Hi everyone! Welcome or welcome back to my blog. Terribly sorry for not posting anything for so long, but the thing is that I have been thinking about putting up some of my own writings instead of books reviews, now. I actually had a topic for my essay writing in the English grammar paper of my semester exams that I really liked. I could not write as much as I wanted about it in the paper due to the word limit, so I decided to later convert it into a bigger essay on my own. So I did that, and now I would like to share it with you. It is a very simple descriptive cum narrative essay which I have tried to make the best I can. So I hope you enjoy it:
The morning of the second day of our school trip found our energy at an all-time high. Our agenda for today was quite interesting. Today, we, the honorable students of grade X, were all set to conquer the great fort of Pratapgarh (er, not quite, but I hope you get the idea). Our very good school had arranged for an excellent bus to take us to our destination. Pratapgarh fort was one of the stronghold of Maharaj Chhatrapati Shivaji, and was considered impregnable. Also, this was the very fort below which the great king was said to have killed the enemy general Afzal Khan. This information was later told to us by one of our guides. He also showed us the various ways in which the inhabitants of the fort could defend themselves during an attack, including narrow slits in the wall used to pouring hot oil on the enemies.
All of us climbed into the bus, screaming and shouting as we always do. We finally set off on our destination. As our hotel was on the other side of town, we had to pass through the extremely busy bazaar, where apparently, some local festival was taking place. The heavy traffic caused by this, and an upcoming road-construction site, greatly slowed us down. This ended up in us reaching the floor about two hours late, just in time for lunch, but more of that later. The road to the fort was a beautiful, but eerie one. It passed through such densely forested valleys that the sun barely passed through. Nevertheless, the narrow, steep road, curving and meandering through the lush slopes of the Western Ghats, is a sight to behold.
As I mentioned earlier, we reached quite later than expected. So we put the rest of our work aside, and got started to the main topic, food. All of us had brought along packed lunches provided by our hotel, and we sat down on the outermost walls of the fort and ate them. Normally, we would have run around, shouted and talked, but this time there was silence. The sight of post-monsoon rainforests from atop the walls of a three hundred year old fort, left most of us spellbound. All around us there lay the rugged terrain and the vast stretches of forests of the Western Ghats. A bright green carpet of seemingly the highest quality lay all around us, encircled by the big, blue mountains that lay beyond our physical reach and mental imagination. Even lunch took longer than expected, and by the time we finished the tour and entered the bus, it was already dark. We began our journey hotelward.
As the driver carefully navigated the bus along the narrow mountain paths, I could not help but feel mesmerized by the sweet sounds of a wild night. A small, unassuming waterfall gurgled in the distance and an owl hooted by my window, having been surprised by the hoot of our bus first. The cool mountain breeze blew through the forest, making the leaves rustle in the soft full-moon light. I fully opened my window and lay back, letting the wind loose upon my face and into my hair. As I looked around with my eyes half-closed, I perceived most of my friends to have dozed off and the luckier ones like me, who had bagged a window seat, followed the same practice as I did. We were not worried about going off to sleep. Mahabaleshwar was still about an hour away, and there was still much time for the hunger pangs for dinner to set in, having had a late but substantial lunch. Suddenly, a loud bang reverberated through this serenity. Our radiator had blasted due to overheating, something the that seemed ridiculous to us half-asleep students, especially during the cool days following the monsoon and before the ostentatious October heat set in.
The children who were asleep awoke with a start, and the others groaned disappointedly, having been in so rude a manner, snapped out of their reverie. At first we looked around helplessly with groggy eyes, but as everything cleared, the truth slowly dawned upon us. We were in the middle of nowhere, without a mechanic and with a blasted radiator.
For those who were unimaginative, or had earlier failed to notice the beauty of their surroundings, not everything changed, but for their polar opposites such as me and some of my friends, something very strange happened. Suddenly, all the beauty of the night disappeared, and the sweet sounds were replaced by a spooky silence. The light of the moon illuminated the grim, dark vales below us, The tiny, unassuming waterfall now turned into a big river, poised to wash us down the valley at a moment’s notice. The owl now threw off it’s surprised attitude and hooted gravely, as though warning us of the dangers of the night forest. We could feel the eyes of a thousand animals of the night rested upon us, their pupils glittering like little jewels studded in a huge, green crown. They seemed to me to be reflecting the sights of the vast firmament above us. They seemed to be towering above us and we slowly crouching below them. Everything was still.
Our mind was maybe destined to be played with that day, because our minds were yet again made to snap out of our reverie by another noise. But this time, it was help that was near at hand, and I knew it. We heard the grunt of an old car behind of a model so old, that is was a wonder that it had even managed to climb so high up the hills in the first place. The car, apparently could not pass ahead as the road was extremely narrow and our bus was blocking the most part of it. Our driver descended from his perch and explained to them our situation. Fortunately for us, they decided to be sensible and offered to help us. They had some sealant lying in their boot, which our driver stuck on our radiator and temporarily fixed it. So the bus having been fixed and our benefactors duly thanked, we once again took off into the night.
After an hour had passed, we could see the city lights in the distance. To us (us special ones mentioned a couple of paragraphs earlier), they looked like thousands of diyas lit during Diwali, which welcome Lord Ram home. Soon we passed through the bazaar, which now looked bare, with shopkeepers preparing to close for the day. We slowly made our way to the other side of the city, where our hotel resided. This time we were not slow due to traffic, but due to the fact that we had a temporarily fixed radiator which must not be unduly exerted. We ate dinner soon after we arrived and subsequently, sent off to our rooms. I felt extremely tired after our sojourn and as soon as my head hit the pillow, I passed into oblivion….
Someone shook me hard by my shoulder, and I awoke suddenly. “Wake up fast! It’s already seven! We plan to go to see Pratapgarh today, and you are still asleep. Aren’t you excited?” It was the voice of my friend Aryan. He is a good fellow, but quite irritating at time. I slowly smiled and calmly said to him, “Aryan, I have already experienced Pratapgarh as you never will be able to.” “I know you have been there last year before you joined our school, but that does not mean that we won’t be able to enjoy ourselves as much as you did!”, he retorted, and walked out with a huff.
So that’s it everyone! I hope you liked it. If you did, stay tuned for more such essays and short stories. If you did not like it, stay tuned anyways. Do subscribe to my blog, perhaps you would like some of the other ones I put up, who knows ? I know this is not a YouTube video and I am not a youtuber, but I just love using this line. So, this is me, Arindam Bhaduri signing off, Good-bye!