A Tale of 2 States - Part 3

 As the Dholakia’s parted ways with me, the interim vacuum was a welcome break with no occupant as my neighbor – but then, a vacuum is an aberration to the normal functioning of the universe. Screams of ‘Baba.. Baba.. mala ikdun gheun jaa’ (Father.. come & take me along from here!) frantically filled the void with an acrobatic & gravity-defying display of break-free attitude by a lean & almost skeletal late-40’s body strangled with chains to the hospital bed trying to chart out its own novel course, much alike a shooting star.

Interspersed with heavy breathing, as the screams & shouts got louder, the medical folks gathered around the eccentrically vocal patient armed with tranquilizers to soothe him down. The sudden boisterous entry had ruffled the environs of the room, as though not to let the storm ebb away, a stream of visitors made a quick pilgrimage to the by now snoring neighbor. Eavesdropping on the discussions revealed a case of successive liver failures due to heavy alcohol consumption which had led to multiple problems over the course of the past few days in hospital and the doctors had now ‘let go’!

As the beeline began to swell, I was shifted into another room for the night. With thoughts continuously rushing to my previous room, the morning broke to the news that its inmate had breathed his last the previous night. The real paradox revealed itself when I was given a discharge the same day – 3 days in the hospital, 3 different neighbors, 3 different outcomes: on-going treatment, case closure & ultimate case closure!

The hospital had revealed its kaleidoscopic nature from being a care-taker to a solution-provider to finally a gory, macabre convener of life & death sentences – whilst I was positive to be out of it, its relationship of being a karmic circle closer was surprising. Meanwhile, the ill-effects of my infection had begun to subside with the care of family & the prescriptions helping re-build the bodies reserve of platelets enabling a speedy recovery with only a few more days of home-rest to go…

The next morning, our chance meeting with the owner who made regular weekend visits to the estate, one Mr. Huja from Mumbai, was an enlightening session into the setting up of the ‘Machan’ driven by numerous restoration efforts almost 20 years back in this part of the tropical cloud forest situated over 3300 feet.

After a decade long project that involved pruning of wild trees & removal of the dense carpet of Karvi weeds, a single bamboo Machan (similar to Jim’s Corbett’s treetop hunting platforms) was built as an observation point which was further improvised to build a more permanent home - the current Heritage Machan. The uninterrupted views of the forest’s beauty from a comfortable setting drew considerable interest from folks that visited the vacation home in-gratis.

To ensure the continued sustainability of the forest & provide livelihoods to the locals, the Machan opened up its panoramic views for a charge to outside visitors 2009 onwards. A year later, 3 additional Machans (Canopy Machans) were built in line with popular demand.

The arty Machan cafe

Our Customer Feedback

The passion of the owner across the 45-minute discussion at the cafe over breakfast, was obvious with small nuances of the property covered in detail and his personal involvement evident in every aspect right from the rustic furniture at the café to the creeper that went up the nets surrounding the trampoline paid attention to; an aspect no 5-star can boast of in a true sense.

Thanking our host for our 2-day mental-spa & of course, an experience-cum-memory of a lifetime, as we headed for our drive back home, the vibrant views of the past few days ripe in our minds were like green shoots that would sprout with their freshness spread across endeavors we undertook for the upcoming future tasks; with our rejuvenated minds back on the road, we were ready to take on newer milestones...

Epilogue:

My experiences in a quick succession of 3 months at the hospital and then at ‘Machan’ seemed quite disconnected & bi-polar when viewed as instances – but, as a pattern, they seemed to fulfil the same void at different planes.

Our active mental wanderings, very much like our hectic physical trails need a panacea of sorts – the ‘Machan’ was to the mind what the hospital was to the body. Whilst symptomatic deliverance of abnormalities at a physical level may be few & far between, the mental disease of being stuck in a monotonous thought pattern as part of hectic urbane lives today is an increasingly plaguing trend – breaks from the mundane are good ‘here & now’ solutions to the mental blitzkrieg; but, in the larger scheme of things, we all need a stronger, steeper & self-anchored totem that will hold us in good stead at a time when our mental pre-occupations are stuck in the limbo… may be the answer lies in transcending the physical as well as mental states to discover a newer state which holds the key to our other 2 states as well… Happy self-discovery!

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Creative Inspiration: Ashwin Sanghi

A Tale of 2 States - Part 2

The torture of our previous neighbour’s uncouth habits had got onto my wife’s nerves - Mr. Dholakia, the patient I shared my next room with was an interesting old gentleman. The silence of the new room now was almost deafening with hardly a word shared between my neighbouring patient and his accompanying wife. Wondering whether contrary to my previous neighbor, they had taken the ‘Silence Please’ notice too seriously, I tried to initiate some conversation but to no immediate response. Apparently, Mr. Dholakia had been unable to talk and eat which was precisely the reason of his visit to the hospital right in the midst of an on-going family wedding.

As Mr. Dholakia communicated with actions and post-its, Mrs. Dholakia informed us of her husband’s unfortunate tryst with cancer of the vocal cord some years back which had left him bereft of his voice. Successive operations & treatments later, he had been able to blurt his mind out thanks to a sound box fitted into his system, but today, on the occasion of the wedding of his grand-daughter, he had turned ‘mute’ with nothing edible going down his throat. As the new grand-son in-law had circled around the fire hand-in-hand with their grand-daughter, our geriatric dear Mr. & Mrs. had needed to circle around casualty folks trying to get a hang of ‘how-to un-mute and eat’.

As my treatment progressed well, Mr. Dholakia’s reports had begun to pour in by late evening. Unable to diagnose appropriate reasons, the doctors had begun to dig deeper; unknown to all, the past few days of family wedding functions had been a major occasion to snack on an awesome Gujarati spread & Mr. Dholakia had lapped up most of the delicious offerings that had come his way.

Having lodged itself at an appropriate position in his throat such that no spiel would come out and no food go in - it was only when a cough tickled Mr. Dholakia’s guttural glands that a ‘pea’ was thrown up in a sneeze; like a Ram Gopal Verma flick, the climax had hardly lived up to the build-up, but then the moral is that aka the famous David-Goliath fable, a ‘pea’ could really be a ‘show-stopper’.

As their grand-daughter had walked into her new home, the Dholakia’s walked out of the hospital with the unassuming ‘pea’ dislodged… as they left, the gentleman bid me ‘get well soon’ with an appropriately worded humble request…

God Bless the Dholakia’s & the humble ‘pea’!

As our day unfolded to a spectacular view of the early morning sun-rise encapsulating the green valley with its ochre rays, our stroll in the wilderness exposed us to the wooded, peaceful and serene estate. A spread of healthy indigenous trees bearing flowers & fruits combined with pruned wild trees, interspersed with waterholes dug for animals to quench their thirst spoke volumes of the ecologically balanced nature of the forest and the responsibility with which its care-takers had restored the biodiversity.

Wildlife such as squirrels, rabbits, mongoose, porcupines and grey langurs were a common occurrence. With a proliferation of insects, crabs, moths, frogs and snakes; birds from the indigenous Myna to the migratory Red-wattled Lapwing had nestled in higher numbers making the forest their home; definitely, a haven for all bird-enthusiasts.

Our pit-stop for breakfast back at the dining-place was a buffet of fresh local produce sourced directly from the villagers in the vicinity with some amongst the staff also serving it out to us. On chatting up with a few, it was heartening to know of the local support provided to them by taking up social projects for the development of the Jambulne village, half a kilometer away; all this apart from training them in hospitality & educating them on relevant environmental matters enabling ‘greener’ lives.

Our local guide during the hour-long evening trail was a ‘google’ equivalent on the flora & fauna of the region; driving home some local trivia, he interspersed it with information on the estate -  100% off grid and run only on sustainable resources with solar power panels & wind mills set up across, the Machan lived up to the spirit of eco-tourism in its true sense by limiting accommodation so that each guest could have over an acre of green space to oneself, reducing the stress on the forest whilst providing a serene experience; so much so, that the water for consumption was ‘pure mountain’ in its source – pulled up from a 300 foot deep bore well. 

A rare specie of a flowering thorny leaf plant

The watering holes set up across the forest

The idyllic setting of a lantern –cum-candle-lit dinner in the lap of tall bamboo trees with hammocks strung across them was like poetry to the eyes – a fine mix of local culinary expertise with a romantic setting.  After the sumptuous meal, our verandah offered the most amazing spread of astral constellations twinkling across the perennial stretch of ether – the enormity of the universe & our pygmy-like existence in its backdrop as though closed in on us as we drank in the scenes of the celestial gems studded into unique patters light years away and of those that chose to be outliers shooting off the treaded path to discover their own novel course. 

x---------- End of Part 2 ----------x

The concluding Part 3 shall be uploaded day after

A Tale of 2 States - Part 1

 
As my body heated up from the intermittent fever that had run up to over 104 degrees since the past 4 days, unaware of the damage that a creature named Aedes aegypti had done internally, I landed up in Kokilaben Ambani hospital for treatment and the casualty staff almost seemed adamant of wanting to keep me with them unless I showed any signs of cooling off, literally. Giving into their demands (& my fears), with pokes made through my largest organ - skin I mean, of course - bang in the middle of the night of 1^st Jan 2013, I was admitted into a spacious room shared with another sleeping patient separated by a curtain; the new year sure had started with a bang!

The morning after was a mix of some more fluids being passed down the intravenous as I consumed colourful systemic solutions - the colours of the capsules, however, seemed to fade when compared with the colours that awaited my arrival into the washroom for my morning ablutions. With sprinklings of the leftovers of betel-nut leaf (paan) chewed with areca nut (supari) that clogged the drain, the wide basin had transformed into a gory spittoon. As though the touch of red in the room wasn’t enough, attempts were apparent to add more colour to the background of the saintly white tiles through muddy outlines with an evident treading of slippers all across, especially pronounced on the seat cover of the WC.

Apparently, my sleeping room partner was the father of the owner of a large ‘tabela’ in the heart of the city (no offence meant, but basic hygiene compromises seemed to be brewing trouble). Whilst the owner had slept through the night looking after his weakened father who had shown no interest in consuming anything edible since past few days; the responsibility of taking care of the old man would be shouldered by the grand-son for the rest of the day – only the grandson was as though, literally, blessed with a mobile phone. Turning a blind eye to the ‘Silence Please’ notice strewn across the hospital, as the young lad played ‘Temple Run’ at high decibel, my thoughts increasingly started running to the temple for the complete lack of sensitivity despite reminders to mute.

As my concerned wife looked across with agony at the intruder of silence, the medical reports came in to confirm the doctor’s initial judgments of ‘Dengue’ fever!

Cruising on the Mumbai-Lonavla expressway, our anxiety was on the rise as to what lay in store for the next couple of days of our holiday – our plans to celebrate my wife's birthday had been fixed through a website that boasted of unique tree houses as part of a luxury eco-resort, but apprehensions lay around what service to expect in a forest; nonetheless, the adventure seeker in us was aspiring for its fair share of excitement.

Numerous bends after hitting Lonavla, we negotiated a few slopes on the road to head along a muddy path that curved into the Jambulne village vicinity. Keeping our vigil for 2 white painted rocks that seemed to be the only torch-bearers for the entrance of our next 2-day sojourn at the Machan, we skipped the hidden treasure at first but second-time around turned in to discover the estate that opened up in full throttle once at the main gates.

Located in one of the 25 biological hotspots of the world and a mere 3.5 hour drive from Mumbai, our tree house (1 amongst 4 within the estate) rose 45 feet above the forest to exhibit an unimpeded,  spectacular view of the flora & fauna offering complete serenity in the lap of nature.

Our tree-house Machan

View of the forest valley from our open balcony

Carefully designed to minimize any impact on its natural surroundings, the elegant interiors and unique architecture of our wooded tree house seemed instantly perfect for our holiday - an island of green unto itself! The eclectic room was a mix of paintings of the Raj interspersed with meticulously picked handicrafts, evidently reflective of a connoisseur’s hand - the outstretched verandah-like private deck housed relaxing chairs offering an aerial view of the kaleidoscopic greens below, whilst the bright sun-lit washroom provided the perfect balance of a private space in the midst of the alfresco forest.

As our active urbanized minds and stretched backbones came to rest on the mattresses, the evening sounds of melodic bird calls on their retreat had begun to reverberate across the valley.

x---------- End of Part 1 ----------x
Part 2 & 3 shall be uploaded over alternate days