Story Brunch
The sudden splash of my fall was followed by her sudden scream and she rushed half-draped towards the hut holding her other clothes in one hand and her slippers in another.
This story belongs to the surveying camp in our 6th semester of engineering, IIT Kanpur, when we were deported to the Himalayan foothills in the North East, in the midst of December. Our stay was in the hostels of an Agricultural University, about 50 km from Imphal. The university was a beautiful landscape surrounded by hills and valleys and a small stream flowing across the valley.
We had been strictly instructed to not venture out into the adjoining forests due to the presence of hill leopards and venomous snakes all around.
But how could the trio of Mohak, Kunal, and I keep ourselves restrained from misadventures?
We landed at the university camp at 6 AM on the morning of 10th December, and by afternoon we could be found in the dense jungles adjoining the university. The thrill of carving out our own way through the dense vegetation had taken us a long distance from the campus.
Our destination was a small green hut on a distant hilltop and we had planned to reach there. Even after hours of making our way through thorny bushes and scrubs, we were very distant from the hut. We had underestimated the distance as we were wrong in assuming the time it would take to cross the valleys. But then, we had already moved too far to return to the campus by evening. Kunal had become apprehensive, the fear of wild animals was looming as the sunset was approaching, we could sense his fatigue by the way he was dragging his body along the hill slope.
We decided to drop our target of reaching the hut and return back to the campus, but we had already lost our way through the woods. Till the line of our sight, we could only spot thick forests around us. The only option left with us was to keep moving in one direction till we reached a road or a habitation.
Just when we crossed a river stream, we heard the roar of a leopard, and all three of us almost had a nervous breakdown. We saw a yellowish-brown animal hustle across a tree just meters away from us. We looked into each others’ eyes, gestured to run as fast as we could, and the marathon began. We kept running for half an hour without turning back, and just when I thought of stopping and taking a short breath, I realized that Mohak and Kunal were missing, I was all alone. I had lost touch with both of them while running. They had rushed in some other direction.
Fear had started gripping me. Not a single ray of sun could make its way to the forest ground due to the dense canopy, and it was already approaching dusk. I had to keep moving, standing there was not an option. Each small step of mine sounded like a cracker burst in the silent forest. I tried to reach both of them on mobile, but the phone displayed no network. A few moments later the phone switched off as it had not been charged for more than a day due to the night journey.
After walking for an hour, I could hear the mellow of goats. I rushed in the direction of the sound and landed in an open patch of cleared land. There was a green pasture and a small habitation on its other side, including the green hut which had been our target for the day. So finally I reached there, but Mohak and Kunal were to be found nowhere.I was apprehensive about their whereabouts, hoping that they would have made their way back to the campus somehow.
Occupied by thoughts of their well-being,I approached the strew-laden hut and knocked on the wooden door.
A beautiful young tribal girl, around twenty years old, dressed in a red blouse and a yellow skirt appeared from inside the hut, her hair locks studded with long thorns similar to kneading sticks.
She did not utter a word, as if enquiring about my presence there through her eyes, her light brown eyes moving in rhyme with her eyebrows and her orange lips hankering to say something.
I tried to explain –
‘I have lost my way. I have come here from Kharagpur and my college students have camped at Nauni Agricultural University. Can you tell me the way back to the campus?’
Before I could complete my ordeal, she rushed inside the hut and after a few minutes, she appeared with an old bearded man with a bamboo basket in his hand. I explained the whole scenario to the old man. He told that it was not possible to go to the campus that evening as it was already dark and leopards came at dusk to drink water by the streamside. He promised to take me to the campus the next day and asked me to stay in their hamlet till dawn.
Though worried and uncomfortable hearing that, I had no other option but to spend that night with the tribe.
I had also the fear of the action the Professors would take against me for being absent from the camp, despite their strict instructions in the morning to not leave the camp.
My Stay In the Hamlet
It was already twilight and the girl prepared some dinner for me, the aroma of the food was very strong. I took a bite of the chapati, apparently made from some grass, and the soup was tasty.
Inquisitive,I asked her –
‘It’s so tasty, what’s the soup made of, never had anything similar before !’
Before she could say anything, her father replied-
‘My daughter is awesome at cooking, better than her mother, see for yourself how nicely she has made that snake soup’.
I coughed out all the soup I had gulped. Who on earth drinks snake soups? I started feeling strange sensations in my stomach hearing his words.
The old man started again-
‘You are coughing, have some water, these rat testes always get stuck in throats.”
It was incredible and unbelievable! I started feeling nauseating and sick listening to the recipe. I had consumed rat testes dipped in snake soup!
I got up from the dining place and told them that my stomach was aching and I could not eat anything more, and also that I had been a vegetarian my whole life. I just needed some sleep.
The girl sensed my trouble, got up and brought some soft cake on a leaf plate, mixed some milk and jaggery and handed it to me-
‘This is made of oats, and it’s totally vegetarian, you can eat it.’
I ate the oats and it was voluptuous.
I- ‘How did you make it, pls tell me the recipe, I will ask my mother to make it for me, this is better than the ready-made one’.
Once again, her father started-
‘See, I told you, she cooks awesome. To prepare this oats cake you will have to ground the oats to powder. Then put the powder in a bowl of goat’s urine to make its paste. Once it gets sun dried you need to bake it on cow dung, and the sweet aroma emanating from it is due to spray made of bat’s blood.’
I could not control my vomit this time and rushed outside the hut and poured out all that I had eaten. Both father-daughter rushed outside and seeing me panting they brought a mug of water to drink. I gulped more than 2 litres, and told them in clear words-
‘I cannot eat now, I am just too fatigued, I need to sleep immediately’.
They looked at each other and understood my issue. The old man arranged a wooden cot with a bed made of jute fibres and placed them in the open fenced yard outside his hut.
He- ‘ Our hut is too small for three people, and you are a stranger. I have a young daughter, so iI cannot allow you to sleep inside the hut, but don’t worry, you can comfortably sleep in this yard, the leopards generally do not cross the fencing until they get the smell of goats, I have tied them behind the hut for tonight’.
I had nothing to say, I knew he had just left me to sleep and survive at the goodwill and judgement of leopards, it all depended on whose smell the leopard found more salivating- mine or the goats.
The young lady understood my trouble once again, she seemed to be a sensible girl, but she was helpless. She brought a jute blanket from inside, gave me a big wooden ‘lathi’ and said-
‘In case of a leopard attack, you can use it’.
I looked at her, astonished by her ‘wisdom’ this time.
How on earth could I fight a leopard with a lathi?
She- ‘ If you sense any danger, pls give us a loud shout’.
The old man added- ‘Yes, why not? After all, you are our guest tonight, we will ensure your safety.
Both went inside the hut and bolted the wooden door. I retired to the wooden cot thinking if it would make any difference to them in case the leopard ate me instead of his goats this time.
I covered myself in the coarse blanket beneath the star-studded dark sky, it was a full moon and the hills were covered with a golden hue, the green pasture was visible till the other end.I was unable to sleep due to fear and anxiety, growls of wolves could be heard intermittently. Even the mellow of goats sounded like a roar and I wished that the goats kept quiet enough to not attract leopards that night.
I fell asleep by around 3 AM due to fatigue.
I woke up when the sun was overhead. There were no goats around and I wondered if the leopard had come last night. It was not so, they had been left open in the wide pasture for grazing.
I had to reach back to the campus immediately. Looking for the old man I rushed inside the hut, the door was not locked, but there was no one inside.
Looking for them, I wandered to the valley behind the hamlet. There was a small waterfall.
Mesmerized by the beauty of nature I kept walking in that direction without realizing that the young girl was bathing there. I could not notice her till I reached close enough to see her fair curvy bareback. For a few moments, I could not remove my eyes from her. She was pouring water over her silky spotless body, it appeared as if the water was just meandering over a white marble floor.
I decided to silently walk back to the hut before she saw me. But I stepped on a slippery mud surface and slipped all the way to reach the spot where she was bathing.
The sudden splash of my fall was followed by her sudden scream and she rushed half-draped towards the hut holding her other clothes in one hand and her slippers in another.
I dragged myself out of the water and started walking towards the hut to explain why and how did I reach there. But something else was awaiting me.
Hearing her scream, her old father and some other tribals from hamlet rushed toward me.
The girl narrated the ordeal to them. I pleaded my innocence trying to explain that I was unaware that she was bathing on the spot and it was an unintentional mistake.
But the tribals were not to relent and they decided among themselves that the matter should be referred to the King for punishment to me.
Two of them came forward and tied my hands behind my back and took me through a narrow cleared lane in the dense jungle where a wooden throne was placed.
