Chapter 5: Swathi

# Chapter 5: Swathi

## The Venue Walk

Sim's Park spread across twelve acres of the Coonoor hillside like a botanical argument against straight lines. Nothing was flat. Nothing was grid-aligned. The paths curved around specimen trees — Japanese cedars, Burmese rosewood, magnolias from the Eastern Himalayas — that had been planted by Major Sim in 1874 and had spent the subsequent 152 years growing into shapes that suggested trees had opinions about architecture.

Swathi walked the east lawn with Deepa, a measuring tape, and a growing sense of vertigo. The lawn was where the main stage would go — a 40-by-20-foot platform facing a natural amphitheatre formed by the slope of the hill. In theory, it was perfect. In practice, the slope meant that the stage would need to be levelled with scaffolding, the audience would be sitting on wet grass unless they brought their own mats, and the sound would carry differently depending on whether the wind came from the valley (good acoustics, the sound bouncing off the tree line) or from the ridge (terrible acoustics, the sound disappearing into the sky like a helium balloon).

"The previous coordinator wanted to put the stage at the top of the slope," Deepa said. "Facing downhill. The sound contractor told him it would work. The sound contractor was wrong, or lying, or both."

"We put it at the bottom," Swathi said, scanning the terrain. "Audience uphill, looking down. Natural amphitheatre effect. The slope does the work for us."

Deepa made a note. "That means the food court has to move. He had it planned for the bottom flat section."

"Food court goes along the path near the rose garden. Stalls on one side, seating under the trees. People buy food, sit on the grass, look at the roses. It's not rocket science. It's Dilli Haat with better weather."

She could see it taking shape. The coffee-tasting area near the entrance — six estate owners, each with a station, visitors walking between them with small ceramic cups. The arts corridor along the central path — Toda embroidery in one section, Badaga woodwork in another, Irula honey and herbal products in a third, and a live demonstration area where craftspeople worked while visitors watched. The children's zone near the playground — puppet shows, seed-planting workshops, a mini coffee roasting demonstration that would smell extraordinary and keep parents buying things while their children were entertained.

"How's the food court shaping up?" Swathi asked.

Deepa consulted her phone — she had transferred the spreadsheet to a project management app that she had customised with colour codes that matched her sticky notes. "Twelve vendors confirmed. We need twenty. I've got applications from: two dosai carts, a biriyani stall from Ooty, a chaat vendor from Coimbatore, three tea estates wanting to serve their own blends, a bakery from Coonoor — they do the best chocolate cake in the district, don't argue with me on this — a Tibetan momo stall run by a family from the refugee settlement near Mysuru, and two proposals I haven't reviewed yet."

"What are we missing?"

"Filter coffee, obviously. It's a coffee festival. We need at least two dedicated filter coffee stations. I've been talking to Selvam at Quality Restaurant — he's interested but worried about leaving his regular customers for three days. His wife told him the restaurant will survive without him for a weekend; he's not convinced. Also, we need a juice and sugarcane stall for the kids. And something unusual — something that makes people stop and photograph and share. The Instagram moment."

Swathi thought about this. The festival had to work on two levels: as an actual, physical experience — the taste of coffee, the texture of Toda embroidery under your fingers, the sound of live music in a mountain amphitheatre — and as a digital event, something that existed in photographs and reels and stories, spreading beyond the 15,000 physical visitors to the millions of screens that would decide whether the Nilgiris Monsoon Festival became an annual institution or a forgettable government initiative.

"Flower coffee," she said.

Deepa blinked. "What?"

"There's a trend in specialty coffee — brewing with dried flowers. Hibiscus, rose, jasmine. The coffee itself is good, but the visual is stunning. Pink coffee. Purple coffee. Served in clear glass cups so you can see the layers. A good barista can create gradients — dark at the bottom, flower-tinted at the top. It photographs beautifully."

"Where do we find someone who does this?"

"I know someone in Bangalore. She runs a specialty coffee popup at weekend markets. Her name is — actually, let me call her."

Swathi pulled out her phone and dialled a number she hadn't called in eight months. It rang four times. Five.

"Swathi Padmanabhan." The voice on the other end was cool, precise, and carried the specific tone of someone who had been expecting this call the way you expect a monsoon — inevitably, but not without irritation. "I saw on LinkedIn that you moved to Coonoor. I assumed you would call eventually."

"Meghna. I need a favour."

"You always need a favour. That's not new. What's different this time?"

"This time I can pay you."

A pause. Swathi could hear the hiss of a coffee machine in the background — Meghna's studio in Indiranagar, where she roasted beans and nursed grudges with equal precision. They had been friends in college. They had stopped being friends when Swathi had — she would be the first to admit — been a terrible friend during the Karthik years. She had vanished into a relationship like people vanish into cults: gradually, then completely.

"How much?" Meghna asked.

"₹60,000 for three days. All materials provided. You'd bring your equipment and your barista. I'll handle accommodation and travel."

"That's not terrible."

"It's also the Nilgiris. In monsoon. Which means mist, and mountains, and the kind of coffee estates that would make you cry."

Another pause. Longer this time. Swathi could almost hear Meghna's resistance cracking. Meghna was, above all things, a coffee fanatic. She had once broken up with a man because he drank instant. She maintained a spreadsheet of every coffee she had ever tasted, rated on fourteen parameters. She had visited coffee farms in Colombia, Ethiopia, and Indonesia, but she had never been to the Nilgiris, which was India's finest arabica region.

"Send me the details," Meghna said. "I'm not saying yes. I'm saying I'll look at the details."

"That's a yes."

"It is emphatically not a yes. It is a conditional maybe." Meghna hung up.

Deepa, who had been listening to Swathi's side of the conversation, raised an eyebrow. "Old friend?"

"Old friend I owe an apology. Several apologies, probably."

"Will she come?"

"She'll come. She can't resist the coffee."

---

They spent the next three hours walking every metre of the venue. Swathi measured sight lines, tested acoustics by having Deepa stand at various points and shout Tamil proverbs (Deepa had an inexhaustible supply, inherited from a grandmother who communicated exclusively in metaphor), and mapped the electrical connection points that would power the stage lighting, the sound system, and the fifty-seven phone charging stations that were, in 2026, as essential to any public gathering as oxygen.

The park manager, Mr. Rajan — a soft-spoken man in his fifties who had been tending these grounds for twenty-three years and knew every tree by species, age, and personal temperament — walked with them for the last hour. He pointed out the trees whose roots had buckled the paths ("Please don't put heavy equipment here — the Japanese cedar will take offence"), the drainage channels that flooded in heavy rain ("If it rains properly, this entire section becomes a pond within twenty minutes"), and the corner of the park where the Nilgiri langurs gathered in the evenings ("They will steal food from any stall that doesn't have a cover. They are organised, they are motivated, and they have been doing this since before the park existed").

"Will they be a problem during the festival?" Swathi asked.

Mr. Rajan considered this with the gravity of a man who had spent decades negotiating with primates. "They will attend. They always attend public events. Last year, during the flower show, the alpha male sat on the chief guest's chair during the inauguration. The District Collector had to share the stage with him. The monkey was photographed more than the Collector. The Collector was not pleased."

"Can we... discourage them?"

"You can try. You will fail. They live here. We are the visitors." He paused. "But they are frightened of large dogs."

Swathi's mind jumped immediately to Bahadur — the large, disciplined, professional-looking dog belonging to her sambar-rescuing neighbour. She filed this thought away and continued the venue walk.

By noon, she had a complete mental map of the site, forty-three photographs, eighteen voice memos, and a revised layout plan that she sketched on the back of a park brochure because her phone battery had died. The festival was taking shape — not as the abstract spreadsheet she had built in Chennai, but as a physical thing, rooted in this specific landscape, shaped by this specific mountain's curves and moods and monkey populations.

They stopped at a bench overlooking the valley. The mist had cleared, and the view extended all the way to the plains — a patchwork of brown and green, impossibly far below, with the Bhavani River glinting in the distance like a thread of silver.

"Nineteen days," Swathi said.

"Nineteen days," Deepa agreed.

"We can do this."

Deepa nodded. Then, with the pragmatism that Swathi was learning was her defining characteristic: "Yes. But first, lunch. I'm starving and Selvam's wife makes the best meals on Bedford Road. Curd rice on Wednesdays. Today is Wednesday."

They walked down the hill toward Bedford Road, and Swathi thought about pressure cookers, and flower coffee, and a K9 officer with a trained dog who might be useful for monkey management.

Strictly professional.

Obviously.