My next stop was what was traditionally called 'Janta Market', it was later rechristened to 'Bhadra Market', but people didn't really refer to it by the new name all that much. Janta Market was shopping central for Kudremukh. My family made weekly trips to Janta Market for produce, groceries, stationaries etc. This was yet another place where we ran into people that we liked, didn't like, didn't care for, but nevertheless knew. Being the small mining community that it was, it was awfully difficult to move unnoticed.

Janta Market was also the place for the customary 'community work' that I had to do as a boy scout to earn my community service badge. For as long as I can remember, Janta Market was always an untidy place. Once a year the boy scout group would show up there and clean the place up, giving our token contribution to community service. It was one of the biggest farces that I have ever been a part of. I take that back, the education system is the biggest farce I have even been a part of (it neither provides education, nor is a system). But the 'community service' was definitely a farce I am not too proud of. What was hilarious was that right after we clean a section of the market, the vendor sitting there would throw some garbage right where we just cleaned. We'd look at him and he'd go, something to the effect, "Hey, you guys walk in here once in a blue moon for your pathetic scouting merit badge, and you expect us to change the way we do things for you? Get a life!" He did have a point. We weren't there to clean the place, we were there for the merit badge. But back then, it was considered ok. because everyone was doing the same; everyone from the employees, to the spouses, to the kids. It was always all about doing the least to get away with it. In a small town like Kudremukh, its inevitable that people develop such an attitude; Kudremukh was no different from the American suburbia.

This time when I landed at Janta Market, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The place was actually clean! Almost spotless! Well, at least something has gotten better in the last ten years! The place was virtually deserted, I had gotten there too early to see any activity there. Besides, most of the people who lived there had left Kudremukh for better job prospects. So there weren't enough to fill the place up to begin with.

I strolled around in the market for 10 minutes or so. There wasn't much to do. Also, there was more of the town to see before leaving Kudremukh. So I got back into my car and started driving around in the town.

Driving around, I realized that Kudremukh spread over a relatively large area. It is much larger than it needs to be. There are pockets of dense housing, known as 'Sectors', and large areas of dense vegetation. Not all together unlike Texas. Some say that such a dispersion of housing was planned to inflate the road laying budget. Larger the area, higher is the road building cost, higher are the kickbacks that the planners and administrators get. Others say its because the planners wanted to use up all the land that was appropriated for the township. As the population grew, more building could be built between the Sectors. Whatever the reason may be, there is no denying that a lot more of the precious rain forests were cut down for the township than was necessary, and that, in my opinion is just wasteful and irresponsible.

After an hour or so of driveby sightseeing, I arrived at my penultimate destination before leaving Kudremukh. The town church. Kudremukh, despite its fairly large Christian population belonging to various denominations, had just one church. The different denominations congregated at different times during the day. Kinda like time sharing. The church is located well out of the way on top of a hill with no civilization to speak of nearby. The last time I was here was in my seventh grade when the entire class went on a picnic, and on our way back we decided to take a short break in the church. I don't recall much from what I saw back then. But from what I could remember, the place hadn't changed much at all. The church doors were locked, I had look through the window bars to catch a glimpse of the inside. It was December, Christmas was round the corner. The church was all decorated with the nativity scene in one corner. On the whole, an unremarkable building. Then again, that comment would apply to all the buildings in Kudremukh. Aesthetics was last in the list of desirables when the town was built.

After seeing the church, I wanted to see the only mosque in Kudremukh, but we were running late. So the closest I could get was the view from the top of a nearby hill. It was again, a whole unremarbale building. I figured that I wasn't missing much. Besides, in my 18 years of stay in Kudremukh I hadn't been to the mosque even once. So there was no real desire to see it anymore. A photograph from afar was all that I took of the mosque with me, and drove back to the hotel to check out.

Half an hour later,  we were checked-out and on the road back to Bangalore. We drove past the KIOCL sign, past the hairpin-bend curves, past the tea estates, past everything I knew I might never be able to come back to. As much as I missed Kudremukh, and all the time I spent there, I had a stange tranquil feeling come over me. I had finally found closure. I had taken the time to bid the town goodbye, and somehow that seemed to make all the difference.