Romancing trains (Part 2): Araku Valley

(...Continued from Part 1)

The next day, I was in the train to Visakhapatnam to meet my cousin Commander S Karthikeyan – or Karthik Anna, as I call him – after 6 years! As it happened, he wasn’t in the city at the time. We – his wife, my niece and I – were to go to Araku to meet him, where he was organising rappelling for students. Before that, we went to the naval dockyard and visited a submarine and a ship each.

This was the first time I was seeing a real submarine. Submarines are exercises in space management, with valves and pipes in every place imaginable, including the kitchen. To be a submariner is a lot about physical strength – there are vertical ladders between levels, tiny doors and no space to exercise. But it is also about psyche – spending days on end in a closed space with no sun, moon, sky or stars isn’t easy, even for hardened military officers. There aren’t many in the navy who end up being submariners.

At the crack of dawn, we started out for Araku. Araku valley was a surprise for me. The air was cool and crisp, and some of the slopes were covered with dark, evergreen trees that are so characteristic of higher altitudes. I got to know that the temperature dropped to as low as 4°C in the winters, which I hadn't imagined was possible in Andhra Pradesh. We parked the car and trekked up to the hilltop from where we would rappel down.
Sometimes, it's okay to make a duck face. Only sometimes.

50 boys from Navy School and Sainik School were watching as Anna shouted instructions to his junior, who was demonstrating, “Keep your legs straight, and at least two feet apart!”

From where we were standing, we couldn’t see all the way down until we started rappelling. I’m not particularly athletic, and my hand-eye coordination is average. After going over the edge, I took a few steps down and then did something wrong and found that both my feet were off the rock-face and I was now hugging the rock. The 100 ft drop wasn’t particularly scary – I’m a person who would climb onto the ledge of our building's 4th floor terrace just as a dare (IT IS VERY STUPID TO DO THAT. DON’T DO THAT.) In any case, there was an extra rope keeping me from falling. What I was afraid of, however, was making a fool of myself.

Now, Karthi Anna is a naval commander and also a mountaineer. I imagine that both professions don’t allow for too many mistakes. But what I understood from watching many others before me was that Anna was patient if you made a mistake. What really pissed him off was if you gave up.

There have been some moments in my life when I have felt abject fear – once during a 120 kmph bike ride, once while trying to get onto a running train and stumbling a bit (only age teaches you that your life is more important than attendance). Thankfully, this wasn’t one of them and I managed to get my feet back onto the rock-face after Anna shouted some more instructions to me – “Imagine your legs and the rope make a tripod! Now look where you’re going and feed the rope!” After that, it was easier and fun too. I almost wanted to do it again after getting down!

To shout or not to shout

At night, I was in a train back to Hyderabad. I had got my favourite side-upper seat. I said goodbye to my cousins and then went in, moving past some smirking guy. A few minutes after the train started moving, the guy climbed onto the upper berth of the adjacent section. And then he kept staring at me. It’s not a crime to stare at someone, of course. I ignored it for a while, but found that I could concentrate on nothing. It wasn’t just a glance or two, he was definitely craning his neck and leering. I had had enough. I got down from my seat and looked up at him and said in a loud voice, “Kya hai bhaiya? Kya dekh rahe ho kabse? Kyun dekhe ja rahe ho? Maza aa raha hai bahut? Tabse dekhe ja rahe ho.” (What’s the matter? What’re you looking at? Why are you looking…?)

He looked dumbstruck. I went back to my seat, half-angry and half-scared. What if he just continued?

This is the view I like to see when I'm not shouting at idiots.
I looked up after a while and saw that he wasn’t around any more. I think he got kicked out by the others because he didn't have a seat. That made me breathe easy. The fallout of this little episode was a little funny because the train was full of men, and not one would even look in my direction now!

So I have now learned that it is sometimes useful to yell at leering men, and sometimes not.

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