Tendua (Leopard) Gazing Expedition.
(Wrote as part of a memoir for a friend (Alakh) as his Birthday gift from his wife)
The effervescent undergraduate days are normally filled with ‘bubbly’ incidents which juggle between sense and nonsense. The days at IEHE were also filled with such vignettes. Scratching and recalling those old memories, somehow I realise that it was destined that such a group of people had to meet, who were basically ‘innocuous minds’ endowed with ‘spontaneous niceness’ and a penchant to discuss on ideas or issues (most of the time blabbering !!) . One common characteristic of this group was the ‘groundedness’ inculcated in them from the small town and cities from which all came and the eagerness to know more about the world. Bhopal was the appropriate place for these bunch of innocuous minds to converge which itself was a neutral lesser known capital.
The group arguably had an eclectic array of minds. And in this group there was Mr. Simple (Alakh), simpler than us ‘khurapati’ simpletons. Not overplaying ‘simplicity’ but we all were simple minded folks in the sense with no addiction to alcohol or smoking (sometimes a beer or two would quench our real thirst and maybe some whisky/vodka would save us on a cold night),, a set of harmless chaps, with the capability of throwing in lot of ideas and stories with “rationality’’ lurking somewhere and ‘wise thoughts’ sometimes mysteriously emanating from nowhere. We can be considered appropriately the microcosm of the ‘Argumentative Indians’.
Alakh was one of the most affable of our wonderful group. If I may recall Alakh had a ‘Vivekanandian’ world view towards things during that time. There were lot of ‘philosophical’ discussions which we all used to have especially with Alakh at places including the beautiful Kaliasot Dam.
But here I would like to write particularly about an interesting expedition - where Alakh, Mayank and me had a sort of a close encounter with ‘death’.
There was a trivial news that had captured our imaginations and became an obsession of our dear friend Mayank. I can remember he used to come to the place where Aruni, Brahm and Prashant stayed and invariably I and Alakh could also be found there. In this place words such as ‘revolution’, ‘action’,’corruption..fundas about life ...adrak wali chai..could be regularly heard.
One evening with Tendua in his mind, and unconsciously fascinated and inspired by Mowgli, Mayank came to undertake his dream of finding the wild animal.
The conversation would be something like this...
Mayank - (in a serious tone as if hatching a plot of espionage)... Tum logo ne Tendua ke baare mein suna hain..
And then someone would say (...Prashant) -
Hain koi kah to raha tha.. sab farji bada hai... tumhare jaise dhurrandaro ko uksane ke liye..
Another voice - Kya mayank babu....Tendua pakadne ki soch rahe ho kya...
Mayank - Raat ko jab Mummy- Papa so jaayenge .tab hum van leke chalte hain Tendua ko trace karne. Kabhi Tendua nahi dekha hain yaar...
Another voice - .sahi hain ..sahi hai ….kab chale ?
Mayank had a couple of thrilling encounters, one with Alakh and me, and the other with Aruni and Brahm. If I may recall correctly,the encounter in the case of Aruni ,Brahm and Mayank was much closer as they ‘smelled’ the Tendua around and 'imaginatively' escaping the claws of the Tendau jumped in a filmy style into Mayank’s maruti van and hence making history in the present pages.
Unfortunately in our case, there was no foul smell of Tendua but just an eerie fragrance of the unpopulated green beautiful Kerwa Dam Road and then sudden outburst of repetitive voices from inside the van...
‘kuch awaaz to aaye...kuch sunayi diya ! Haan kuch to sunayi diya...
Nahi... kuch nahi !!
And then we may stop the van anticipating to see the ‘Azad Tendua’.
But we didn’t realise it was not the danger of the Tendua but another danger waiting for us on our way. As we were going back, we came to a crossing where the sloping road was submerged in the river. Time was past dusk and the light was bleak to estimate the depth of the water on the road. Alakh gave a warning that this may be dangerous to cross and I was also not decisive to go. But our ‘Aar ya Paar’ (one with Jackie Shroff) movie inspired Mayank (with music of the movie playing in his van) thought we can do it. Not anticipating fully the perils of the huge lake (Bada Talaab) besides us, he pressed the accelerator and vroom the van went. Without much speck of time passing we realised that the van has got stuck in the water.
In hindsight we realised the mistake was the gear changing done in the water which led to the water flooding inside and hence locking the gearbox. Now we realised and saw to our horror water on both side of us and we sort of freaked out. Not ‘sort of’ but really freaked out. The calmer guy out of us was Alakh.
Alakh - Koi nahi..kuch nahi hoga..
Now we had two tasks in hand, to save ourself and to save the van. The flow of the water was strong. We ‘wisely’ reached the opposite side of the flow and held on tightly to the van not necessarily trying to save us but the van.
The conversation was something like this ..
Yaar band baj gayi !!.....
Puree jaan se gaadi ko pakdo !!....
Yaar paani Thanda hai !...
Alakh ne sahi bola tha !.
But after a while fortunately we saw a group of villagers passing by and they stopped seeing us holding to the van.
ONE VOICE - Paani mein fus gaye kya... ( we might have thought of saying - Nahi yaha pani ke beech main gadi pe masti mar rahe hai)
Arre Bhaiya aake thodi madad kar do yaar.. paani mein fus gaye hai !!
And hence we were saved !
Then we went to Alakh’s place and if I may recall correctly had some tasty samosas which Aunty had made with adrak wali chai which we enjoyed while narrating our story. Then after that Alakh dropped us back home one by one in his Hero Puch.
