The old Munnar

 A hundred years ago, in 1924, Munnar was not the city we see today. It was the most elite and modern town of its time, with the charm of a European village. A century ago, trains ran around it! Cable cars carrying bundles of tea on a ropeway strung across the hills. When luxurious bungalows and motor cars from the sea filled the mountain tops, Kerala was still socially two centuries behind. Munnar, built by the British elite to escape the hot climate of Madras and Travancore and to experience the beauty, coolness and nostalgia of their homeland in Europe, had something else that elevated it to immortality.

Douglas Hamilton wrote that ‘these were hillsides reminiscent of the landscape of Scotland.’  The Muthirappuzha River, flowing like music, meets two other rivers and gives rise to the name Munnar. This valley must have been a real challenge for the English, and the difficulty they faced in building a Victorian-style town on land that had been conquered by nature and wildlife was no small feat. As a silent witness to all of this, the old church and the meda still remain, swaying in the shadow of an eternal love that had gone unknown. The effort that went into hauling the train engines, built in factories in Birmingham and brought by ship, up this hill on an iron rail a century ago still amazes us. I can imagine the frame in my mind of a train whistle blowing like something out of the wizarding world of Harry Potter, standing in front of the Munnar station. Who knew then that all of that would change in a single night..?!

 That one night, 28 July 1924, that erased it all from the frame of time a hundred years ago... It was then that the rain that had been falling non-stop for sixteen days reached its peak. The people of Munnar did not know that the stones, soil and trees that had flowed in the mountain floods had accumulated in the gorge now called Mattupetti or had become a dam of their own. The most important place there was the city's center plaza. The city center was always crowded with the railway station building, department stores, telephone/wireless centers and the headquarters of tea companies. The city has been deserted for days as warnings were spread that the continuing rains were getting stronger and that people should not come down to the town and the plantations. The frightened wild animals had already fled to the forest and sought shelter in the tea gardens.

 On the night of July 28, the high range experienced heavier than usual rain. On that day, when the rain and cold spread so much that it was impossible to even look outside, all the people were confined to their homes and rooms. Those human lives slept, unaware that a dam created by nature like an atomic bomb and the water trapped in it like a giant lake were standing above their heads, into an eternal sleep that they would never wake up from.... In the middle of the night, the dam could not hold the water in the pouring rain, and the water that gushed out had the power to carry it to the foothills of Munnar. The earth shook, bridges collapsed, bungalows, factories and the railway station were submerged, and even train engines were swept away by the force of the current..! Only those who were in the higher places were left alive. Having lost their roads, transportation and homes and cut off from the outside world, they were again plagued by hunger and disease.  When the water finally receded weeks later, Munnar had become a ghost town....

There is still no exact number of those killed or missing that day. Munnar never recovered from that collapse. A group of willing people went underground with the dream world they had created.! No one has been able to recreate what was lost there or bring Munnar back. Even today, what we call Munnar is a modern city located a few kilometers away from where the original city once stood. However, if you walk along the banks of the Muthirapuzha River, you will see at least a handful of structures that remain as witnesses to the lost times.