Lekhapani Adventures

Well I hope the story is not too long :)
Anyways here it goes....
It was Holi that that day and people could only identify us with the colours on our face... late in the afternoon is when we decided to stop the play and clean up ourselves. Someone amongst us gave a wierd idea of taking a mass bath in a spring that he knew (he had only heard of) in the jungle. Without thinking of the consequences we just drove ourselves to the jungles behind our colony....

There was a guy called Pawan who used to stay in the valley and occassionally used to share his evening gossips with us during playtime. He was the one who warned us saying that it could be dangerous. But we were a bunch of adventurous kids and his warning amused us all the more. We were six guys - Debashish, Amit, Pawan, Harjinder, Dinesh and Ajab Singh. We had a battery torch, a knife and a thick stick as our weapons and ammunition :). It was 3:45PM when we started and by the time we crossed the valley to get into the jungle it was 4:15. The path was becoming darker, not because the evening was approaching but the density of the jungle was increasing. Suddenly, the first breakthrough--- we saw a Jaguar (Bagheera of Mowgli) staring at us from the peak of a tree. He had no choice rather that sitting and staring at us, as we were more in number. We just watched him for 10 minutes and carried on our search for the spring. We could hear to some unfamiliar sounds which I never heard after that in my life --- sounds of animals who were not quite happy to see men invading into their teritorry. We were all quite as we all had something in our mind because by now everyone had a blurred understanding of the mistake we did coming here without letting anyone know in the other world (the world out of the jungle). But as you know that the show must go on... we kept walking inside.

Here comes the second surprise, this was not an animal this was actually a crack of the mountain which unfortunately came in our way and seemed like a small creek which could be crossed by a calculated jump. When Pawan and Ajab Singh jumped across it was my turn and when I peeped through the creek only to witness darkness. It was deep crack in the mountain which had split it into halves. But just to prove that I was a brave kid I jumped across. Harjinder had some second thoughts in between but he also jumped successfully. Dinesh and Amit were not looking convinced and they thought of dropping the idea of jumping across. 4 guys at one side and 2 at the other doesn't work. We started convincing them that they can do it and they were not convinced anyhow. Finally they started crying and we decided to jump across once again and go back home.

Within two minutes I don't know how but they were at our side. Guess they got conviced but, a bit late :) We were happy to get each other on the other side. But we never realised that it was 5:00PM. By then and the sun was about to leave us in the jungle alone to face the dark realities. We kept walking and saw wild rabbits, few snakes and deers crossing our ways. Finally, we reached the spring.

Aha...till date I remember that surreal scene. The spring was beautiful and a huge gang of living beings were basking around--a huge gang of snakes. They were countless and all of us were chilled till our spines. We never had anything to do rather than stare at them. I feel so bad sometimes because none of us had a camera. :(

Finally we decided to go back as it was getting late. We stepped back and started walking and within a matter of few minutes it was all pitch black. We had no clue what to do. We could not even see each other. Someone tried putting the torch on so that we could see some light in our lives. But of no use Pawan said that by that we would direct the non-human creatures in the jungle to find their dinner but, I guess he was wrong as I know now light would have kept them away from us. But we all were kids and relied on whatever little knowledge we had. We were in dark again. We were walking holding each other in a series realizing that it was the biggest mistake of our lives.

The worse was waiting to happen and it happened as we lost our way back. We all felt that tonight is the last night of our lives. I dont know about others, but I could see my parents and my brother after my death. Time was passing by and we could see the increasing number of radium-lit pairs all around us. These were nothing but the eyes of creatures around us. We were so afraid that we never cared about the reptiles crawling over our toes, fortunately not hurting any of us and even more fortunately, we never hurt any of them. Now the challenge was to save our lives by finding the right way. We went back and phew!! we got a tree that we marked while coming there. We started walking on the right way now and to confirm that we were on the right path was the creek which appeared again. I guess we started seeing things in the dark by now. believe me this time it was less than couple of seconds that everyone jumped across without saying a word as we all knew that we had to survive. Just after crossing the creek the path got broader and we literally started running for our lives. After some time we could see lights in the valley and were assured that life is close now. This was the moment when everyone ran so fast that I am sure they never did in their lives again. We reached the valley :) :) :) and then we reached home as well.

I never told it to my parents and My brother knew about this few years back when I was in college. I was mentally disturbed for around a week after that. My mother asked me many times about the reason and I lied to her saying that it was nothing but unsatisfactory marks in the unit tests. I have no contacts with anyone of that group. But I am sure that we will always remember each other in this life to have faced something like that.

I hope you enjoyed reading this piece of my life as I loved sharing it. Sometimes I feel that god is really there because had he not been there today you wouldnt have got this guy in your lives...

bye and take care...