Kodaikanal: Serenity amidst Turmoil

Though steeped in controversy, the hill station of Kodaikanal in Tamil Nadu is a delightful experience

Over the years, I’ve noticed that my travel experiences often become influenced by the books or music that I’m into at the time. But my week-long sojourn in Kodaikanal has been a different story. Long after I returned from there, I encountered a rap song, “Kodaikanal Won’t”, which has made me realise that the verdant hill station I’d so enjoyed has a darker side, and that any story about it has to be a cautionary tale. And so it has come to pass that my experience of a place has been retrospectively coloured by an angry rap song.  

The story is age-old, but disturbing nonetheless. Unilever used to run a thermometer factory in the area, where its workers were exposed to unacceptably high levels of mercury. In 2001, when the factory was shut down for flouting pollution norms, it left behind locals afflicted by mercury poisoning, as well as its surroundings with unacceptably high levels of the poisonous element. Last year, when artist Sofia Ashraf’s rap song “Kodaikanal won’t” went viral on the internet, the multinational was pressurised into paying an undisclosed amount of ex-gratia compensation to 591 local employees.

From the vantage point of the Carlton, one of the nicest and oldest hotels in this misty lakeside town, Kodaikanal betrays none of this turmoil. Bucolic meadows slope down into valleys thick with evergreen broadleaf trees like magnolia, mahogany and myrtle. As we sat on white wicker chairs on a manicured lawn, cups of tea in hand, it was clear that the best thing to do in Kodaikanal was to circumambulate the lake, either on rented bicycles or on foot.

View of the valley

The first day, we walked to Bryant Park, a small but stunning botanical garden bursting with dahlias, phlox and other stunning annuals. Abutting the lake, the park had lovely walks along the hillside and a pond abrim with water lilies. We lingered by the pond, wondering at how English the countryside here looked.

Clearly, that’s what the English thought too. It is said that modern Kodaikanal was established by American Christian missionaries and British bureaucrats in 1845. In the ensuing years, they built cottages, churches and schools — as well as its pretty star-shaped lake — creating a tiny facsimile of their faraway home. A British friend now in his sixties had tasked us with the job of seeing if the house by the lake that his uncle once lived in, was still there. We hired a cheesy tandem bike to look for it. Little remained of it, save for a broken gate in a ramshackle garden. A weathered headstone teetered in one corner, probably a grave of a long-forgotten pet.

We banished the melancholy that had overtaken us by eating the homemade chocolate that Kodaikanal is famous for. With chocolate shops a dime a dozen, and all of them generous with their samples, the crowded town is a chocoholic’s delight. They were too sweet for me, but they reminded me of the innocent pleasures of tuck shops of yore. Replete with more sugar than I’d normally consume in a week, I set off to explore one of the prettiest places for an amble in town, Coaker’s Walk.

On one side of the lake, Coaker's Walk affords splendid views of the Shola forests of the upper Palani Hills. The last time I heard the term Shola forests was in a yawns-a-minute geography class, but when I learnt that the dense patches of tropical forest separated by grasslands around us were called that, I was enthralled. We walked along an emerald green wooded slope as a pale mist rose from the valleys below. The mocking call of a laughing thrush rang out. The forests seemed enchanted to me then, but I know better now.

Today, when I recall how we listened to the sounds of the forest in Coaker’s Walk, the thought that a multinational has been able to leave this place with dangerously high levels of mercury makes my blood boil. “Kodaikanal Won’t” plays on a loop on my computer. To date, the thermometer factory site has toxic levels of mercury, now leaching into the very lake and forests that I’d hiked in. Unilever has now promised to clean up the mess, but as Ashraf raps in her song,

“Kodaikanal won’t.
Kodaikanal won’t.
Kodaikanal won’t step down until you make amends now.”