Under the bejewelled sky,sleeping with the stars

This trek had all the ingredients for making it an exciting event, 1200 feet of overall rappelling over 5 different patches, breathtaking waterfalls atleast for laymen like us who have not seen the Niagara falls and all, the affable winter season that we all look forward to, two nights in the wilderness and some great friends to enjoy it all along with. Now all we needed were some master chefs to carve it all out for us; from Camp Fire India, an avid trekking and adventure group.

I am talking about the 1200 feet Malshej waterfall rappelling that I went to on 27th November 09 with some of my colleagues.

You won’t get the perspective of the height, so to give you one consider it alongside the towering Eiffel tower, which just stands at 1070 feet and it would take more than 190 of me each standing 6 feet 3 inches high on top of each other; even more if we stand on the shoulders rather than the head .

After an uneventful journey from Mumbai we reached the base camp, a village school veranda at 3 am in the morning. I barely was managing to sleep on the hard surface, the thorough city bred that I am, that they woke us all up with whistles so shrill that I felt in no time would the villagers including me would rain down upon them for disturbing the sleep. But nothing of that sort happened, instead as though our bulging backpacks were not enough , we were each burdened with a helmet, two sets of gloves and a harness.All of us were then herded towards the mountains looming in the distance through a vast grassland and quite literally so with the harness buckles making soft tinkling sound just like the bell attached around a cow neck.  But one look at the early morning beauty and I  forgot all about my so called maladies.

We finally reached the valley top from where the rappel was to begin. There were five levels we had to rappel over two days to reach the valley at the bottom.The first day, there were two patches of 300 and 350 feet. There were a couple of monkeys around who had come to watch their brethren, seemingly foolhardy to be attempting this. They even managed to strike claim to our breakfast but not before we all had our fill.

We all managed to rappel down quite easily. Most of us were quite unlucky managing only the infinitesimal amounts of cuts and bruises but the few lucky ones got to enjoy a bruised back and a bleeding forehead.

Night descended on the mid valley shelf as smooth and swift as  an eagle zeroing on its prey and with it came the most amazing parade seen in some time coming. Celestial beauties came out in thousands in their best dresses, though nothing compared to the showstopper of the show, the dazzling lady moon who treated us all  to an amazing appearance over the valley  ridge. The waterfall transformed itself into countless pearls hurling down with a roar. A silver misty pearly spray kept raining down on us whenever a gust of wind managed to sneak in. There were no words to describe this and any few that managed to stand were drowned in the roar of the waterfall and the flowing silvery strands. As rightly said, ”A picture speaks a thousand words”, but the one in front of us represented a novel worthy of bookers prize.

 

The next days we all woke up to a chilly morning, with sunlight glistening on the higher ridges of the valley. The chill seemed to be running away from the warmth of the sun and cramming itself in the valley with us. It was in this chill that we realised the warmth shown by the instructors over the two days. Helping each one of us so calmly, standing at the ravine edge with no ropes or hooks to hold them. Just looking at their composure instilled confidence in us.

It was these guys and the ropes that just drained our fear away. Once we were hooked we felt like superheroes, felt that nothing can harm us now and we all crawled down the walls like spiders mocking Fear right in its face.

Santosh, Deepatai, Sundanshu, Poorti….. , the safety equipments .. these were the stars whom we all slept along with in the night.

 

to Camp Fire India ... from

Honestly Corrupt Traffic Cop

Last week I was driving to office with my colleague with whom I carpool. We were lost in the conversation and turning around a bend when I saw the white hand outstretched ahead of my car. Sadly it was no angel but a traffic havaldar supposedly doing his duty.

I had inadvertently broken a traffic signal. Now the time to bribe… the thing about Indian cops, any type of them , is that you safely assume that they are susceptible to bribing. If you meet one who doesn’t take one, you should buy a lottery ticket that day.

Here I was getting out of my car thinking how much I would lose… I chided myself to be more careful next time. I walked up to the cop and tried to walk out the mess by making a excuse that the tempo ahead prevented me from getting the view of the signal which probably was true had I even bothered to look at the signal. By the way, the tempo too had been caught. Anyways the cop was too old in this trade to be deceived by me and gave me a lamer reason why I was in the wrong but I was in no mood to argue.

I said that I would pay the fine whatever it was.. ya the official fine, no bribe. But then he played his card and I was dejected… I need not bother buying any lottery today. He wanted me to deposit my license and then collect it the next day from the chowki where I could pay the OFFICIAL fine. 75% of the folks would not want to take such pains to be OFFICIAL and that day I was one of them. I asked him what would it take to rub of the incident under the carpet and offered him 100 bucks. He nodded and while I struggled to pull out my wallet which seemed unusually heavy,he made small talk with me inquiring about my residence, place of work, my good name.. etc. Then he said some stuff that they too are forced to take bribes as they too have targets to achieve. And all this while we thought targets are only for corporate guys like us.

I paid and looked up for the nod that would allow me again to pilot my vehicle when the most amazing thing appeared. In went the hand in his pocket and though the 100 disappeared out came quite some 10’s. As I tried to make sense of the situation, the cop calmly counted 5 of them and handed them to me.

Seeing my blank look, the cop explained himself, while the fine was 100 bucks, bribe had a 50% discount going on and hence the balance was being refunded. Then adding a bit a spiritualism, he said that we come empty handed and leave empty handed in this cycle of life and what would he do taking more money than he needed.

I laughed all way back and wondered whether the cop was really that honest to all or was it a case of ‘Me Marathi… Amhi Marathi’.

I just wish that the cop rather uses the money to tutor his kids in ‘Dhirubhai Ambani International School ’ than to drown it on ‘Kingfisher’ strongs.