Dwell among the clouds

When you have too many things to post about, the post either becomes a blabberation, or becomes too long. I don't know which of the 2 this one is going to become, but i suggest you prepare yourself to face the consequences, whatever the genre ;-) Now... to Ooty, and Kerala.

When your eyes are being subjected to a feast, it feels like your mind is lost in a dream. A mid-day reverie that you don't want to snap out of. And i found that happening to me way too often in the land of mist and rain... of flowers and peaks...of never-ending greenery. Where you live among th clouds...and walk among them, and yet you cant see yourself within them, and thus find it difficult to believe so... but end up feeling it somewhere in your heart, that it becomes true, and makes you believe. Pine forests to arrest your attention, and make your eyes prisoner....In my opinion, not a single pair of eyes would mind an exile there. You just cant stop looking...The rows of softwood...like symmetry came naturally to them!The trees beckon you to them, but the slippery soils warn you of some unexpected fate you might meet if you succumb to the temptations of the pines whose trunks seem like a stairway to heaven... for the sole reason that their highest branches and tips are lost in the mist, and blend with the sky...giving you the feeling that if you manage to climb up and have a little peek, you'll be in a world far away from ours. So here finally, is the place where the land and the sky meet in total peaceful white-ness... unlike the sea and the sky that meet in rich blue, the colour of the world. Its like living in a dream.

And then there are the winds...whose main aim it would seem, is to push you off the nearest cliff, as quickly and forcefully as possible. The wind and the drops of rain get into a conspiracy to slap your cheeks, and every exposed part of your skin so hard that its like anasthesia...makes you numb with cold. And then the chill becomes painful...Like a thousand needles are piercing your skin from nowhere...and you feel white. You feel like if you try to open your mouth, your jaw might just break away from the rest of the skeletal structure and take a nice holiday... :D But, its a great feeling(only if it happens once in a while). Struggling against that wind very simply draws a similarity to life itself... And when you reach your destination against the wind, and the view from the top is breath taking, nothing else matters. And life too, follows a similar pattern...

And the tale that Ooty has to tell moves on... from deep valleys, that seem as bottomless as an abyss, to tea gardens, to flowers of paradise, to lakes and to home-made chocolate (that i regret not tasting!). But we move on... to kerala. You get so drunken with the greenery that you start seeing everything as green...ok, that maybe an exaggeration, but the place is really green...I don't really know about the cities, but the road to kerala was wow. My mother bought something called 'pazham pori' at some tea shop on the way, which was, i think, banana fried in bajji style! It was sweet...and had 'welcome to kerala' written all over it! And then there was guruvayur...with all the lamps and the elephants...the place humbles you so much. Was beautiful. Temples.... :) Nik, you live in a beautiful state.

Thanks to the trip, i had my first tryst with a fireplace ;-) was super cool... i just kept staring at the flame and lugging more wood... And looking at the reflection of the fire in someone's eyes gives you such an eerie feeling! My aunt's eyes literally looked like they were on fire... lol. And we also had this 5.5hour train journey climbing up to ooty... it was the cheapest travel we made i guess. 11 bucks a ticket for such a long journey in a cute little chuc chuc train that kept stopping and whistling and crying its chucchucs...and that is an antique piece that runs on coal! Some experience... :)

The trip cost my dad money...but cost me... some football matches that i very badly wanted to see... but well, now that am back, i can have it all :)

Yours 'Italy into the quarters' ly
Signing off....