Station master Ramaiyer

On a recent visit to Tirumurthi hills I remembered a trip I had made with my late chittappa over 50 years back. He was then a station master at Pollachi (or was it Poolankinaru ?). We made it to the hills by bus and bicycle - by bus from Udulmelpet to Tirumurthi Nagar, from where we hired bikes to cover the three-km distance to the temple.
We bathed in the stream that flows by the side of the temple.
Took these photos during our recent trip. Not much has changed in decades since my trip on a hired bike. For which, I believe, chittappa paid eight annas as hire charges.

Station master Ramaiyer, as my chittappa was known among his wide circle of friends, had served in several places in his career in railways. He made friends wherever he went. Besides, a lot more people knew him for his propensity to cure snake-bite with mantra. Snake-bite cases were not uncommon those days and villagers had more faith in my chittappa than the local doctor.
I was then a schoolboy in New Delhi. On my trips south during vacations I had spent some enjoyable days with Sita chitti and chittappa in exotic little places such as Thirukkadaiyur, Rameswaram Road and Chettipalayam . The days were spent watching trains and hanging out at the station master's office whenever chittappa was on duty.

His son Balu and I, on occasions, took the last train to Tranquebar (at the end of the line) to watch a late show at a tented cinema house. There was no cinema house in Thirukkadaiyur. After the show, which ended well past midnight, we walked to the railway station to spend the night, awaiting the first train back to Thirukkadaiyur.
Sita chitti now lives alone in the house chittappa built for them at Pollachi in 1975. Sadly, he didn't live long to enjoy a happy retired life in his own house. He died in a road accident. Chitti remembers the date - May 15, 1983. She had lost her only son Balu, decades earlier, that too in an accident, by drowning at a village temple pond in Thirukkadaiyur. Not a day goes by without Chitti remembering her dear ones. "Balu would have been your age, had he been alive," Sita chitti tells me this every time I visit her in Pollachi.
My wife and I owe it to chittappa for having brought us together in marriage. Chitti and he were the ones who initiated an exchange of our horoscopes, and followed up the proceedings that led to our union. The jaded blow-up from a group photo gives an idea of how the Ramaiyer couple looked at our wedding, in 1971.