the Mundane & the Potpourri........

The year was circa 1999. A hot summer' day in March. And there I was, getting down wearily from an overnight bus from Bangalore about 4 kms from the temple town of Subramanya in the midst of the Western Ghats. Accompanying me, or rather, I was accompanying my friend (Arun) and his two cousins (Chetan and Harish) on what was the beginning of my first TREK in the forests and hills of Bisle Ghat. They were "veteran trekkers" unlike me.

I was full of enthusiasm and was ready for 2 days of rich experience. And, also the rights to brag, to some of the mortal ones back home! It was still a long time away from dawn and we spent a considerable time freshening up at a nearby stream, stretching and trying to ward off sleep. A little before dawn, we started on our trek on the asphalted road, waiting for a local village bus to drop us off at a designated location from where we would veer off the beaten track. The bus finally caught up with us (!!) after we had covered almost 4-5 kms and a short 20 minute ride later, I was looking at some huge hills...and my suspicions proved to be bang on target. We were going to climb them and get down to the other side! Surely my friends (now, were they really???) would go easy considering that this was my first time out there. All my pleadings bounced off their deaf ears and they argued that the very purpose of our being there was to climb and get down and probably repeat this exercise a few times over the next 2 days. The alternatives were even worse...so I trudged behind them...still grumbling and mumbling to myself and probably cursing the exact moment when I had said yes to this soon-to-be-terrible day. So much for the bragging rights!

The climb was hard and the sun seemed bent on taking revenge for an earlier swear word I might have used in its direction. Every time we reached a 'peak', it seemed someone was stretching my limits by introducing a few more hundred feet of climbing to reach the 'actual' peak. This happened quite a few times. Being my first such adventure, I had carried a few loaves of bread n buns with jam and pickle to go with them. How did I know that the others would also be bringing the same fare? Of course, I was not expecting a-la-carte Italian cuisine, but surely they would have brought chappatis, etc! And to re-enforce one of Dilbert' principles, all the food was over much before lunch as we were all ravenously hungry! The others were unperturbed, probably having lived thru these kinda situations innumerable times. But I was pretty sure that they would leave me to be cleaned up by scavenging animals or, at best, bury me if they were in a generous mood after I died of starvation.

But no such thing happened (I must have done some good deeds indeed in my past) and we finally made it to a small cluster of houses (3 to be precise) by 3 pm. One of the small houses was occupied by a forest guard, behind whose home stretched the vast and dense forests of the Ghats. We got round to talking to him after washing and feeling a bit fresh. He pointed the house farthest to his, where an old couple were sunning themselves. The only other inhabitants of this cluster were a mother and daughter who lived in the small house in-between. We went there to have a much-needed lunch. After helping ourselves to humongous quantities of rice and pepper rasam, we went back to the forest guard' home. We told the woman that we would be back for more servings for dinner later.

The guard' home was divided into two parts. He lived in one part and the other doubled up as a radio room. After sleeping and resting ourselves for an hour, we woke up to hot steaming cups of tea. It turned out that his wife was away at her parents' place. He regaled us with stories of the forest, wild elephants, animal census, managing BIG government babus on their trips to the forest, poaching, the timber mafia, ghosts, sacrifices and so on. Towards dusk, we four went for a walk in the forest and managed to be back before it was dark. With nothing else to do, we were curious about village rituals, superstitions, spirits, etc and bombarded the guard with our queries. In the process, we must have come across as typical city-bred cocky fellas, the way were making fun of their belief in ghosts and spirits. We finished dinner at the woman' home and were back listening to some more gory stories of the guard.

He offered us some spare charpoys to sleep on and also offered us the radio room if we wanted. As it was pleasant, Arun, Harish and I decided to sleep outside his house. Chetan did not want to be the only one to sleep in the radio room all alone, but we three were adamant that we would sleep outside. He cursed us and advised us against sleeping out in the open, quite literally in the forest. The guard also retired to his part of the house and soon Harish also went off to sleep. Arun and I were enjoying sleeping under the stars and also listening to the sounds of the forest at night (but not much appreciating the eerie sounds). In spite of all the weariness I wasn’t sleepy and same was the case with Arun. It was almost half past 11, when lo and behold - an old man came shuffling slowly out of the guard' home! He was wearing a white dhoti and a white vest (white, a la one of those Ramsay brothers’ movies!)...

After what seemed like an hour of being dumbstruck, Arun n me came to our senses...or, did we really? We asked the old man who he was, but he ignored our Qs and also ignored our presence...and moved slowly towards the bushes to relieve himself. When he did not respond to our raised voices and when we did not hear anything from the guard, we feared the worst. By now, Harish was trying to be awake and failing miserably. It probably was all a nightmare for him. Chetan, inside the radio room, was almost hollering and demanding to know what was happening, who the 'old man in white' we were shouting about was? He was in the most piquant situation, he did not want to come out and neither did he want to remain inside all alone! The old man slowly started making his way back inside. No amount of shouting was affecting him...and there was still no sign of the guard! Was this the Devil' retribution for making fun of ghosts and spirits? Would the old man (we were sure now that he was a ghost) come back to devour us? After a few seconds, the guard finally came out rubbing his eyes off deep sleep.

In a nonchalant manner, he asked us what the entire ruckus was about...all of us started speaking at the same time...but finally managed to ask him...”didn’t you see that old man in white who just came out of your room and went back in”? We were sure his answer would be NO and our worst fears would come true...the ghost must have disappeared! But we weren’t prepared at his reaction....he burst out laughing and was guffawing by now....we were all looking at each other and wondering whether the guard was also a ghost and maybe this was the way he built his appetite! He managed to control his laughter and started apologizing profusely! We couldn’t make head or tail of it....he finally managed to clear it all up....it seemed that the old man was his father and being pretty old, hardly ventured out!!! The guard had simply forgotten to mention his father in our conversations earlier....we were looking sheepish...and it turned out that he was DEAF!!! He went back in, but to tell you the truth, we never really slept that nite...

posted by rishi shankar @ 4:14 AM