought it cliched seeing fights breaking out in movies when ppl got lost but now i realised the psychology behind that!). Soon I had my way and we headed back. But we had hardly taken 50 steps when we couldnt even know which way we came. The forest lay thick and spread in all directions...whatever path was there we had left behind almost an hour ago...

Bickering broke out again on pushing forward but I stood my ground...we were all tensed and the realization of being lost in this jungle dawned...we were still game for jokes though...motta got hold of a branch and started practising tarzan tricks in anticipation of a long spell of forest life...thomman and paili decided to scout the area and there they saw a spring emerging from under a rock and a stream flowing down...paili listened carefully and he heard the sound of a river in the distance...we had followed the kallar upstream for an hour and if we could get to it all we needed was to follow it downstream to reach the rock cave we had seen earlier...for a second we marvelled at paili's genius...he was always belittled with the nickname shishu from school but today he had risen to the occasion while all we self-proclaimed streetsmarts couldnt think straight...by now we had all come to agreement that the cave was meenmooti...and immediately we ran for our lives...on the way we saw a giant giant spider the like of which i'll never see again in my lifetime...we ran at double speed now and a kilometer on we saw the anapindam again...the relief it brought to our face cannot be described but we wondered if the kattana was close by and fled for our lives again!!!

Wearily climbing up a small hillock we had the golden moment of the trip...struggling to climb using a creeper, khaja was miffed to find a lazy and tired muthu hanging on to him in the hope that khaja would lift him up and khaja came up with a repartee i have not heard in the best of malayalam films...."uriyil thoongunnavante pariyil (tvm lingo for ass) thoongunnoda"...hearing this muthu gave a cry of "ente amme" and fell back in resignation while we threw our bags to the ground and broke out in a long long laugh. Although the sun had not set and it was just 4 or 5 in the evening the forest had begun to get dark but we reached the rocky banks of the kallar and followed the river to the cave. On getting to our campspot we just jumped into the river for the refreshing bath of our life...worries about the notorious under-currents which had taken many a young engg and medical student life at kallar was the last on our minds...we just had a memorable adventure to relish for a lifetime. After the bath we returned, suddenly felt religious and muthu recited the "gayatri mantra"(in the evening!) and paili said an "Our Father in Heaven" before we got down to business. Well by business, I really dont need to explain further but the end result of all this was the comic sight of muthu camping in a lungi and all set to fly to america taking exception to our constant barbs about the standard of his english and saying stuff like "I am standing on the 30degree inclination of a small rock" to prove he wasnot fit and we were concerned at not having bought ginger and garlic to ward off snakes but naga "gamefully" beginning a vomitting spree that drew a virtual lakhsmana rekha around us and oh the smell...let me not talk about that! There was a bonfire, old memories, new ones the day had given us, talks of where the future would take us...oh what a night of fun we had. The dialogue "Anapindam Oramyondo Jabba" just like the "Thomaskutty Vittoda" dialogue in In Hariharnagar became part of our class folklore and 4 years on, this december I see the faint outlines of another disastrous vacation taking concrete shape...