Selverach and the Kotagiri curves

Kotagiri is a city in the middle of the mountains, in the state of Tamil Nadu, southern India. It runs a route full of finite curves and tea plantations. The road has small colorful houses and threads hanging with branches and leaves drying in the sun.

We went for 3 days. A long time ago we did not take a weekend off and the intensity of the studies in Bangalore had us wanting to go out and venture. Living in a city like Bangalore reinforces my desire to reach nature and find peace and calm. Lately, every time I get to nature, I wonder if I’d like to choose it as a place to live, but that’s another story.

The second morning, while the girls slept, I decided to go for a walk. Since before arriving in India I wake up without an alarm clock. I think it’s my desire of adventure.

A while earlier I had sat in the hammock on the corner of the house that was in front of our room. The hammock had a view of the route and, as the house was over the mountain, you could see all the animals walking along the asphalt and surrounding, as well as the mountains far away covered by some clouds.

I swang for a while as I smelled the scent of Masala Chai coming out of the kitchen. Every kitchen I entered India has at all times a jug with boiling water, tea in threads and cardamom, to which milk is added and turned into Masala Chai. Santi, the landlady, had offered me a cup while I was there. Spiced Chai tea made by people living on the mountain is one of the things I enjoyed most that weekend.

Santi walked from the kitchen to the hammock with a white tray between his hands that looked huge for the little cup of tea. The routine was that she would bring me tea in the cup and I would ask him for a glass and pass it on. I like the flavor that the tea with milk has in the glass. It´s because of my grandmother Sarita. When I was a girl I used to sleep naps in her bed and wake up like this, with tea with milk in glass. Maybe it’s something that makes me feel at home.

I finished the Chai, did a little yoga routine (actually stretching because I’m just dabbling in this world) and the girls weren’t awake yet. I decided to go for a walk. I went down the stairs of the house, turned to the right and saw that there was no one on the road. The air was cold, it had rained a few hours before and the green smelled very green. The road was on the rise. Luckily, as it was early, not many cars, trucks or collectives passed by. The route was very finite and in India they are not characterized by driving calmly. The runs, the lack of rules and the horns, could be three things that perfectly describe the Indian traffic, even if it’s out of town. And in the city I don’t even tell you. The best description I found so far is that of ‘’a chaos flowing’’’.

I walked a few miles and stared at the work of the tea collectors. I walked about 20 minutes. I reached a point and decided to turn around. After a few steps, I felt someone coming behind me. Until that moment I had not seen anyone walking. Literally, I was in the middle of the mountain and it was a little more than 9 in the morning. I heard a babbling and a few words that I could not understand. A man in his 60s was speaking to me in a language I didn’t know. It happens to me a lot in India that local people speak to me in their language even though I won’t understand them. And that’s where the fun starts, the game, finding a way to understand each other. I assumed the man spoke Tamil, the language spoken in Tamil Nadu.

You know what? That’s a myth I disarmed when I arrived in India. People in India don’t speak only Hindi. In fact, not even everyone knows how to speak it. Everyone speaks the language of the state where they were born. Kannada is spoken in Karnataka, Tamil is spoken in Tamil Nadu, in Kerala Malayalam is spoken, and so on. As such a large percentage of the population speaks English as a second language, as they were a British colony. Sometimes English is the only language in which they can communicate between states within India.

Anyway, after shaking hands with ‘’hello’’’, my friend and I started walking together and trying to communicate. Between signs, some words in different languages and head movements, I understood that he was called Selverach (surely not written this way). Another great theme is to understand the names of the people here, they are very different from all those you heard in your life, but I find them very beautiful for their originality (from a Western perspective, of course).

I walked with Selverach on the way home. He tried very hard to explain something to me, while I nodded and smiled so that he would not lose his enthusiasm. From what I could understand, he was going to pray and, a few minutes later, I was able to check my theory. I came to the door of my house, greeted him with the gesture of palms close to my chest and he did the same. I asked him by sign if I could take a picture of him and he nodded. I took the picture, climbed the stairs a little and kept watching him without him noticing. A few meters later, at the corner of a bend, where there was a stone mount with colored scarves and a Hindu sculpture, he knelt down, put his hands together in his chest and began to pray.

At last, communicating is not a matter of languages or social conventions, but of opening our hearts.

#Communication #MasalaChai #Kotagiri #TamilNadu #India