A Mensch at Cinchona Waterfalls

In life we need a mensch. They often are the known and the anticipated – a caring father, a kind colleague or a supportive supervisor. But occasionally, they show up at unexpected corners and sweep us off our feet. Our guide Alan at the Cinchona Waterfalls trail was one such mensch, the only one I have met at Costa Rica and for that matter, in a very long time. It was our second day in Costa Rica and my wife had clearly planned a meticulously detailed trip. As first-timers in the country, on our list was the not-to-be-missed La Paz waterfalls. For the two of us, this was a celebratory trip but even with her much less frugal standards of spending, particularly while travelling, she was not convinced that the $50/person cost for the hourlong trail to see La Paz up close, was really worth it. It was an overcast day and after our customary photo from the bridge in front of La Paz, it was quite a tug to come to a collective decision that we were not going to fall for that obvious tourist-trap of a trail. Cinchona was another choice - somewhat nearby, yet quite obviously not such a prized destination. By the time we drove past the sign board in front of Cinchona, it had started raining. My wife, who is always thrown to the front for such conversations, went up to Alan and found out that Cinchona would be cheaper - $20/person with an offer for the kids to go free because of the low turnout during the rain.  Nevertheless, the rain proved to be too much of a deterrent and we decided to let it go as well. Even over the relatively short conversation, Sujata clearly had developed a connection to Alan, and we stopped to let him know that we would not be doing the trail. Yet, it was quite apparent that she really would have liked to do the Cinchona trail. Grudgingly, we turned back and started on our way back to our B&B and magically, as if almost in response to her yearnings, the moody tropical rain stopped abruptly. It was time for a call and I suggested very strongly, that we all go back and try Cinchona out.

There was only one other car and Alan was clearly happy that we were back. This was an informal enough place that given the low turnaround, he was already planning to shut shop. So we were going to be the last customers. After the forms and the signatures, we were about to head down and Alan said, to my mild surprise, that he was going to come along with us for a bit to show us the trail. Right then, the older couple who went down before us came up and my wife asked them, as she almost always does , “So how was the trail ?” The question was clearly thrown not with the expectation of a critical analytical evaluation of the trail, but rather with a hope for some encouragement. The old man turned to us and said ´”Oh, it´s very hard ! There are parts where there is nothing on one side and if you fall, you could die”, and then moved casually by us. Alan clearly sensed the angst in us and when my wife asked him, “ Is it really all that challenging ? This man seemed to suggest so”, he had a smile of reassurance and brushed our concerns aside. It was not the air of someone who laughs at your worry because they couldn´t care less, but that of a comrade who lets you know that they have your back.

I am no habitual hiker and Cinchona is definitely the most challenging hike I have ever done. It was more so because I was not prepared and it had rained before, making our steps, sometimes down steep slopes, less certain. Yet, the raw natural beauty around us, Alan´s obvious care and ownership for the ecosystem and his connection with it, and his deep knowledge that he shared with us freely, made it also the most memorable trail I have ever done in my life. The tropical forests in Costa Rica are called cloud forests , that distinguishes from rain forests, for a good reason. The low lying cloud constantly dispersing through the forest creates an environment that leaves a distinct footprint on the flora and fauna. Together with the rather quiet surroundings on this rainy day created an almost surreal mystique filled ambience around us.

There were clearly parts where my wife or I would have given up, had Alan not been there with us, including a stretch where we had to use a rope and step backwards, effectively climbing down. He went ahead of us, did not need any support during most of the stretch and yet it never seemed that he was trying to show off his brawns or skills. He was amidst his natural habitat, a place where he is at his deepest level of comfort. He has a good native sense of humour – after showing an epiphyte which grows on branches of trees and looks like the top of a pineapple, and explaining its difference from a parasite, he smiled and said to me, “That is a very unsafe place to stand because they can break and fall down anytime and it can even kill you depending on how big they are”, and pointed to the branches right above where I was standing.

Menschs don´t stay with us all along. They gently support us when we need them the most and when we are ready, they let us go and be on our own. A time came inevitably when Alan had to leave us to continue the trail while he headed back up. This was way farther than what any other casual caretaker of the place would have come and by now, we had gotten used to his company, his wisdom and his fact-filled tidbits about the nature around us. Yet, we had to move on and so did he.  But he left us at a time and place when we felt confident enough to trudge along. Our trail ended in a wondrous view of Cinchona Waterfalls and the best part was that we were all on our own, with no one else in sight. Good things don´t last long and the dreaded drizzle was back, prompting us to start our hike back. The upward trail was somewhat easier and with the nuggets of wisdom and advice from Alan, we soon found ourselves at a branching point where we could either make our way back to the starting point, or hike down another trail to see another waterfalls. Feeling empowered and emboldened by then, we proceeded down to the second waterfalls. My wife and I could not get to the closest point of approach but our sons did, and as a family, we could not have felt more triumphant at the end of the day. 

Unsurprisingly, parting ways with Alan after we came back up was not easy. There were progressively shorter pieces of conversation, at the end of each of which we thought we were done but then quickly found a different topic to latch onto. The next day when we were leaving our first station in Costa Rica, we found an excuse to visit La Paz again and then my sons wanted to bid goodbye to Alan before heading out. He was clearly happy to see us again and despite a busier time, inferring from the number of cars parked in front of the entrance, graciously spent a few minutes chatting with us, although we were no more prospective customers by then. 

We are at the tail end of our Costa Rica trip and have had many discussions comparing all the trails we have done over the last several days, thanks to my older son, who is obsessed with ranking based prioritization of things in life. As we have travelled past volcanoes and cloud forests, the answers have kept evolving. Yet, when it gets to the trail component of the experience, Cinchona still reigns far and high above all the rest and we all agree that had it been not for our mensch who showed us the path, our answers might not have been so unanimous.

As we give up more and more information to statistics driven data mining that becomes better and better at “figuring” us out, we part ways with more and more of our private, personal self, which only we have access to. Many many years from now, there will likely be individualized guides at Cinchona, perhaps not human, that would draw information from us strewn all over the clouds and would present us with the mensch we have been looking for all our lives. By then, Allen will perhaps retire; or not, because his advice was to keep exercising the mind and body to stay fit, and away from ageing and he was clearly at the top of his game. But there may still be a few old customers who would come back to Cinchona and prefer a less perfect Alan than a bastardized, machine-improvised version of him. 

Manzilat - in search of a destination

 I first visited Manzilat on a sultry summer afternoon. For many years now, my aspirations and my achievements during my trips back home have been at an eternal phase lag. This means that I first heard of Manzilat at least four "visit equivalents" back. As such, this would have been four years ago. However, the pandemic added a constant term to the phase lag - I had been waiting to go to Manzilat for a good six years by now. Nevertheless, these aspirations, a large part of which amount to visiting restaurants I have never been to, end up in two broadly different classes of outcomes - either the expectations are in more or less  reasonable resonance with the experience, making me even more eager for the subsequent visit; or there is a destructive interference between the expectation and the reality, which Americans call a "Meh" ! Manzilat was an outlier in this landscape to begin with. Manzilat, even from the beginning, caused a rather sharp polarization of opinions -  a large number of my friends and relatives clearly loved it and couldn´t wait to go back for a second and third time. A smaller number not only couldn´t care less, but they also went to a significant extent in elaborating why it was not such a big deal and why better experiences might have been had at other venues. This, in itself is not so uncommon but more recently, a number of fans had become disappointed from their latest culinary excursions at Manzilat. A trusted source alleged that earlier, the proprietor was able to engaged experienced cooks who made a difference. However, of late, particularly during the pandemic, many of these trusted comrades left, forcing her to fall back on local slum dwellers, who she had to train and the quality of the offering had to suffer as a consequence. My expectations about Manzilat thus became a continuum, almost like the proverbial Schrodinger´s Cat - the encounter would define what the expectation was to begin with. It is against this backdrop that I suddenly decided on a whim to give it a try for lunch, given that Manzilat´s is about a 15 minutes´ walk from my residence.

No matter who you talk to,  a convergent point of agreement about Manzilat is that you need to make a reservation. In apprehension of this, I had tried to establish a line of communication almost right after I landed at Kolkata, through WhatsApp, inquiring about how long ahead of time did we have to make the reservation. Fatimaji was surprisingly responsive, given that she runs a one-woman managerial show, assuring me that a couple of days´ notice would be sufficient. However, on this summer afternoon, when I decided well past noon that I was going to try my luck, I hadn´t made any reservations. Most of my culinary excursions in Kolkata these days are spent over worrying whether my kids would enjoy them, or not. On this day, they were away on a trip with the rest of my family and I was, after a very long time in Kolkata, a free bird - a feeling I hadn´t experienced in a rather long time. I tried my luck at sending a WhatsAppp message, inquiring if they would have a table for a lone diner for lunch but clearly, my expectations about the speed of response was over estimated. Nevertheless, being completely free on my own , I started walking towards the restaurant under the watchful eye of a  summer sun, which was playing a cat and mouse game with the clouds, while I navigated through the busy traffic and pedestrians around Ruby hospital. Just about five minutes away from my destination, I saw a message on my WhatsApp - "if it is for one person, we have space. Please mention your name" .

Manzilat is on a the terrace of a three-storey building and from everything I had heard, I was expecting to be seated on the terrace. Surprisingly, as I made my way through the door, I realized that a space somewhere away from the open terrace was being readied for me. By this time, the sky was overcast and although there was evidently perceptible humidity in the air, there was no scorching sun shining directly on us. Moreover, Manzilat has sturdy overhead shades, offering protection  from the direct heat of the summer sun. So, I asked my waitress, adorning a nose piercing and with a disarming smile, if I could sit outside and if she would mind turning the fan on. She was quite convinced, as I could see, that it was a temporary muse and that I would retire inside as soon as the space was ready. So, after a good ten minutes or so, when she returned and told me that the table was ready and when I requested to continue to sit outside, it took her by surprise and she kindly reminded that the heat might become bothersome. By this time, I had sensed the magic of a meal under the open skies of Kolkata where I could spread my eyes across the tops of the buildings, but where I was not so high as to seem disconnected from the pulse of the city. So, I insisted, borrowing a bit of my American "know it all" confidence, that I would like to sit outside for the entire meal. Although I don´t know for sure but I wonder if she chuckled within, betting an unknown bet that I would regret the decision by the end of the meal.

Very many reviewers have complained that the service at Manzilat is slow but I did not find it to be so. It will be hard for me to dissect whether that was because I was overprepared but in any case, when the complimentary "Khus ka Sharbat" appeared, I was still revelling in my view of the late afternoon Kolkata sky away from the skyscrapers. Contrary to what some of the reviewers had said, the Sharbat was not cloying and was rather refreshing, perhaps because I was quite hungry by this time. For some unknown reason, I had decided that the biryani, which would have been the only thing I could order, had I chose to do so, would not enable me to get a good sampling of all that Manzilat had to offer. Nevertheless, when the waitress asked me if I wanted anything other than their Ulta Paratha and Galauti Kabab, I had to make a real effort not to add the biryani to the order. Anticipating a long wait, I let myself get lost in the solitary view of a summer Kolkata afternoon sky, by then stealthily changing shades under the layer of a cloud while the sounds of the streets underneath grew from a subdued mid afternoon laziness to the humming hustle bustle of the afternoon rush hour. 

Halfway into folding the Galauti Kabab systematically with the two parathas that I ordered, I realized that I desperately needed to make more of the experience and to let my sensual experience linger, which by then was well fed by the gastronomic delight and reinforced by the visual sensations. So when the waitress appeared again, I ordered a Rezala and one more paratha. That it would be a Chicken Rezala rather than Mutton threw me off but it was decidedly delicious - full bodied in flavour, not overly spicy and the chicken literally melting in my mouth. But how do you expect a prediabetic Bong to stop at that ? So, I had to order what I consider to be an acid taste of all places that serve Mughlai cuisine - a Firni. The Firni at Manzilat is outstanding - not overly sweet, with the right proportion of garnishing and of a truly exquisite taste. In hindsight, given how few components go into making Firni, this is a rather nontrivial achievement !

So my dear friend, if you are bored with the air-conditioned, tailored, artificially lit and sometimes crowded dining experience in Kolkata, I suggest a departure. Go to Manzilat on a lazy summer afternoon when the heat may not be so piercing. Have a meal outside on the terrace and do ponder about the nawabs of Awadh who had to leave their dear abodes, that they held close to their hearts, and that they attempted to recreate while struggling to find new roots in our city. What might have gone through their minds as they lazed under the summer sky, munching a paratha with a serving of kabab, and thinking about all that they had left behind ? 

Jab chhod chale Lucknow nagari, kahe haal ke hum par kya guzari

As I sat on the terrace of Manzilat that afternoon, my yearning for all that I had left as home twenty four years ago, were likely not so different from the forefathers of Fatimaji, who were desperately trying to settle down in Kolkata as the country roiled in a historical turmoil. So, when I left my table, bade goodbye to Fatimaji and my waitress, I knew one thing for sure - I would be back again to pick up the threads right where I left them as I cast a longing look at the Kolkata skies from the terrace before climbing down the stairs, to be onto the streets again.