This post is about a coincidence of similar unexpected things that happened on my two visits to the city of Chikkamagaluru. The city is approx 300 kms from Bangalore, in the Western Ghats. It is known to be the place where coffee was planted for the first time in India and, apart from the vast picturesque coffee plantations, holds some good tourist attractions like Mullayanagiri (the highest peak in Karnataka) and some waterfalls, and has a relatively colder climate in the late night and early morning hours if compared to other places in Karnataka.
My first visit was at the start of 2016, with two of my college friends, one of whom was accompanied by his wife and the other one with his girlfriend. So we were a total of 6 adults along with my son. As is expected in any group of people, there were different personalities and characters in our group. While the married friend and his wife had a so called cool and fun attitude, the bachelor and his girlfriend took a guarded stance throughout the trip. One reason for the guarded stance could be that they were travelling together for the first time and wanted to understand each other better over the trip, to decide on the next step in their relationship. My wife and myself were the balancing agents in the pack, not too bothered about our personal preferences as our focus was on taking care of our son and enjoying with him on our first vacation with him, we had less expectations. The 11 plus hours drive from Bangalore to Chikkamagalur was joyful, the resort we checked in was at a very nice and serene location, and we had a very nice time at the bonfire which started after the sunset and went on till late into the chilling night. All in good mood, we were sitting at the dinner table and were having the normal chitchat while having the delicious food cooked in local style. As we were passing casual comments at each other, the girlfriend said to the married friend "TU ACHAAR KHATA HAI?" (You eat pickle?) with an ew. That did not go well with the wife and she retorted immediately "OH CHHAMIYA! TAMEEZ SE BAAT KAR" (behave yourself you wannabe-small-town-girl). And then there was a pin drop silence at the dinner table, followed by iced conversations through the remaining trip. The coldness continues between my friends, even after more than 2 years of that incident and even when my bachelor friend is single again. While this battle did not affect me much, the next one did.
My second visit was with my entire family, at the start of Jan 2019. My wife, my son, parents, my sister, and one of my younger cousin brothers accompanied me in this visit. This was only our second family trip, after my sister's and my marriages, the first trip was to Kerala at the end of 2017. This trip will be one of the memorable trips of my life, unfortunately because of some painful rather than joyful memories. This time I was one of the parties involved in the battle, the other party being my sister. I plan to talk about the built-up, course, and aftermath of the fight in my future posts, but one of the things that came to my mind after the fight was that there must be something with this city that travelers end up getting into such mood spoiling avoidable battles. Maybe, I will give this city one more shot at proving that it does not happen every time and with every one..
