Trips to Valparai have always been close to my heart for various reasons. Perhaps I might spot the enigmatic Nilgiri Tahr on the cliffs en route the hill station or feel the cool breeze coming from the misty plantations.
But a journey to Valparai on a reporting assignment on Thursday turned to be the most satisfying one for a different reason. Accompanied by my photo journalist colleague M. Periasamy, I started our trip from Coimbatore to Valparai early in the morning. While I wanted to document certain behavioural aspects of the rare Lion-tailed macaque, Mr. Periasamy was trying his luck in photographing a rare bird.
As we crossed the ghat section with its 40 hairpin bends and reached Iyyerpadi around 8.45 a.m., a tea estate around 105 km off Coimbatore, a police constable stopped our car and requested us to disembark. A fire tender was parked on the side of the road and people had thronged the spot in large numbers. Soon, I spotted a man atop a high tension electric cable tower in the middle of the tea estate. The policeman told us he was a tea estate worker, who had some issues with the management, and was threatening to jump from there. “We want you to pose as an official from the Labour Department and hold talks with him. Please convince him that his grievances would be addressed and ask him to come down,” the policeman said.
I told him that hailing from Kerala my Tamil wasn’t great. He assured me that wasn’t an issue. “Just pose as an official and talk to him. You can do it, sir,” the cop instilled confidence in me and I agreed.
He then guided me to the power transmission tower where workers were appealing to the employee to come down. As I appealed to him to come down, the worker shot back, “What is your designation? How could you come so fast from Coimbatore?” In a quick response, I told him that I was in Pollachi and that I was directed by my office to reach the venue faster.
Though the policeman and myself didn’t have a thought about the designation, the former said: “He is an Assistant Commissioner from Labour Department. He has come to settle your grievance.”
I asked the man again to come down to settle the grievance. He was atop the tower from 7.30 a.m, and finally agreed to come down. Though fire brigades offered to help, he said he would alight by himself, and came down by 9 a.m., completely exhausted. He was rushed to hospital, and Mr. Periasamy and myself then headed for our work.
After spending the entire day at the hill station, we were not lucky enough to get the desired outcome of the reporting trip. “After all, it appears that our assignment today was to save the man’s life,” said Mr. Periasamy as we were heading back to Coimbatore in the evening. The credit will of course go to the constable.
Neither the policeman nor this reporter had the opportunity to get introduced to each other at the spot as things had turned dramatic after the rescue operation with the man’s emotionally stressed wife swooning. Late at night, I called up the Valparai police station and found out that the name of the real hero of this operation was S. Vel and spoke to him. Not only did he thank me profusely but said the worker, Veeramani, 58, was almost exhausted when we negotiated with him and would have fallen off the tower had the operation been delayed.
(Assistance for overcoming suicidal thoughts is available on the State’s health helpline 104, Tele-MANAS 14416. and Sneha’s suicide prevention helpline 044-24640050).
