On the road at Mulbagal

'It looks up at me and leaps again. But fortunately, it has lost its nerve by now and is hiding somewhere under the dressing table ... ' GEETA DOCTOR on her stay at the cucumber town.

THE National Highway does not go through Mulbagal anymore. It stops short a little before the entrance to the town, takes a long winding detour through flat green fields and irrigation canals and rejoins the old road from Mulbagal. From the distance, it appears like any other small town on the road from Chennai to Bangalore, a medium sized smudge of brown against a hump-backed hill.

Mulbagal might soon be forgotten altogether. Except that unlike most other small towns of its type, it flourishes a secret weapon. It is the cucumber capital of Kolar district. The cucumbers signal to the long distance road traveller, like lighthouses. They stand on both sides of the main street at Mulbagal, and wave to you. Fat ones and juicy ones, pale green tender ones and huge marrow shaped ones that lie against the coarse brown gunny sack, like missiles. They are so sweet and fresh and filled with dripping juices, that the fat woman who sits on the wayside, does not even have to ask her clients, "Shall I cut one for you?" They just stand in front of her, while she uses a long flat blade to slice the skin, in smooth long strokes. With two quick downward thrusts of the blade, she quarters the cucumber down its length, but not all the way. Then using her rough leathery fingers, she takes a generous pinch of the red and white masala that she keeps by the side, and rams it down the inner surfaces of the fruit. No, it is not wrong to call the cucumber a fruit, that is the way the Persians eat it, as fruit to quench the thirst. Were they the ones who first grew the cucumbers in this town?

After spending many a trip just sampling the cucumbers, we decide to spend a night in the town of Mulbagal. What can it be like to live in such a remote place? Does it have a history? Do people do anything else besides growing cucumbers? Shall we take a hint from the signs on the highway that insist "Visit the famous Anjaneya temple?" "We can give you the Deluxe rooms, with balcony," says the manager at the motel type accommodation on the highway, just at the junction where the detour starts. It is run by the Karnataka Tourism Department and has been built on stilts against a rocky hill. It is suitably wild and hilly to suggest the incidence of wildlife. "Oh, yes, there are plenty of snakes, we used to see them all over the place," he tells us, as an enthusiastic recommendation. The architects have built small pools for a water garden under our balcony, so it seems like there is enough incentive for things that crawl and slither. "But they do not enter the rooms," he adds, when it is evident that we are not really looking for snakes. A boy carries up the luggage. The rooms have been very well planned, with a good bathroom in working order, built-in cupboards, a dressing table, bedside tables and even a mosquito net.

"Dinner order?" asks the boy, flourishing a menu that promises Chinese, Punjabi, Continental and South Indian dishes. Since we are the only guests for that day, he is completely devoted to making us feel at home. He brings us small thimbles of tea in cracked porcelain cups, the texture and colour of fine rust decanted from the radiator of a passing lorry and he brings us candles.

"Electric light not working," he tells us in Kannada.

"What about bedsheets?" I ask whipping the covers of the beds to discover that there are only two very grungy looking mattresses. But neither of us can get very far on the subject of sheets.

"Let's go to the town and buy sheets," I suggest to my husband, "and mosquito repellent and batteries for our torch and something to eat for the night."

The town itself is in darkness, by the time we get there. Even our cucumber sellers have to display their ware with the help of round glass covered kerosene lamps. The bigger establishments have hissing petromax lamps. In spite of this there is an air of intense life as the villagers make their purchases before leaving the town for the day. Young men, darkly handsome, with the fine chiselled bones of those who have been toughened by working in the fields are flashily dressed in bright pink shirts. Women stop by the flower vendors, with small children by the side. A tempo van drives by with a loudspeaker announcing the charms of Goat Brand Beedis, with disco type music and a painting of the famous Marlboro Man, now smoking beedies!

"What kind of sheets do you want?" the local shopkeeper asks us anxiously. He imagines that we are looking for sheets to wrap a newly deceased family member. Or perhaps a violently striped jamkalam to roll on the ground. Finally, he gets the idea and shows us a very attractive bed-cover, made in a jacquard pattern, which we decide to buy. By this time, a small crowd has gathered to offer us advice in three or four different languages. But Hindi is definitely the link language.

It is so dark by the time we decide to walk to the famous Anjaneya temple in the heart of the town, that we can only find our way by looking for the looming mass of stone somewhere in the distance.

"It's very old," says Ramkumar Shastri, the young priest, who is officiating for the evening puja at the temple.

"How old?" I persist.

"Five thousand and one hundred years!" he says, solemnly. "Formerly this town was known as Mudlabagalu or eastern gate. This was the Eastern entrance to Tirupati. "All the pilgrims who travelled to Tirupati in the old days, would stop at Mulbagal and bathe in its sacred pond. Further down, away from the main road there is another temple on a hill, which people worship as 'Small Tirupati'," he explained. This one has a magnificent carved Garuda on the hill going up to the temple.

Even though it is only seven o'clock the temple is in complete darkness. The lights have failed in the town and there is such a total blackout that it is actually possible to believe that the temple is 5,000 years old. Huge stone walls stand protectively, around us. It is like a fortress. The main pillar of the temple acts as a point of reference. We can walk towards the main sanctum, by keeping it to our right. There are just a couple of visitors, but the way in which the two priests conduct the rituals, taking our small offerings and laying them in front of the figure of Hanuman that seems to leap out of the darkness, in a blaze of golden light, provides a moment of complete surrender to the drama of faith. It does not ask much of us. The figure of Hanuman, primitive, powerful, magnificent, with a shining ornament of some glittering material on his forehead, suggests the path of right action, that he seems to embody.

"It's my father who is in charge of making the decorations for the gods," explains the young priest. He speaks chaste English and sports a watch on his left wrist, along with the caste marks on his dark forehead. He is quite miffed when I ask him whether he is an Andhra or a Tamil.

"Why? I am a Kannadiga of course," he tells me.

I shake my head in remorse. How can I tell him that long ago, it was the Pallavas who held Mulbagal under their territories, or that later it came under the sway of the Vijayanagar kingdom, followed by the Muslims. The British under Colonel Campbell fought the local Muslims with the help of the Nawab of Arcot and it is said that a terrible siege of the town was finally lifted in 1768 through the treachery of the killedar.

"Yes, it is still dominated by them," he tells us, "The Muslims make up 60 per cent of the town, but we have always lived in peace with them, even if we are in the minority." Just nearby is the tomb of a famous Muslim saint, Haider Wali and for generations the two communities have respected each other, he tells me.

Outside of the town, just across from where we have planned to spend the night, there is yet another famous hermitage. It belonged to a famous Madhava guru, Sripadaraya, who flourished in the second half of the 15th Century. He is said to have been allowed to sit on the throne of the Vijayanagar King, Vira Narasiya himself. The story goes that he was able to get a pardon for the King's crime of having killed a Brahmin. The once quiet and beautifully maintained temple with a tank is now being somewhat hideously renovated in concrete and wrought iron.

By the time we get back, the night is so thick with stars, it begins to look like a jacquard weave bedspread. I am about to unroll my new acquisition, when I notice that I have a visitor sitting on my pillow. It looks up at me as I shine a torch in its direction. It leaps. There are screams and shrieks from my side. It leaps again. It is a flying frog. Fortunately, it has lost its nerve by now and is hiding somewhere under the dressing table. I am deeply grateful for the mosquito net, but when I tie it up, I notice that it has a gaping hole in it. This is when I use my interior decoration skills and drape the new bedspread over the net before going to sleep. Outside, there is the roar of a thousand lorries, taking the detour of the National Highway and the shy calls for sexual favours by a hundred or so fire-flies. As it happens, the other deluxe rooms are also the meeting place for romantic assignations, or so we decide, when we notice young couples, arriving at night in their new cars and running up the steps, without any luggage.

Next morning, we are woken up to the sound of thuds and excited cries from a troop of monkeys. They have taken their positions on the balconies and are leaping off onto the bonnets of the cars, parked just below them. The new Marutis and Hyundais actually make a very satisfying sound as the monkeys learn to bungee jump onto them. Hanuman would no doubt approve of such enterprising activity in the early morning.

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