The Paeans of Octavio Paz

Ootacamund

In the Nilgiris Hills

I went looking for the Todas.

Their temples are cone- shaped and are stables.

Thin, bearded, impenetrable,

they milk their sacred buffaloes

murmuring incoherent hymns.

They guard a secret from Sumeria,

not knowing that they guard it.

Between the thin, dry lips of the elders

the name of Ishtar, the cruel goddess,

shines like the moon on an empty well...

A vision on the mountains road:

the rose camelia tree

bending over the cliff.

Splendor in the sullen green,

fixed above an abyss.

Impenetrable presence,

indifferent to vertigo – and language...

~ Octavio Paz

(winner of the 1990 Nobel prize for Literature)

Nilgiris has mesmerized one and all they came, they saw - got conquered
(still coming in droves)

a laureate from far of ... as far from Mexico came visiting and

had this to say.

Source: The Nilgiris Guide (1993)

By D.Venugopal
Nilgiri Documentation Centre.