Recently when the Cauvery water dispute between
Karnataka and Tamil Nadu came alive, many people felt that the proposed
Mekedatu Dam project is the only solution for the water dispute between the two
states. I am neither getting into the
details of the dispute, nor the dam project.
I just remembered a trip that I had with my students to Mekedatu, way
back in 2001. Mekedatu, located around
150 kilometers from Tumkur, is the place where river Arkavati confluences with Cauvery. After merging, Cauvery flows through a small
deep crevice, presenting a magnificent scenic beauty.
I, along with about 30 students, started our journey to Mekedatu. It takes a little above three hours to reach there. On the way, we stopped somewhere for breakfast and continued the journey. Everybody was in a joyous mood. Around 10 in the morning we reached a point beyond which the buses were not allowed. We had to trek the remaining distance to reach the top. Initially it was fun to wade through the forest, listening to the sound of Cauvery flowing. But, after a while we realised that it was a long trek. None of us had been to Mekedatu before, so we had no idea about the distance (No Google Map those days!). We kept walking and walking. Finally, when we reached the top, though we were all tired, we were awed by the natural beauty. We all sat there for a while. We were all extremely hungry, but, except for the water bottles, we had not carried any food. Slowly we started climbing down.
Now comes the second part of the story! Suddenly a girl in our group fainted. We gave water to her, but she was still not able to get up and walk. Two boys lifted her and started walking. We all panicked; we didn’t know what to do. The boys were already tired and walking by lifting a girl was tedious. After walking for about 20 minutes, we spotted a jeep parked in front of a house. We knocked on the door. A gentleman came out. We requested him to drop us near our bus. Luckly, he obliged. We asked the bus driver to take us straight to a doctor in the nearby town. The doctor examined the girl and said, ‘nothing to worry, she fainted due to dehydration and lack of food’. It was already 3 in the afternoon. We went straight to a nearby restaurant and ate to our heart’s content. When we resumed the journey, that girl was the most active and those boys who had lifted her were still tired!
When the bus reached close to Tumkur, another vehicle suddenly came across, and our driver applied a sudden break. We heard a loud cry from the rear side of the bus. A girl, who was probably sleeping, had hurt her knee when it went and hit the seat in front of her as a result of the sudden break. She was in terrible pain. Her friends helped her and tried massaging her knee. But that seemed to increase her pain. She was not able to walk. Since we had already reached Tumkur, we dropped her near the hostel along with her friends and asked them to take her immediately to a hospital. She had suffered a minor fracture.
We had a sigh of relief when we reached home that the trip had finally come to an end. What remained in our memory was not the pleasure of the trip, but these untoward incidents. Some trips are like that - remembered for unintended consequences!
