PROLOGUE
I am standing in the middle of nowhere. I am alone… I am wondering… how can this possibly happen…its impossible…but yet it has happened and that is why I am here… I look ahead…no sign of light…just a trail which I had followed a few minutes back…running and screaming…but all in vain… I start walking back in the hope of finding my friends who are possibly half a kilometer away from me… There is silence, loneliness, and hopelessness…yet I have to reach them…to decide what to do next…After taking a few brisk steps, I find them… the look in their eyes is of exasperation…of an active volcano…which can erupt any instant and bury me alive…I see their eyes speaking to me…blaming me…cursing me…for what has happened…
I go in front of them with my head held…oh…oh…oh …wait…calm down…don’t think too much…no need to worry…nothing tragic has happened…we’ve just missed our college bus…that’s all…
Hence…I go in front of them with my head held high and smile on my face…and say… “Guyyyyys…this is awesome…!!! We are going to have an ADVENTURE tonight…we are walking down the remaining 8 km. to the college!!!”…and now their emotions have full intensity…cursing me…blaming me…shouting at me… and to defend myself I say…”It’s not my fault…it’s the driver who is to be blamed.”
The next bus starts from Ajmeri Gate at 9:00…and we are 2 km. away from Sisodia Garden…which means we have to wait for another 45 minutes to catch the next bus…and we are not sure even that bus will stop or not…and even if it stops…we will get no dinner in mess...
Hence we decide to walk down to the college and keep an eye for any 4-wheeler…car, bus, truck, tractor…anything…which can give us a ride and help us save our already exhausted bodies some energy…
FLASHBACK
Already exhausted…because we have come back from Choolgiri(the famous Jain Temple with a number of statues of all the 24 Jain Tirthankar) which is on a peak of the Aravallis…where we went via multiple staircases… and came back the same way… after which… we walked a bit more to reach the bus stop at Sisodia Garden… but had roughly 25 minutes… hence walked to the Ram Mandir a kilometre away and waited for the bus there…
The bus came… its headlight fell directly on my face …I waved for the bus to stop…so it was obvious that the bus would stop… but sometimes in life most obvious things do not happen…
The bus did not stop…there was a sudden adrenaline rush through my veins as I saw the bus going away…I shouted and ran after the bus...in fact we all ran…in the hope that…we’d be able to catch the bus on that free-from-traffic road… so we ran and ran…shouting and screaming at the top of our voices…very soon I realized that there was no one running beside me...I was running alone… but I had to stop the bus… so I gave it another shot…a final dash but all in vain and that is how I reach into my present state…
BACK TO PRESENT
So, at present…we are walking on this empty straight road… now what to do, while walking through this forest…its no mall or city centre that we may ogle at someone…it’s the quiet, silent, eerie jungle…in where we can only expect some predator ogling at us…fortunately that is not the case…or at least that is what I feel…
To make our moods lighter, one of my friends starts telling some really good PJs and we feel like killing him…anyways, he is successful in turning the atmosphere a bit better… and we start discussing similar events… in which some of our seniors got stuck in a situation similar to ours… and that is why we have a reason to believe that some 4-wheeler will give us a lift…
Vehicles come every now and then; however most of them come from the front... Whenever a vehicle comes from behind, we wave at it…but looking at a bunch of 4 guys on an empty road like this…no one will stop… because we are strangers… and general common sense implies that we may be robbers, looters or murderers…
Hence, we walk… A bike passes…a scooter goes past…we don’t wave at them… then a car comes…we wave…nothing happens… so we walk some more…this time an auto-rickshaw… but it is already hired… so we walk a bit more… a Wagon R comes… and fortunately it stops… the man in the car neatly dressed…seems to belong to a good family… he speaks softly and politely… we try to explain him our situation…he listens attentively and then says, “Actually we would have loved to give you a ride, but we are short of space… by the way could you tell us where is xyz(what name did he say… whatever… I don’t care)”, we don’t know…so he thanks us and leaves us… (Damn… he stopped only because he needed help…)
It is as if we have lost all hope… we will anyways reach the institute… but now no one has the strength to walk more...and my “Guys…this is awesome” reverberates in my ears…
In this situation, we need something … to relieve ourselves…to calm ourselves… we need some kind of reserve of energy … so that we can continue… I recall Andy Dufrene… “Hope is a good thing, may be the best of the things and no good thing ever dies…” and continue walking…
Now, we have reached the Keshav Vidyapeth which means institute is just 5 km. away… just 5 more… O God…do something…some miracle…please…
SUPERNATURAL INTERVENTION
At this instant, we look back and find a Maruti van coming from behind… we wave at it… but it doesn’t stop and continues moving…suddenly someone shouts…
“arey…mess wale bhaiya” and then we all shout in unison…
All of a sudden, we hear the screech of the brakes… we go there…and explain the situation to the mess wala bhaiya… but he seems reluctant…
He says “bhaiya… we have to buy some items… you continue walking…we will come back for you…”
Now this is utterly disgusting… seems completely impossible… why would he come back for us… and if he doesn’t have enough room…how will he give us a lift after getting more of whatever he has to purchase…
My hope turns into despair… but they promise they will come back… and a few minutes more prove that they fulfil their promise… we board the van filled with the stock of bread and eggs… and here goes our ride… our saviour mess wala bhaiya … we will be indebted to him for this ride…
Now smiles return on our faces… we look each other in eye… with contentment… all ill feelings vanish…it’s a feeling of victory that is spread on our face… I feel it… and so do my friends…we are all hungry… and now we’ll get good some food…
EPILOGUE
We enter the institute… no one stops us…the van goes straight takes the usual right turn…then goes on the road adjacent the girl’s hostel, and then takes a final right turn…to reach the back door of the mess…We thank the mess-wala-bhaiya… and go ahead … make a literal back-door entry…and have the most delicious dinner ever… simply because we are extremely tired and hungry and the dinner consists of aalu- puri…
A friend of ours is having dinner with us… and we tell him…about our adventure…he says… “oye wo log tum the kya… haan mujhe laga to tha… ki koi hai…par samajh nahi paaya”. And, again a surge of emotions…damn what the hell were you thinking then… should have at least stopped the bus…
(Acknowledgements: Thanks to Mimani, Manish and DB(deepak) for being a part of this experience…for our pics…visit my orkut profile…
This was getting too lengthy…hence many of the details have been skipped…so for more details… contact the three of them…or possibly go to the comments section…in case any one of them might have dropped in some of those details…Thanks for reading)
