This is the first entry of the year but I would like to take you back some time along my journey of life. Days, weeks, months, years have since passed by at a stretch. Must be some ten years now, no it’s been fourteen. It’s strange how much those ultra-small, microscopic particles we often refer as brain cells can remember so much from our past, even from our youth. It was the month of April I remember it well because just the day before that particular day on which I am commenting was Holi, the festival of colours. I remember having played Holi outside my city on my tour to Madhya Pradesh. We left around ten in the morning for Bandhavgarh a national reserve camp in Madhya Pradesh. The journey was very long and after short stoppages at places where people were seen playing holi we finally made our way towards our destination.
Our journey was very long and as night came it became quite dark. I realized we were headed through the forest and right into it. We passed two hotels and then I realized that my love for an adventurous stay in the forest had been made. The strange feel of the faint moonlight entering through the tall trees cast strange silvery shadows along the road and as the leaves of the trees rustled the silvery shadows seemed to move, nearly every turn seemed to reveal some kind of a wild animal running away at the sudden intrusion of the headlights into the calm, quiet and serene environment of the forest.
Finally, we reached the government lodge around seven in the evening and I realized that for once my bravery would be put to an ultimate test. The lodge was situated way inside the jungle and very close to the core area. If that was not enough the room we were about to live in was above ground level and the pathway to those cottages were supported by some pillars right in the open surroundings of the jungle. Just as we were entering the room, the bellboy, who was carrying our luggage gave us or rather particularly me the biggest fright of all. Just the night before our arrival thus referring to the full moon night of the Holi purnima, a tiger had killed a bison just below our cottage and parts of the bison still remained to be cleared. The pathway was not that high and if a tiger or a leopard really wanted it could easily jump its way up for some tasty human meat. I remember being very scared and the splendid decor of the cottage hardly did anything to subside my fear. I was so scared I could not move towards the restaurant for dinner which was near the reception office I had to be assisted by my parents .
That night I had a very bloodcurdling nightmare. I saw myself covered with colours except that they weren’t colours at all. I was bathed in my blood as it oozed out from my face, limbs and my torso. A tiger was roaming around me waiting to go in for the final kill while the silvery shadows of the trees slowly turned into jackals, wolves, hyenas and some animals I didn’t see before and as the tiger rounded of for the final kill going straight for my neck I woke up with a start shaking and trembling with fear.
The tiger came again but this time I was not saved, it went in for my throat as I shouted out only to awake again to may parents’ comforting, I was no longer in the jungle outside my cottage nor was I in the cottage, I was back in my room at my house. The dream had followed me all the way here and as far as I remember I could not sleep alone again for a year or so. As time passed, slowly I had forgotten that event but then suddenly one night it all came back to me in the jungles of Kaziranga. It seemed very strange to me when I woke up as the hotel in Kaziranga where I stayed was far away from the core jungle and I had already visited many jungles before. The dream is again lost somewhere in those very brain cells waiting to be relived, to be awoken again by some sort of stimulus.
Well you may have expected a dream involving monsters, fire and some similar stuff after reading the name but that’s how it is. Pathetic! Isn’t it?
Note: The lodge as you see in the picture has been modified and commercialized today to suit human habitation but the true virginity of the surroundings and the chilling feel that arose within me during the stay there may be a bit hard to imagine.
