"koi Ganapathi ko bulaaao, I am hungry"

So where was I ? aaah we were all set to jump into the “coracle “ and row to a nearby island. Let me take a moment here and give you a brief description of our thoughts just before we started our journey to the island. Rowing is damn easy, why because we had seen Ganapathi paddle and he made it look so simple and of course everyone remembers the famous song “Oh Maaji re…apna kinara nadiya ki dhara hai’ , in which the fisherman effortlessly rows the boat. So we assumed that rowing was like eating a piece of black forest cake. Ganapathi called out “Please form a single file semi circle “.He then went on to explain how to row and stabilize a coracle (A small rounded boat made of waterproof material stretched over a wicker or wooden frame). He warned us, “If you guys don’t make it to the island before dark, you will have to row back and camp on the mainland”. Let me try to put those “frightful yet amusing and agonizing 30 min boat ride” into a few sentences. 5 of us got into a coracle with me sitting in the middle (Can a circumference have a “middle spot?).I was the one balancing the boat . Frightful: Yes I was afraid, no not because of the erratic way in which my boat mates were rowing, but because they were splashing me with *#&^ water and you guys know how I hate getting wet. And at one point I asked them to switch seats and the coracle almost toppled, whew that was frightening. (I’m still not sure why we were afraid of getting toppled , just 2 hours earlier we had swam approx 1km and on top of that we still had our life saving jackets, then why were we afraid?.The mind, my dear, plays weird tricks .sigh*). The distance to the camping island was something like 1.5km but because of the “down wind” we had to take a circuitous route and ended up paddling some 3kms. Amusing: It was really funny, because the non-paddlers would shout out instructions to the paddlers and they would get confused and they in turn would yell at us. Agonizing: When I say agonizing I think of the pain and effort it took to paddle. If you were on the right hand side of the boat, your left hand would take the burden ,as it was in the case of Gopi. I was sitting opposite to him and I don’t think I can still lift my right hand above a certain point eeeeeeeeeeew .NO MORE EXPERIMENTS. After 15 mins of shouting and swearing the paddlers got their act together and paddled in synchronization and we made steady but slow progress. When we reached the island it was dark and heavy clouds were looming in the sky. My weather sensitive nose started twitching. Madhu acted as our guide for this camping trip and Ganapathi stayed back on the mainland promising to catch up later(dinner time). Madhu asked us to pick up the camping equipment and follow him. He informed us that the “camping spot” was just a 10 min hike.(Yeah right).He carried a steel pot of water on his shoulders and with a torch lead the way. We were too tired to make conversation so we followed him in silence, stumbling, staggering one foot then the other ,unmindful of the precarious man- made path to the summit. One of the questions we asked Madhu was about the wild animals on the island. His answer “A few wild porcupines and you guys”. We dumped our luggage which consisted of tents, mats and water bottles at the camping spot. Madhu called Anand aside and asked him to form a small group and bring in firewood for the campfire. Anand looked lost, poor guy he was too tired as he had to paddle a lot that day. We somehow organized a team and set out deep into the forest.Agreed it was not the Amazon forest, but when u have a small torch and can’t see a *&$% thing in front of you ,even your bedroom would look like the dark Amazon jungle. Hold on its “ Daddy, what do you do at work” day in my office , some #$**$ manager named me the official photographer and I am being whisked off . Abhishek take your hands off Aishwarya, Sanjana stop pulling my nose,Rahul that is a laptop OMG Aditya that is an artificial plant, stop watering it !!. With the help of Ranjith and my nose we found lots of rotten wood and Madhu gave us an A for our effort. The camp fire was a huge success and we sat around it singing multilingual songs. Out of the blue Sandhya exclaimed “ Look Look ” pointing to the sky. The clouds were clearing and the full moon greeted us. The obvious thing to do on the 13th of any month, when you are stranded on an island and watching the full moon is to ??? yep howl like werewolves wooww bowwwwwwwwwwwwwww. We definitely scared a couple of porcupines not to mention our guide Madhu.(uahhahahaa) There are 2 types of pain, the first one is when you are hurt and you scream “Amaaaaaaa” it really hurts and is usually this pain is caused by someone other than you .The second type of pain is the by product of some activity in which you had lots of fun. You know the consequences and were ready to bear it. Here you scream out ”Aaaaaaaah “ and sort of have this funny grin. We were now enjoying our pain. Here’s some of the things that I remember happening that night as we slept under the stars, looking at the %$#* full moon.( Sorry it was just too bright) *Anand twirling his “green colored torch” very similar to the Jedi in Star Wars. *Anand spraying everyone with MOVE *Sandhya shouting out “ koi Ganapathi ko bulaaao, I am hungry” ( She really gets irritated if she’s not fed on time). *Ravi and Rakesh singing a lot of “dard bari” geeth and continuously feeding the campfire with wood. *The song “Re mama Re mama re“ no one knew beyond those 5 words. *Sandhya’s conversation with Ganapathi on the non-availability of buttermilk and his tongue in the cheek reply “ my buffalo ran off ,so no buttermilk”. *The sumptuous dinner around the campfire. *Gopi and Preethi volunteering to go with Ganapathi to get more drinking water. *Rakesh,Ravi and me going out to investigate the strange sounds coming from the bushes. *Everyone asking Rakesh to SHUT up and so that they could sleep. *Rakesh, Gopi and Preethi playing cards at 1 am, in the moonlight . *Ramki taking some weird pics of the campfire. The next morning we woke up to hear someone screaming “Areh koi Ganapathi ko bulaaaao, I want Coffee”, yeah who else but Sandhya. We packed our bags and mentally prepared ourselves for the ride back to the mainland. This time our coracle had some very interesting characters.Apart from the ever reliable Gopi and yours truly the vonti goobe, it was occupied by Anand and his bro, the ever detached Preethi and the “not so thin” Sandhya. Initially the task of paddling went to Gopi and Sandhya and as I had already traveled with Gopi, I knew he was good with the paddle .Anand thought otherwise and started giving suggestions left ,left ,right no left, paddle harder. I had to calm him down. We(Anand and I) then took turns paddling , unfortunately I was sitting on the left hand side of the coracle and my right hand again did all the work and sort of ..is still is…”out of action”. No fast bowling for a couple of weeks. With Gopi’s expert maneuverability skills and Sandhya’s raw power ( and of course her hunger pangs) helped us reach the mainland in less than 20 minutes. We then rushed to the Circle aka the food court., where we were served some hot breakfast. Ganapathi then asked us to get ready for some “boating”, this time it was a small boat made for 2 people. We really enjoyed this event because it was not so taxing on our already tiring bodies. Some of us went diving while the notorious Anand was busy toppling people from their boats. After a hearty lunch, it was time to make yet another climb to our rooms, thankfully it was for the last time. We packed our bags thanked Ganapathi and Madhu, and promised them that we would be back next year. After the Sumo ride to Thalaguppa, a short bus journey to Sagar and another 70 kms in a private bus, we reached Shimoga Railway station. We didn’t want to take the slow 2 bogie train on our return journey to the railway station as it was unpredictable and we had a 10pm connecting train to catch.

Our return Train(Shimoga express) journey was peaceful, apart from the tongue lashing that we received from the Police Inspector.That was because we were ( wink wink) creating a nuisance and disturbing other passengers. After everyone was tucked in for the night, the TC came on his rounds and I had to deal with him as I had the tickets. Surprisingly the TC came in three times to check on number 9, I have no idea why, but the end result was that i was really irritated.The TC would just barge in , switch on the lights and shake the person who was sleeping on berth number 9, and ask for the tickets. I would then reluctantly make my way to the TC and show the tickets and he would make a tick mark against number 9 (in the end that ticket had 4 tick marks). The rest of the journey was peaceful and we reached Bangalore safely. Thus ended our little trip to Honnemardu.