Kodaikanal Diary: They Paved Paradise To Put up a Parking Lot

I moved to Kodaikanal three years ago, driving the distance of 1184 km in my tiny red car from Goa. Till today, that tiny red car and its GA number plate is my identity here, and often a conversation starter. The guesses are Guwahati or Gujarat for some reason—no one even considers Goa as a possibility.

Maybe my car is an enigma and doesn’t match with the rest of me, which is technically local; I am Tamilian and speak the language, and have even managed to match the dialect with practice over three years. They ask about my number plate. I then tell them. They are always gobsmacked and wide-eyed.

You moved from Goa? Why! For the life of them, they can’t figure why someone would move from the party capital of the country with the ocean, the paddy fields, the Portuguese aesthetic and a great eating scene to live in a sky island where nothing happens.

The weather, I say. I am at an age where my tolerance for most things has significantly reduced; bad weather tops the list.

They just shake their heads in disbelief.

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Something did happen a few weeks ago. A US Vlogger who was driving around Kodaikanal on a scooty was robbed by monkeys of an entire chocolate cake and oranges while he paused for a few minutes to take in the view.

So yes, Kodaikanal did have its 15 seconds of virality. Speaking of monkeys, one wonders why no one is worried about their exploding population in the hills, especially when they are prone to robbery like this (one has also heard they have a fetish for cameras and shiny objects). Perhaps when the KSPCA are done with their ABC programmes for sterilising and vaccinating stray dogs, the monkeys will be next.

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The sandhai (Sunday Market) in Kodaikanal (shandy, as it was known in the time of the British) is a quaint small-town thing. It’s the place where all kinds of people converge once a week with their bags and koodais (baskets), sun hats and parasols, exchanging pleasantries, making promises to “meet up”, but mostly focused on grabbing produce and running before it starts raining or all the good stuff runs out or the crowd gets too much.

From the mouth of the Seven Roads junction, going all the way down to the Government Hospital, as you are examining passion fruit, tomatoes, beetroot, chayotes, kohlrabis and avocados, you are likely to run into people you know every step of the way: school teachers, security guards, taxi drivers, plant swappers, the library lady, the bakery lady, hotel owners, tailors, chemists, your plumber, electrician and your help. Since everyone knows everyone in Kodai, it is very likely that you will run into someone you are trying to avoid, so going to the sandhai is like forced socialising, but there is really no other option to procure your weekly veggies.

But recently, much to the chagrin of the locals, the sandhai was moved from its current vantage location to way beyond the market road, down the slope, to a distance of a kilometre-and-a-half; so close to the drains that veggies roll down into the gutter frequently. The joke is that if a tomato rolls off your koodai, you have to run all the way down to Moonjikal (kind of the gateway to the town) to find it.

The reason offered was that the hospital needed easy access for ambulance services, but apparently there were vested interests. One of course was the building of a huge parking lot, but the other, more riling one was to “keep outsiders out”, dissuading vendors from down the valley and beyond—like Batalagundu and Ottanchatram from selling their wares in Kodai. Every Sunday, there is much discussion of sandhai politics on various whatsapp groups; they all agree that they paved paradise to put up a parking lot, but there is more to it than meets the eye.

At a recent event at one of the local resorts, local singer Seema Ramchandani (of ‘Viva’ fame) actually sang a song she composed on the sandhai. There was also Suman Sridhar, belting out favourites in Tamil and Hindi, and getting the crowd nostalgic for all that they give up when they move to the mountains. It was enough culture for us to last a year!

The next morning, Sridhar was butted by a bison right outside her Air BnB and ended up with broken ribs at Apollo Hospital in Madurai, so the cultural evening did not have a happy ending. But for every bison butting that deters, there is a Manjummel Boys, drawing hordes of tourists (especially from Kerala, with their KL number plates) all over again to experience the charm (or eeriness) of Guna Caves where Kamal Haasan sang a lullaby to his kidnappee in the infamous Gunaa.

Lalita Iyer is an Associate Editor at Outlook and the author of Sridevi: Queen of Hearts, The Whole Shebang, Raising Mamma and other books