Ooty Bulletin Board

The Queen of Hills...

Dedicated to all the BFFs in the world...

Hi,

It is quite well known that most girls:
· Are threatened by people of their own gender (Even when they don’t need to be…)
· Check out other girls more often than probably even guys do (I think we just try to see what the other girl has going for her or doesn’t… It is like watching a fashion tip movie rather than read a magazine…)
· Have more ‘boy’ friends than girlfriends (I’m sure you have heard a lot of girls go, ”Oh, most of my friends are boys… It is so much easier that way”)
· Despite all the aversion to the same sex, have that one BFF (Best-friends-forever) that they cannot do without…

I’m dedicating this piece to the last point in the list given above and my BFF, Paromita Som.
Paro and I have been friends for, well, you know, I’m really not sure how long we have been friends for! No, it’s not that I don’t know when I met her first; I remember clearly when we first met and also the circumstances but when we turned into ‘friends’ is something that is a very vague, blotchy memory… Hmmm, weird, I always like telling people how we have been friends forever, but that’s not really true. We ended up being friends somewhere down a few months, even years, of knowing each other…
Paro was my junior in college and we were both put up in the same hostel during our college time. After the completion of my engineering, I continued staying in the same hostel as I then started on my MBA. We both left our hostel on the same day, with each other. We both shifted to new places and got ready to get into our new roles- working singles. Ok, before I get distracted into telling you how our friendship blossomed, flourished, endured etc, let me get back on to track…
While we didn’t meet too often, we kept in touch. The one aspect of our relationship that is its USP is that we accept each other. Period. No complaints, no demands (Ok, yeah, those of you that have seen ‘Ajab prem ki gazab kahaani’ have probably caught me!). We are both mad to a certain degree (Varied flavor of madness, though…) and find it easy to be with each other as neither of us is judging the other. Hanging around together is never any trouble or awkward for us as we end up doing stuff we both quite like- movie, shopping, eating, reading, pampering ourselves etc etc… So, as we near the end of our single status (Yeah, I will FINALLY be getting married this year!) we decided to take a trip by ourselves (Paro’s wedding gift to me!). Just spend some time together and do, well, nothing. We just wanted to have some time to ourselves… So we decided to pack our bags and head to Ooty (The queen of hills…) for a three day trip. We ran the idea through our respective boyfriends and the idea was trashed without a second thought! Ooty? Ooty??? Why would two girls want to go to Ooty? What will you do there? Just the two of you will be going??? It’s a honeymoon spot, what will you both do there??? These were some of the questions thrown at us and after some cajoling, pleading, explaining, threatening, we were given a go ahead :) (Whatever happened to us being independent decision makers?!? Some things in life never change…). So we got the go ahead and started on what the itinerary should look like. I won’t keep you guessing. Please find below the itinerary that was prepared by Paro after checking with me and sent along with a lovely senti mail to me:
2 Days Trip Plan :
· Start on 12th Feb early morning enjoy the Bandipur view and reach Ooty at around noon.
· Take an auto till Lake View hotel and check in @ around 1:00pm(max)
· Take rest for some time then go out for lunch (or have it in same hotel)
· Take 5 mints walk till Ooty lake and go for boating, 10 mints car dashing, 5 mints toy train ride, 15 mints horse riding then take a walk near the lake (or sit near the lake)
· Around 6:30pm back to hotel ,relax and explore the hotel garden and take a walk inside the hotel .
· Order dinner and plan about the next day from the hotel enquiry .
· Next day just relax go for early morning walk have nice breakfast take lots of snaps for memory and then start the day with some shopping or visiting different tourist places depending on the mood or we can relax enjoy the view and weather… read some novel and explore the near by area .
· 14th Feb check out @ 11:30 am…. have brunch then take an auto till bus stand.
Well, if you have been following my blog you will realize that things never quite happen the way I plan it. Never. So why would this trip be any different, right? Yeah, so we started off all right. Read through to find out what all we did through the trip!

12 Feb ‘10
We had to board the bus from Mysore to Ooty at 7 AM. So we had planned to get up at 5 AM and then get ready and out of the house by 6 AM. It is rather difficult to find autos that early in the morning in Mysore (It’s a small beautiful city and most people prefer having their own mode of transportation…) and hence the one hour window to get to the bus station. Arvind (My soon-to-be-husband! Eewwww, husband sounds so boring! I’ll just stick to calling him my boyfriend…) had offered to come over in the morning and help find us an auto (Why he would not drop Paro and me, by turns, to the bus stop is beyond me…) so we were pretty relaxed about getting to the bus station on time. Well, nothing exciting happened there except that we found an auto guy willing to ferry us to the station. Only that Arvind bargained with him for one and a half meter. What that means (This is an explanation for any person who hasn’t ever had a blessed chance to travel by the ‘Auto Rickshaw’. I don’t believe there is anyone who hasn’t, but then you never know!) is that you have to pay the auto driver a fare one and a half times of what the meter reading comes up to. Well, sounds reasonable, right? So NOT. That concept works rather well in a place like Bangalore where the meters are not all rigged. In Mysore, you bargain by price (And to think that Arvind has been residing in Mysore for over three years :/). Anyway, the meter started its astronomical ascent pretty much after a kilometer had been traversed. Both Paro and I were focused on the meter and just couldn’t take our eyes off it (I don’t think I am ever as alert as I am while tracking an auto meter!) and spent some five minutes squabbling with the auto driver about the final fare (80 bucks! It should not have cost us more than 50. 60 tops…) and paying him only 70 (Boo hoo hoo, I HATE wasting money where I could’ve avoided it…) and then later trying to focus on the upcoming trip… We made it to the bus (After being misdirected twice in the rather small bus station. It’s embarrassing to mention, but then, it did happen…) and got on board and then looked around twice to make sure we were on the right one- There was this HUGE party of almost 30 people (Later confirmed to be 27… Still, I was close in my initial estimate…) who seemed to be off to Ooty on a sightseeing trip. Paro looked uncomfortable straight away. Oh, I forgot to mention that the party I just talked about consisted of a rather loud, noisy, chatty variety of people. They seemed to be farmers from Maharashtra out with their womenfolk on a well deserved vacation. The only problem was with their perception of the ownership of the bus through the journey. They were quite successful in making me and Paro (And probably the rest of the passengers as well…) feel like we had hitched a ride on a marriage party bus! After we got used to the loud conversations coming from all directions (Paro had the window seat initially so she only got hit from three directions…) we settled into small talk and watching the fields go by… I loved looking at the beautiful serene lakes and the cute little ducks swimming around in them while Paro commented about how easy to please I am. She found it very amusing about how my happiness has such low trigger levels. A bird or a lake or some animal or something equally silly was enough to lift my spirits. I took it as a compliment (That’s one secret to being happy with Paro. Assume most of her comments to be compliments and you’ll do just fine…) and drifted slowly into a deep sleep. I vaguely remember Paro waking me up so she could get out and grab a bite to eat at the place where the bus had stopped for breakfast; I clearly remember sliding into the window seat Paro had just vacated and then quickly pretending to be asleep again so she won’t ask me to budge and get back into my aisle seat… The bus started again and in just half an hour or so we entered the Bandipur Wildlife Sanctuary. The flora was all dry and brown as we were just getting out of a winter season and there had been no recent rains, the fauna (Spotted deer, wild boars, elephants, peacocks) were out in the open, lazing around in shaded glades and looking utterly bored by the vehicles passing on the road, and looking quite snobbish and downrightly sardonic at the various loud calls and shouts being given out by the occupants of the passing vehicles (No, my voice was not among any of the shouts and calls sent hurtling through the cold crisp air... Seriously, I’m really enthusiastic about wildlife and stuff but would never do anything stupid like shouting at the animals to capture their attention…). After a rather alert one hour where I was on the edge of my seat (Paro reclined her seat and looked ready to sleep…) and kept peering through the hedges and trees trying to spot some other form of mobile life, I got sleepy again and reclined my chair as well. Paro and I chatted a little while and talked a little about everything in general and nothing specifically. We had, by then, started our ascent into the Nilgiri hills and while both of us are prone to motion sickness (I hate travelling in the ghat section for this reason alone…) we were pleasantly surprised to find the bus crawling through the mountain section and thus hardly unsettling our stomachs. This allowed us to both huddle near the window and peep out at the lovely tea plantations and the various pleasing-to-the-eye scenery that passed by… We finally pulled into the city of Ooty and sat with silly content smiles on our faces while we saw the board for the ‘Lakeview Resort’ pass us by. And then a couple of seconds later it hit us that, whoa, we had to get off there!!! By the time we realized that we needed to disembark, the bus had started towards the city bus stand and we decided that it was just not worth the trouble to raise an alarm and get the bus to stop (We weren’t afraid of creating a scene, just that we were too lazy and decided to see how far we‘d get before we had to stop and travel backwards…). We were both again glued to the window as we watched the bus travel quite far (No walk-able at any rate) and then finally come to a stop at the bus station.
The Ooty bus station was quite a disappointment. It is quite filthy and in bad shape, almost crumbling to dust… I was rather disappointed but Paro seemed ok with the way it looked as she had just recently visited Ooty and knew the latest state of its being… We then enquired about how we could get to the hotel. It turned out to be just around a kilometer from the bus station and I forced Paro to walk along with me. We walked quite some distance and then stopped at a place Paro said was really bad (Yeah, doesn’t make sense, stopping at a place you already know is bad but in my case, the stomach rules the mind…) and had some lousy lunch. My mind grumbled at the quality of the food and also at that raw fish smell that lay over the place like a thick blanket but my tummy thanked me (Come on, I had not even had breakfast! Ok, Paro did buy me some pakoras but it still wasn’t ‘breakfast’…) and we started out to the hotel again. It was when we reached the Ooty lake that we realized that the distance 1 km was only between the lake and the bus station. The resort was a further kilometer away. With dirty looks and grumbles from Paro and weak, half hearted encouragement from my side, we finally managed to skirt along the whole lake and make it alive to the resort, yippee!!! It was almost two PM by the time we checked in… Paro hated being allotted a cottage away from the lake view but I was so engrossed in admiring the cute little cottage and plopping myself on the soft bed that I managed to convince her to not badger the reception guys (That didn’t stop her from trying though! She still called them and asked for a change of rooms but we got so comfortable in a few minutes that I don’t think we’d have moved even if they had given us a better cottage!). After we got comfortable, we decided on what we needed to do next. Ahem ahem, I know I gave you guys my planned itinerary earlier on and that you know Paro and I were supposed to go see the lake and do boating, 10 mints car dashing, 5 mints toy train ride, 15 mints horse riding then take a walk near the lake (or sit near the lake). Well, we did none of the above. We got into the cold blankets, waited it to get a little warm, opened one book each and started reading… Hahaha, I know you must think we are mad for going all the way to Ooty to do just that! But, yeah, that’s what we did. Paro has a BIG aversion to cold so as soon as her feet started getting cold, she got really uneasy and jittery and we decided to go out and read while basking in the warm sun… We did that for an hour or so, lying down on the lovely grass with the warm sun on our faces and reading, mmmm, pure bliss… Our hour was up (Read- The sun’s strength had diminished and Paro had started fidgeting again…) and we went back in and she quickly got to the phone and ordered for a room heater. It came shortly and we snuggled into bed and let the warm air make us feel all fuzzy and nice… We also pigged out on some Gobi Manchurian and then went back to reading. After a couple of hours Paro got tired of reading by herself and said it’d be so good if someone read to her and bingo! She said that to just the right person. I LOVE reading out aloud and co- reading any book. So I got into the groove and read her a few chapters complete with voice modulation (At least I’d like to believe I did…) and enjoyed sharing the story with Paro. We then ordered a nice big dinner and went back to reading a little more after which I drifted to sleep and Paro read through the night until almost 3 AM and slept after she had finished the book. Well, that’s was day 1 of your trip :) I know, you still are wondering why we couldn’t do all this at either of our homes, but then, we had a really good time, so that’s all that matters… Zzzzzzzzzzzz…..

13 Feb ‘10
Mmmmmmmmm, we slept in till 9 AM and were still debating about what we needed to do… Just then the landline phone rang and it turned out to be the Hotel travel desk checking if we were interested in their package of Coonoor and Ooty. Wow, amazing, of course we were interested. We got on and surprise! there were only honeymoon couples on the bus. Sigh… why didn’t we listen to our respective boyfriends when they explained about Ooty being a lovey- dovey destination??? Hmmm, after the initial awkwardness we got pretty much into our groove and started checking out the couples. Short description of the interesting ones:

1. Pretty, elegant girl with nerdy, I-can’t-believe-my-luck guy- They were accompanied by a girl of around eight that we assumed to be the younger sister or niece of the girl. The two girls sat together and the guy (Wearing Poma shoes; no, I did not spell it wrong…) sat alone separately (Who brings kids along on honeymoons???).
2. Arrogant, South-Indians-are-so-frog-in-the-well thinking Delhi couple- We had a brief conversation with them where we asked if they were from an IT background. Their surprised look unsettled us a little until we realized that they actually were from an Income Tax (IT) background :)
3. Shy, quiet girl and an I’m-no-frog-in-the-well-south-Indian guy- The guy was singing- along songs from the 80- 90s that the tour guide was playing in quite a remarkable accent. Redefined the term ‘mother-tongue’ accent.
4. A very cute and quiet couple- Were yelled at by the driver when they decided to take an extended trip into Sims park while the rest of us waited :) Don’t over work your brains, they were actually just strolling…

Hmmm, those were the interesting couples that I remember. There were a few others, but they seemed normal enough to have passed my attention…
We did a regular circuit of the Ooty lake, the Botanical garden, Tea plantations, Lambs rock, Dolphin’s nose etc etc and had quite a surprisingly good time despite us being the only girl- couple ;) hahahaha… Reached the hotel quite tired and perked up almost immediately when we saw that there was a bon fire arrangement done up in the resort lawn which was actually right behind our cottage. Yippee! We were going to get an opportunity to get dressed and party through the night! Hmmm, I told ya, things never work the way I plan it. It turned out to be a private party (We actually called the reception to check; pathetic, I know…). We now had two options:
1. Crib through the night about the loud music and noise
2. Use the music to have a pajama party of our own!

We went for the second option and loved being silly! Paro even did some aerobics while the music was on, hee hee hee, optimum utilization of resources! After dancing ourselves out of the left over energy, we watched a couple of movies and crashed for the night.

14 Feb ‘10

“Good morning Paro… Happy Valentine’s day!”
“Mmmmm, good morning! Happy Valentine’s day to you too!”
Yeah, that was how we woke up. We were just starting to chat again when someone knocked on the door and we, predictably, pretended not to be awake (I’m so sure the guy would’ve heard us talk from the outside, but it doesn’t hurt to try, does it…) so he would just go away. When he seemed persistent, I went over to open the door and found this sweet old man standing there with two packages in his hands. He asked my name and then shuffled the two packages to pull out a lovely bouquet of pink roses! Wow! I’ve never received flowers on Valentine ’s Day before and was almost speechless. There was another bouquet of lovely red roses for Paro. That’s when it hit us that Allen had those flowers sent for us! How totally sweet can a guy get??? I gloated over the flowers for a while and then called Arvind to complain about his lack of enthusiasm with anything remotely close to planning a surprise… The only response I received was, “Someone sent you flowers, so be happy and enjoy them”. Hmmpf. How do all the romantics in the world get stuck with the anti- romantics? Big mystery…
We then decided that we better get a few more snaps while we can (My sis had fooled me into believing that the camera battery was charged and hence we had managed to get only a couple of snaps yesterday before the battery died out on us and left us in the lurch…). We fooled around the resort garden a little taking snaps that we felt would be useful on Facebook or Orkut. Only problem was that Paro is a PATHETIC photographer. She would never ask you to pose or even say cheese, would take a snap in a second without bothering to check if the position of the subject was favorable, would not bother to view the snap and see if another ones required to be taken, would just walk away without giving you a chance to take another picture if you didn’t like the one she just took. Not quite the best person to be taking Facebook or Orkut snaps, you know…
After the so-called-photo-session, we got packed, cleared our dues and started our walk back to the bus station. Stopped in between to buy some Ooty chocolates for Arvind and my sis, Nammu.
Our trip back was quite uneventful and dull (We were both forcing ourselves to sleep to avoid being sick. The driver was handling the bus like a maniac and that was all we could do to keep from throwing up…) and we reached Mysore five hours later.
Though we did nothing amazing, like maybe scuba diving, sky diving, river rafting etc etc, we did something that made us feel so much better- Spend time with our best friend. Thanks Paro for the lovely time, I owe you one.
Well, since I am talking about BFFs, I really want to thank Arvind, Paro, Bharathi, Raj, Alfia, Sharath, Hemanth, Ashwini, Alka, Mathew, Govind, Archie, Sreenath, Sirisha, Shweta, Aditya, Rutesh, Sundar, Swarna, Ranjana, Rashmi for being my BFFs in their own ways. Thank you for making my life so much more special. I love you.