17/02/2020
Into The Wildness, Along the Foggy Path
” It is likely that the fuel can go empty anytime, the road is in utter bad condition”, said Rijesh while driving the car mechanically. There was a touch of gloom around us, slowly sneaking in as much as the blinding mist.
It is always true that an experience that took us to a frenzy mood lingers forever, giving a shudder each time we think of it. My story about a journey to Gavi was not a different one. The entire baffling drama started with our getting permission to enter the Gavi route at noon which is not allowed normally. It is needless to say that we were late; late not by minutes but hours. We were least bothered about the distance we had to cover en route Gavi , in fact we had little idea about the place. As we passed a few kilometers, a kind of anxiety and dilemma began to cast over us in such a way that we even thought of cancelling the journey midway.
Climbing the steep glen was not an easy task, that too in the mist which blinded the view horribly. The packed lunch kept in the car had aggravated our hunger when we decided to pull over beside a heap of broken rocks kept for road work. We had a good notion about the place and the possible elephant attack that we were not able to take the lunch peacefully, but Jamsheer and I managed to finish almost fully without wasting the food. (One year later I happened to see a video in which two guys were seen charged by elephants and to my horror, it was near the same heap of rocks where we had lunch..!)
The journey continued…Gavi seemed to be farther…much farther…. a never reaching destination….everyone had only one question…one single question... How much longer?
On the contrary to what we thought, reaching Gavi was a big deal. Not a piece of cake.
All of us were concerned about the level of fuel in the car, as we were not fully sure how much longer to run to reach Gavi. Besides, the road was almost fully broken making it impossible to drive the car in top gear. We all started looking at each other at sixes and sevens not knowing what to do. No petrol stations around, no people for help, check posts that appeared between kilometers were the only hope. But everything would be in peril once the fuel emptied. And Gavi still seemed far … too far to reach...
It was getting darker now, leaving no sign of our destination, when we reached a check post where an aged officer’s remarks added fuel to the fire. He said as if to the younger officer, “ wasn’t it two weeks before that a man was killed by an elephant around here, he was literally smashed and crushed like anything.” He said we had to cross the final check post before 6.30 evening. Valikkunnu, if my memory serves me best, is the final check post inside Gavi became our new destination. Getting out of the forest was the only concern now; the name Gavi had already been replaced by check post.
After a few kilometers, it was I who identified the dam where the movie ‘Ordinary’ was shot; the climax scene was horrifying. I cried , “ This is Gavi, we are passing through those spots seen in the movie.” It was nice to see those places where the incidents in the movie took place. Gavi was beautiful, enchantingly beautiful. Unfortunately we had no time left to get down and watch the place , our destination had been reset, somewhere in the middle of the journey.
It was the gate of the final check post that looked like a pass to normal life for us after hours of uncertainty and unrest. We were out of the forest now. We were told there was a fuel station nearby and that was a moment of relief, a sigh of relief. There was a tea shop at the check post and hardly had we reached there when we ordered tea and snacks and the tea looked tastier than ever before.
On the way to bus station, we all had the same feeling, Gavi is an unfulfilled dream, an unfinished journey, yet to begin over again. The car was running faster now, leaving the fog and thick forest behind, giving a slight ray of hope for the next time, to come back for a nostalgia. It was dark around us, and the cooling breeze slowly soothed us into tranquility.
AMRAN
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