It was raining yesterday, when I went out on a drive via an intercity road. I could see the mangroves along the shores, dark, bleak and the distant mountains pitch black and tall in the moonless and rainy night. Kind of reminded me of maku's village, where its pitch black at night, so dark, that if you hadnt had the god given body co-ordination, you wouldnt know whether the potato crisp you want to eat is going into the nose or the mouth.
He'd invited me there to his farmhouse. One of my friends (IAK) and I were to join him and his group of 2 cousins and a friend, who'd already reached.
Well ya, so we'd reached maku's farm house in the evening. His farmlands are situated right in the valley of the sahyadri mountain ranges. Its a picturesque place, especially in the monsoons with fields of paddy on one side and cloud covered mountains on the other. We had made plans to make a night trek and have our dinner in the mountain air. One of maku's uncle had prepared dinner and was going to be our 'local guide' to the way up to a clearing in the woods, where we would have our dinner. We packed the food, and started off, equipped with battery operated torches and a 'laalten' (A kerosene lamp). The moment we crossed the fence, it was obvious that we would have to stick together to avoid getting lost in the darkness. Maku's uncle leading the way, we passed through the fields, breathing the fresh and cool air. Thankfully, it was not raining at that time. We had a nice one hour trek to the place where we were supposed to be having dinner. We enjoyed our time up there. Maku's uncle downed a full 'desi' liquor bottle and rest of us contended ourselves with cold drinks. Maku's village has a lot of queer stories, the ones which are typical in an isolated village. These stories include ghost sightings, animal sightings and other such incidents. Panther and wild boar sightings are a common phenomenon there. Maku's uncle told us a lot of real life stories that night.
After stories and dinner, we started back. There was a small stream of water which we had to cross. Maku's uncle spotted two crabs in the water (not uncommon, there). He is known in the village to be an expert crab-catcher. True to his reputation, and that too after he'd downing half a bottle of liquor, he swooped his hands into the water and came up with the crab, which was struggling against his firm grip. All this was done in a flash of a second !!. He'd caught the crab between the shell and the pincers.
He took hold of a container and put the 'still struggling' crab inside it, closed the lid and handed the container to me. Thereafter, when I held the container, I could feel the crab knocking against the walls of the container !!!
He went after the second crab, which was crawling ahead with great speed. Uncle took one of maku's cousins along with him to hold the torch. He asked us to wait at the very spot. We saw them go along the stream a long way, and finally out of sight as the stream twisted and turned through the woods. After sometime, we started worrying about uncle and maku's cousin. Both were gone for a long time. We were stranded and couldnt move without our 'guide'. We started contemplating whether to go see where they had gone. I said "Guys, if it rains, we'll be soaked to our skin." My friend IAK responded by saying, "It didnt rain when we trekked up, nor did it rain when we ate our dinner, beneath the open sky, why now?".
A moment later, as if someone above had heard our conversation.............it started raining. We couldnt wait there now. There was no shade. Uncle had not come back. So we decided to follow the stream along which he and maku's cousin had gone. As we were walking along, we started calling them aloud. There was no response. After walking clumsily in the rocky bed of the stream, we came up to a point where the stream narrowed and it was covered with an arch of bushes, so that you couldnt see beyond. We must have shouted out for them 7-8 times from there and there was no response. Then suddenly, maku's cousin called back, "We're coming". And then they appeared, ducking under the bush-arch. They had finally caught the second crab too.
Later, when we reached his house, maku asked his uncle...."Where were you?". He said that he'd chased the crab for quite a long distance and had finally caught him just some distance away from the arch of bushes. Maku asked him why he did not answer to our calls. His cousin who was with his uncle told maku that they'd answered aloud the first time they heard his voice. Maku said that he'd called out several times near that bush there. But strange as it seems, maku's cousin and his uncle, heard our voices only once, even though both parties were near the bush.
It could be nothing but isn't it just worth noting that,
-Rains only started when maku's uncle disappeared, compelling us to go after him instead of waiting there as he had told us to? It wasnt raining throughout our excursion....and just started at that time? As a matter of fact, it did not rain again all night and even the next day?
-If we were around say just a few feet away from the bush arch and they were a few feet away too, only on the other side, where we couldnt see them, how could they have heard our voices only once when we yelled our throats out for around 2 minutes continuously?
Was it just be maku's drunk uncle and his non-drunk cousin lying? Or was it simply another one of those queer incident which happened there?
