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Magazine
Paradise lost
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Kodaikanal is no longer the sylvan summer getaway that it once was. GOWRI RAMNARAYAN reports on the current chaos endemic in the hilltown.
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Greenpeace activists demonstrating against pollution by a multinational company.
"LOOK, there's a nuthatch scrabbling on the tree trunk," the mother tells the little girl. A flash of red and black above and she whispers again, "Scarlet minivet!" The green hills are a-quiver with babblers, bushchats, bulbuls, barbets, crow pheasants, and the laughing thrush of the Palni hills. A plump blackbird scurries ahead on the path ....
A few other morning walkers pass by with subdued greeting, as you return via the baker's cottage for fresh loaves and scones. The confectioner close by, a little lady with a frilly apron, lets you taste her heavenly, home made chocolates before choosing. At home, plums, pears, and creamy avocadoes wait for hungry mouths. Lunches and dinners are crammed with carrots, beets, cauliflower, butterbeans and striped turnips, spilling their juice over the cutting board.
And flowers! They are everywhere, zinnias, phlox, red salvias, asters, ladies' lace, marigold, dahlias, redhot pokers, beaming from spotless sidewalks, clubhouses and parks. They beckon from the gardens of glass-paned homes snug under sloping tiles, curtained by pale pink climbing roses. In the heart of town, a sparkling star-shaped lake invites you to jump in for a swim, or row across its blue green ripples. Round it winds a road half asleep under sun and solitude, roused now and then by footfalls of amblers. Only the boat club area is brisk, as children clamour for — or shy away from — boating and pony rides. The nights are chilly, the day is cool. Mists stream in with a fine suddenness. Quick showers end in a rush of rainbows. Then, as the sunbeams stroke them, every rain-drenched leaf on bush and tree shines with diamonds and pearls... That was the Kodaikanal of my childhood. Even during the "season" (March-May; September-October) the hill resort promised a clean, calm, wondrous retreat from metropolitan bustle. Some tourists of the 1960-70s bought their own land and built cottages modelled on hill town architecture. Some became year round residents. They were careful to see that humans and their habitations blended with the cool green environment.
The first settlers (1845) from the American Madura mission came in search of healthy climate for convalescence, soon overtaken by the British. They came through haunts of tiger and bear on horse, dhooli and chair. They wedged prayers, parties and picnics in between hunting, golf, swimming, rowing and tennis.
Clubs, libraries, churches and missions were joined by a school for "children of pure European descent" (Highclerc, now Kodaikanal International School). Kodaikanal retains some of those flavours and skills, as in baking and gardening.
The Kodaikanal Lake ... hemmed in by garbage mounds and junk shops.
Thirty years later, I return to my old holiday haunt. Nothing prepares me for the blow, not even the bumpy ghat road, innumerable vehicles staggering uphill in blasts of fumes, tyres and A.R.Rehman; nor the conversion of the Silver Cascade into a background for a teeming bajji-bonda-pakoda stand.
"What a shock for you!" laughs Zai Whittaker, herself jarred by the changes in 13 years when she taught at the Kodai International School. "I saw the town ruined in ugly, haphazard construction. You required a gas mask to enter the bazaar, its gutters overflowing with hotel effluents, including sambar and idli! Mosquitoes have moved in, lanes are clogged with vehicles, garbage escalates, water is scarce, prices hiked up, even the climate is hotter." Whitaker says that off-season terms are still peaceful for students — of the old International School and Presentation Convent to Gandhi Vidyashram and Brindavan. The question that residents and worried visitors ask is — for how long? You need only the evidence of eye and ear to know that Kodaikanal is reeling under multi-pronged pollution.
Not from just mindless tourism , but also from irresponsibility at every level, municipal or ministerial.
Garbage mounds and junk shops hem in the lake, its murky waters shared by lilies and plastic bottles. The stench of "progress" has replaced the tang of eucalyptus and shenbagam. Sylvan serenity? Haphazard hotels and tourists — to whom environment consciousness seems to be a hostile phrase from an alien planet — have decimated it. Newer houses are ungracious to the landscape. Traffic congestion is incredible, so is the decibellage of horns, mikes and crowds.
You seek tranquillity in vain from Kurinji Andavar, the god named after the flower blooming once in 12 years on the Kodai range. He has long been deafened by amplified hymns in his temple, leaving no scope for boons and prayers. In a voice poignant with school day memories (Presentation Convent), Katya Douglas of the local Consumer Protection Society talks about the uphill battle with authorities for basic needs. Manjula Engineer in Kheelbhumi despairs as she watches the neighbourhood wells drying up due to water tankers' activity in an illegal borewell. "When tax payers don't have basic amenities, isn't it hilarious to hear the minister announcing a theme park?" Water shortage and power cuts are now "normal" in and around Kodi.
Says Jayashree Kumar, "I wish we had protested in a body every time we felt a law was violated — in construction, tree cutting, civic administration, sewage disposal, traffic control, the occupation of all parking space by taxis, the use of substandard equipment in public service. We residents have a responsibility to protect our environment."
A greater eyesore now ... a partially demolished multi-storey hotel.
As a first step, she would like to regulate day tourists to manageable numbers, and make the township a vehicle-and-noise-free walkers' paradise. "I've seen this in England. It will work with a vigilant citizenry and integrity in enforcing rules." (Does she know that the Kodai municipality of 1916 had banned cars when the Raja of Pudukkottah's kerosene automobile grunted up the ghats?)
A multi-storeyed hotel near the panoramic Coaker's Walk, demolished by court order (a greater eyesore for being only partially torn down due to lack of funds!) stands testimony to the fact that all protests have not been in vain.
Likewise, the multi-national Hindustan Lever thermometer factory was forced to close down, when it dumped its mercury-laden toxic wastes in the open scrap yard. Resident Minoo Avari, a gritty participant in the initiative, supported by Greenpeace India, says that compensation for workers is still awaited. He lists abysmal conditions with regard to roads and lanes, unlicensed drivers and touts. Avari and Kumar trounce the town's infrastructure as totally inadequate, its administration too inept for the tourist boom in the last 15 years.
Raucous overnight parties are summer evils. Churches, temples and mosques add to the din. "If government authorities break laws with loudspeakers throughout the day at the Bryant Park flower show, despite its proximity to the Van Allen hospital, citizens are helpless."
Meenakshi Subramaniam of the Palni Hills Conservation Committee engaged in awareness, action and conservation projects, denounces local governance as "non-existent". Among other problems she mentions the handing over of the old garbage dump to the TNEB without proper sanitisation or landfill measures, for the construction of a sub station. "The Blackburne shola, a biological treasure trove, is now unwilling neighbour to the new garbage dump; a group of villagers are victims of contaminated drinking water from the Blackburne stream."
The PHCC and the United Citizens Council, Kodaikanal, are urging that the region be declared "environmentally fragile", a safeguard against the industrial tourism, which threatens its biological treasury.
The problem is not the preservation of the colonial ambience in one of the few hill resorts of the south. It is about the survival of the ancient shola forests of Tamil Nadu, with whatever is left of their endemic flora and fauna after the tampering of colonial and independent India. As conservationists know, the sholas are practically non-regenerating.
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