Mar 30, 2017

Adventures in a jungle

Samik, Sayan, Kalyan and I have met after a long time and decided to go for an adventure in a Jungle resort. A lot of our friends and family are also staying there. We take a walk towards the forest and come across a big entrance going down towards a tunneled basement having a mysterious staircase. We enter the orifice and start following the staircase. Like in a normal building the staircase kept winding back and forth as we change the floors. After a couple of floors there are openings on either sides like an open staircase. Through them the forest slowly reveals itself. Right in front there is a water body, kind of a pond. And looking at that I have a dejavu. I have been here before. I have been to this forest before with Krishna and it is a dangerous forest with a lot of ferocious animals. I had just started remembering all the past incidences and before I could speak it out to them, I see Samik has already gone ahead, in a matter of seconds straightaway head on, he slides himself down into the pool.

I give out a shriek of fear and start telling the others that a massive ferocious crocodile stays in that pond. Gasping for more breath I say, " once you are in there, there is no chance you can come back alive". All of us start panicking and the next moment I spot some movement in the water. I see thorny dark scales shining in the obscured sunlight through the thick cover of the forest, moving in the water. I bring their attention to the movement and instantly all of us realize it is the massive crocodile I was talking about. We cry and call out his name aloud but he is nowhere to be seen. We saw him slide into the pond but no sign of him after that.

We are out in the open Jungle now and suddenly there is a foreigner with us looking to explore more. I start walking with her telling her stories I had gone through the previous time I was here. We were being chased by animals we have never seen before. Ferocious mythical creatures which come in a herd and just want to kill you in a stampede. Baboons, elephants, rhinos, dinosaurs, lions - none of them and as much we know about in this Real world. All of them look different, more ferocious than normal, like from a mythical world. I was narrating how we were constantly running to escape from each of these attacks, how we maneuvered to get away from the stampedes. Suddenly the earth starts shaking. We See The Rocks, water and trees vibrating in thunder and I knew they have come again. I hold the foreigner's hand and show him from far away a huge cloud of dust rumbling towards us. And before we could gather any sense to react, in the whirlpool of the dust we could see a herd of massive mammoths running towards us.

In seconds all of us are already scattered and I end up in the Tunnel through which we had entered the jungle. I start climbing up, running and gasping for breath. After a couple of floors I end up in another entrance of the forest. I retract and start climbing down to the next floor and I land up in yet another instance of the forest. I quickly realize that it is a maze. No matter how many steps I go up or down I will end up in another entrance of the forest. Apparently there is no way out of here. Still I keep panting and I keep climbing up and down searching for a new opening for hours to come. I don't remember how many hours passed by before I lose my consciousness out of fatigue one one of the floors.

Next time I open my eyes, I am lying down on one of the Midway staircase landings, my eyes fixed on a half opening through the Midway landing leading into a new flight of stairs which I couldn't notice before because it is hidden from normal eyesight. I manage to crawl through that small opening into the new staircase which leads me to the exit where I finally see people happy with their families, smiling heavily after a brief visit to the forest. In contrast I I'm terribly distressed losing all my friends and having wanted to save their lives I start running towards the resort where our friends and family were staying. On my way running I meet Gautam mesho and ask him if he has seen my father. He says no. I keep running and straight away enter a room where I see my mother and sister safe relaxing. I tell them what just happened but no one believed me and kept quiet. Now that they were at least safe I left them and locked myself in a room with Eyes full of Tears exploding with helplessness and guilt.

After several months I happen to meet Samik again and was shocked. I catch hold of him and shake him and ask him, " what happened that day?"

He said, " I got lucky and escaped through a hidden tunnel inside the pond."

One big sigh of relief and I finally felt that I have never been happier before.