Another day of meaninglessness. Headbanging and dope till late last night. Lots and lots of homemade crap food which never feels stomach filling as by the time the stash is burned down all the internal organs which signal the brain, "STOP!!! That’s enough", have dozed off.
What’s on today’s agenda? Bunk classes…Visit girl friend… Score…
So the usual suspects gather at the usual place and amidst the usual certainty of indecision time management takes a toss waiting for an agreement to be reached. Such are the vicissitudes of self-proclaimed libertarian set of minds. Push, kick, turn, balance and off. The machines start making their way through the dust clad roads. Slowly moving from known paths trudged on a million times onto virgin ground where the appeal of seeing something for the first time keeps regurgitating again and again.
The road leading to point B wanes through a very small village with some single floored houses dotted here and there. The odd tea shop in the corner and locals glancing at the mini procession of motor cycles. People squatted and smoking tobacco in its rawest form with little reaction to the whirlpools of dust engulfing them like a spell freshly cast. The six degrees of separation carry the baton and the human chain navigation system, indigenous to places before the time of GPS; keep turning the wheels in the intended direction. Not to forget the numerous puffs during the ride and the superb ‘Make a joint on a speeding bike’ antics.
The ride ends here…
The vista is quite spectacular. A dam hosting a serene body of water surrounded by lush green forests which apparently shelter herds of elephants.
So, where to perch for the day? Too many options and too many heads cook up a wonderful broth which leads to everyone stationing bang on the other side of the dam. Road to ground zero emanates some rudimentary riding skills as there is no defined path. Dribbling a few trees, manoeuvring around the divvied shrubs and conquering a few small boulders is all it takes to get there. And the effort is well worth it.
Just in front of the where the pistons have been stopped from moving any longer is the shore. It’s a sandy area with grass scattered inconsistently. The water is calm and circumferentially picket fenced by an ambrosial lining of vegetation. On the opposite shore is a fairly sized dam with all the water gates tightly shut surrounded on either side by huge boulders which look like consciously placed because the landscape designer wanted to have them that way.
Straight into the cool water goes everyone under a mild Indian afternoon sun. Some decide to swim to the middle and float around and sometimes dive deep to feel the weight of the water before emerging again, others who have high confidence on their lack of swimming skills decide to stick around places where the level of water is not a threat while a few decide to help the latter ones learn how to swim. Not a care in the world. Blue skies above, sound of ripples hitting the floating bodies and marijuana doing a passionate dance in the mind to that music. It inspires comparisons with the seclusion of Krikkit*, a planet which had a completely black sky due to a dust cloud (which was composed chiefly of the disintegrated remains of the enormous spaceborne computer Hactar which was originally created by the Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax to design the Ultimate Weapon producing a very, very small bomb that, when activated, would connect every star to every other star, cause them to all go supernova simultaneously and, thus, destroy the universe. The bomb proved dysfunctional because Hactar had designed it with a tiny flaw, reasoning that no consequence could be worse than that of setting the bomb off. The Silastic Armorfiends disagreed and destroyed Hactar) and thus the people of Krikkit led insular lives and never realised the existence of the Universe. Thank you again Douglas Adams.
Where the hell is all that noise coming from? Answer : A bunch of nincompoops having their own way of alcoholic fun on the other shore, just by the dam. Dude, anything dry is much better. Alcohol brings out a fully different side of things which was in no way conducive to the atmosphere. The result, banter between the two herds, People seeking silence vs. people breaking it and total annihilation of the utopia. The ensuing exchange was anything but convivial and did not last long but a constant disturbance was created which polluted most of the senses. All of a sudden the racket experienced a spike in volume. Anybody could not care less of what was going on. Environmentalists had a good case of making arrests due to sound pollution. Then again the tone was a bit queer now. Or was it ? Certainly yes. Something was not right. Indeed.
One of them was gone.
The fight-or-flight response, also known as the acute stress response, refers to a psychological reaction that occurs in the presence of something that is terrifying, either mentally or physically. This is when the sympathetic nervous system kicks in and a number of things begin to occur: your heart and breathing rates increase, digestion slows or stops, the pupils dilate and you begin to sweat. That’s what each and everyone felt after fathoming what had actually happened and imagining the number of fathoms underwater the missing man might be. Two splashes and two minds which selected the fight response dive in and start swimming.
A train of thoughts hoot through their minds, “Have to save him”, “Will save him”, “Keep swimming”, “The water is getting really heavy”, “How will I pull him out”, “Still can’t see any signs of life”, “Where is he ?”. The hurried strokes, the questions echoing in the head, the reverberating cries of desperation instantly transform the surroundings. They keep swimming towards the assumed point of disaster never losing hope, never thinking about letting go. But the stretch is too long and water gets heavier and heavier and starts pulling them down with its liquid vines. A quick stop for some breath and off again. But still nothing. They hope to get some signal from a living organism trying to fight the liquid of life for life itself. Nothing. The muscles start aching; the lungs start revolting, thoughts start slipping and the water smirks and pulls down the two bodies even harder. It’s not possible to go on anymore, they stop. With them ends all chances of not turning the place into a watery grave as all the other spectators could manage to do is just defend their title.
As this whole episode was unfolding some of the others guys rode off on their bikes to get help and help came but after the final bell had tolled. The two man rescue party, which had failed, swam back and watched a search party form. They sat still. They waited and waited and waited. The hand crafted rocky shore was filled with on lookers, while some villagers with bamboo sticks kept poking the water like they were searching for a lost treasure. The nonchalance etched on their faces looked very uncanny to both of them. But they kept silent and waited. Eventually the body was retrieved.
I stood up and walked down to check for any signs of life which I had tried to save. I had never attested death before.
It was cold. We left and never went back there.
