After a wholesome lunch (the new chef was brilliant), we decided to have a bit of a wander around all our old haunts. To those who say that Ooty town is a mess ...well, it is, but that doesn’t mean it’s all bad. On the contrary, it’s possible to not step out of the town’s boundaries and still have a good time. Who, for example, can resist the sinful lure of fresh, home-style chocolate? If you walk into King Star bakery, the mounds of different kinds of chocolate will have you in a tizzy, and we wasted no time in tucking in. Bursting at the seams, we pushed our luck further and popped into Irani Restaurant, where the Re 1 samosas were now Rs 4, but were still as satisfyingly oily. Realising that a bit of exercise was in order, we walked over to the Botanical Gardens, passing the Assembly Rooms movie theatre and the Laidlaw Memorial club on the way. The gardens had cleared their throats and were now in full-blown Aria mode, with dazzling colours greeting us wherever we went. Ooty, it seemed, had rolled out the red carpet for us.
On a whim, we headed just out of town towards Golflinks, the wonderful old golf course where the whole school would go for an annual picnic (we were a very small school; just 120-odd students in all). The sign there said ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted’, but what’s a jail term or two in the re-living of one’s childhood? We sauntered onto the vast, green expanse and had a leisurely stroll. A group of evidently amateur golfers were ripping up great tufts of grass in their attempts to tee off, and no-one took any notice of us. I remembered that just off to the side of the course, there used to be an ancient hunting lodge and an enclosure full of pure-bred foxhounds. Sure enough, both were still very much there. We went over and played with the friendly dogs, until a stern-looking fellow came and shooed us away, informing us that we were on defence property and civvies weren’t allowed in. Ah well, at least we had put another piece back in our retro jigsaw puzzle.
Wandering back onto the golf course, we found an isolated spot and sprawled out on the grass, under a sky so sharply blue you could cut your finger on it. Talk, inevitably, turned to escapades and mischief-making, famous sporting victories (and losses) and how, in a nutshell, we had had the time of our life in the ten years we had spent in Ooty. Why do people travel, did I ask? Sometimes, it’s to rediscover a part of themselves that’s gotten a bit lost along the way.
|
