Top Station is a bustling little settlement atop a precipitous ridge that juts out over a yawning valley plunging thousands of feet. Scenically located 35 kms from Munnar, it gets its name from its lofty elevation—well over 6,000 feet above sea level.
Top Station’s truly breathtaking views are often blanked out by dense mist—disappointing tourists who flock there to glimpse vistas of the plains of Tamil Nadu in the hazy distance and Kolukkumallay, the world’s highest tea estate, perched eyrie-like across the valley. In the 1960s I often visited Top Station, lured by the romance of its famed ropeway—an engineering marvel—that plunged steeply down from Kerala to Tamil Nadu, stopping just short of the sun-baked plains.
The ropeway, owned and operated by the British tea company I worked for, transported tea chests down and brought up foodgrains. Wound up in the early 1970s, only the crumbling foundations of the old ropeway station now remain neglected.
Visiting Top Station in 2002, I met Raju, a doddering old man encased in warm clothing to ward off the bone-chilling cold. Mistaking me to be a tourist, he thrust a tattered photo album into my hands with an ingratiating smile. “Old ropeway photos, sir,” he rasped hoarsely. I flipped through the fading images of bewhiskered Brits supervising various stages of the ropeway’s construction in mountainous terrain, around 1940 according to Raju.
It soon struck me that these rare, unseen photos were of considerable historical value. Was Raju aware of their significance and would he be willing to sell them? Raju shook his head emphatically when I broached the subject. “How can I sell this, sir?” he asked rhetorically, adding, “It’s my only source of livelihood, given to me by a ‘Dorai’ for whom I worked as a cook years ago. By sharing this album with tourists and explaining the history of the ropeway, I earn some money.”
So I tipped Raju handsomely and told him that if he ever decided to sell the album, I would snap it up. On a subsequent visit to Top Station I found an earnest-looking young man hunched over a rickety wayside table on which Raju’s telltale album lay open. Raju, I learnt, was no more and his son had taken up his ‘job’, the grubby photo album having become a valuable, earning heirloom. Strangely enough, I was glad Raju hadn’t parted with it—in those difficult times a poor family’s livelihood certainly outweighed history.
George Netto
Email: gnettomunnar@rediffmail.com