Our reckless holiday

Taking a 76 year old mother (who by the way has not steped out of her house in the last 30 years)on holiday is a reckless thing to do,especially if the mother is mine.For starters she hates meeting people,secondly once she has settled down in a place(very difficult for her as there are loads of likes and dislikes) then she does not want to be disturbed (she had made herself at home in my place after two difficult months).Well knowing all this well I still took her on holiday to Ooty no less.From the blinding heat of Chennai to the high altitudes of Ooty is a pretty wide spectrum,so I concluded that I am an unacknowledged suicidal personality or reckless or just plain stupid to not see the enormity of what I had undertaken.Oh well guess I will never learn or learn the hard way all the time.
Of course i took the precaution of taking my nephew and his wife along.The boy fulfills the mother's need to have a man around(very important in her scheme of things and in mine too as the boy in question is calm,collected and has a way with the mother...which i don't).The girl has her uses,she is practical,has access to some of the best doctors and is helpful in many ways (detached from the situation....being married into the family also gives her an objective view of things)
The Central railway station was our first hurdle.Having managed to pack her bags,hail a taxi etc we arrive at the station to be greeted by a well meaning porter who offers the mother a wheel chair(senior citizens can avail this facility at a price).The mothers pride was most hurt(in her scheme of things wheel chairs are meant for the disabled) and she quelled him with a look that sent him scuttling all the way to the far end.And so our journey starts and we arrive pretty decently at the Coimbatore station where I take everyone for a good morning cup of tea at the residency hotel(tea in most hotels is a pathetic affair and when the staff are hardly awake its even worse)After some not so nice comments from the mother on the quality of the tea and the largeness of the bill,we wind our way up the hills one very happy family,until just under an hour when the first of the hairpin bends begin.From then on motion sickness takes over and the rest of the drive is spent in the mother being sick and cursing the day she dared to venture out of the house.We arrived finally at our destination to be met by another sibling and a doctor on hand.Unfortunately the doctor looked like on of the many boys in the boarding school(we were staying at a staff house in an international school) and didn't inspire much confidence,but considering that the queen of hill stations is sadly devoid of a decent hospital (any hospital actually never mind decent or not)we didn't have a choice.Of course looks aside the doc proved to be pretty good so by the afternoon,the wheel chair that was scorned at the station was proving to be a god send for the steep climb up to the house.The next day as luck would have it,the sunny days of Ooty disappeared behind a black cloud and it poured like there was no tomorrow.All said we were scrambling to get a return ticket for the mother who if she had a way (she did mention envying the birds that could fly where ever they wanted to)would have left Ooty that very day to embrace the heat of Chennai....but the railways being what they are and with yours truly having every intention of having a holiday she had to stay put for a week.I am convinced that taking a mother like mine on holiday can turn a saint into a criminal in a blink of an eye....