Coorg : Coffee, Pepper, Cauvery & my Grandfather

The beauty of being a child is that you don’t realise and don’t know the multitude of differences between people and places, castes and faiths. Especially if you are Indian, it doesn’t really matter where you are from : North, South, East, West. You are all just all similar because you share the experiences you share, laugh at the same jokes, fear the same things, love summer vacations and hate exams. This is also very true if you are an Army child. You’ve grown up being friends and living with people from all parts of the country:  it’s the best secularising force ever! It is only later when we grow up do we begin to differentiate and separate a Bengali from a Kashmiri and  a Keralite from a Tamilian. So “I am from Coorg” didn’t really mean too much for me as a child, other than most people not knowing what Coorg was! Well, the last part hasn’t changed even today.

Until I was about 10-12, my visits to Coorg were just annual trips to heaven - where your grandparents spoil you and there is no homework or exams to prepare for. My brother and I would look forward with eagerness to visiting Coorg. Even then Coorg was not home. It was just a place we went to for our summer vacations and a place where your grandparents lived, beautiful nonetheless. Neither I nor my brother are staunch in any which way, we aren’t staunch Hindus, we aren’t staunch south Indians and we are not staunch kodavas for sure! Well we are pretty sensitive about India and that’s what matters doesn’t it? Credit goes to my parents, they’ve always encouraged us to think beyond the ordinary, read about issues and form our own opinions. At our dining table you will find my serious and intellectual father with my brooding brother on one hand and me and mom, the vociferous lot on the other! We love debates! But well, we are Indians, and all Indians love a debate!

As we grew up, Aiyappa, my brother and I realised the uniqueness of the kodava culture through our own ways. On our annual visits to Valnur and Balele, we sat on the porch of our grandparents place and heard stories they told our parents. Listened to the field hands in the estate talk and joke and crib. Fortunately for us, our parents and more so our mother, spoke to us in coorgi, so we knew the language. Well enough to not sound foreign when visiting Coorg. I remember once to mock us, someone at a wedding took us to the snacks sections and wanted us to name all the coorgi snacks on the table. And were shocked when we named them all. It was my moment of pride as a kodavathi!

We loved food, and coorgi food was just out of this world. We also loved the estates, and the dogs and the weddings and the food in the weddings and the picnics and dubare and the elephants! But most of all we loved sitting on the porch of our maternal grandparents house and listen to our grandfather (Thatha) talk and narrate stories from his childhood and sing hindi songs in his lovely lovely voice. We never got bored of those stories, ever. They were the same stories, every year. About how in one army mess, he had chilli bondas and they were the best he had ever had in his life, and how back in the days, some of his cousins in  school used to get hot tiffins with steaming papput and mutton curry and how they would all share and be the envy of all those not not invited to the feast! We listened to him patiently, always asking him for more. He would then start singing songs from old hindi classics and of course talk about how Bollywood has degraded and how the music doesn’t have the charm anymore and how ShahRukh Khan was a sham! We would both sing together and he would tell me to practise and sing more. I loved singing with him.

We would tag along with him everywhere he went. I especially used to go along with him to each and every wedding and to the market to buy mutton or keema or fish or to the society : basically everywhere! I was the first grandchild, hence very very special. At least, I like to think so! He loved to talk, my grandfather. Sometimes you had to ask him to keep quiet. When I was old enough to talk about politics, I used to argue with him about Congress and like everyone in Coorg he would end the discussion exasperated at  Sonia Gandhi’s Italian ancestry!

He was a food connoisseur. After he came back from a wedding, people would ask him he liked the wedding and he would say “the biryani was really good!” I inherited his love for biryani ! You could make me do anything as a child for a plate of Biryani! But to be honest, my first true love was fish - mathi meen in particular. There used to be a man called Kadar who went around Valnur selling fish on his cycle. And every time he came to our front gate and rang his cycle-bell, I would screech and run! My grandfather would laugh and follow and buy fish for me. We would both then accompany the maid with rock salt and other spices to clean the fish. My eyes would be glued to the mathi meen. That day’s lunch and dinner would be my priority!  They used to joke of getting me married to Kadar - a lifetime’s supply of mathi meen!

But alas, I grew up. And my grandfather grew old. Kadar passed away. Things changed. Coorg is now very commercial and Dubare is cluttered with “Uncle Chips” type of stalls. But Valnur continued to be very special to me. Some day we would just sit out in the porch and listen to the stillness of the evening, the descending quiet of the estate, the birds chirping on their way back home, the dogs all untied and enjoying themselves, sipping on our evening’s quota of the aromatic filter coffee. And Thatha would say, “can you find this peace in the cities?”. I being a teenager, more awed by the glamour of Bangalore in those years, defended cities saying, “there’s so much to do there, Thatha!” Now, when I look back, what he said was so true. At the risk of sounding old, I would choose to settle in Coorg over anything else. And it’s not because I enjoy the peace and quiet and the life when I visit for holidays, but I can actually compare life there to life in the cities, and somehow you have so much more time in Coorg, time goes slowly, the people are warmer and nicer and everyone knows you, everyone has common issues and problems, the same joys and sorrows, it’s like one big family. That community bonding is such a fulfilling feeling and relieves the daily stresses of life in many ways. The true beauty of coorg is the community we have and then sense of togetherness. I have a special place in my heart for the Oorukudwa (the day before the wedding when the village gets together to help prepare for the next day !) part of our wedding ceremonies. Because in it’s truest sense it signifies a strong bond and unshakable trust between a people from a particular village - related or unrelated by blood. 

My favorite annual thing to do when I visit Coorg is to read Gone With The Wind - all over again. I find a striking similarity between the Confederate South and Coorg : with their plantations and estates and communities.

I miss my grandfather now when I visit Valnur. And  I regret not spending more time with him, not visiting him more often from Hyderabad, not singing more with him, but I know he is always watching me and always there in the house when I visit. I can feel his presence and always his blessings.