Chapter 6: The Journey Continues… With a Twist
Naveen sighed and adjusted his backpack to feel more comfortable, since the adventure ahead would be anything but easy. He looked at the others and said, "Well, let's get going. It's going to get even darker soon." Divya pondered on how he was the leading figure in most of the group work they did. He was truly a born leader; she wished she had the strong will and mind like he did while taking a decision for the whole team.
They started their journey through the dark and dense jungle, helping each other along the way. Naveen was leading, followed closely by Rajveer and Divya. Prakash fell behind from the other three's fast pace. Divya stopped for a while, waiting for him to catch up. Naveen glanced back and yelled using Captain Samar's way of speaking, "Oi Mehta… there aren't any girls to check out back there, why are you falling behind then?!" he winked at Rajveer, who smirked back. Divya noticed all this but didn't react except for smiling down to herself.
"Naveen yaar don't you get it?! He's checking out the view in front of him!" The two looked back at Divya and Prakash for their reactions. He was blushing as he glared at them, while she kept walking normally with a blank, indifferent expression.
"Yeah… it's quite nice you know… seeing water leaking in your backpack…" Divya told him, holding back her laughter and trying her best to keep a straight face. Rajveer immediately took off his backpack and held it out as water dripped from it.
"No! How did this-? All my things are wet now…" he groaned. The other three looked away, trying to keep their laughter in, but finally Prakash let out a snicker unable to hold it back for so long. This triggered the laughter from the other two and soon they were holding their stomachs, tears pouring down their cheeks as Rajveer tried not to smile and keep the scowl on his face.
"Oh God… I haven't – laughed… like this…" Divya panted holding her side, "in ages…" The other two nodded in agreement, wiping their tears. Letting out another chuckle, she got up unsteadily. "Wow, laughter can make people so weak! This should come in handy when you're interrogating the enemy or trying to hold him off…"
"Oh sure… we'll just go around tickle our enemies while in war and we'll surely win it." Rajveer joked sarcastically, still upset from the earlier events. Divya rolled her eyes and picked up his backpack, taking everything out of it to let them out to dry.
"No silly… laughing gas! It's not that hard to find either; once my sister and I were hiking and there was some sort of nitrogen gas around from the ground… we laughed so much that the local people would've thrown us in the mental asylum if they didn't know us!" she recollected with a smile. When she was done putting everything out, she sat down against a tree comfortably.
"They knew you? That's an even a bigger reason to send you to the pagalkhana! I know I would've done it…" Naveen stopped the leg-pulling when he saw that she was too worn out from the journey and the leaking-event to reply. "Oi come on, don't tell me all of you're already tired!" he exclaimed looking up at the dark evening sky.
"Can't we camp here? It's not that bad…" Divya commented tiredly. Naveen looked around and sighed.
"Come on guys. It's only a few more clues, plus, Captain Samar said that there would be some things for us at the spot… what if someone finds them or-"
"In this jungle? I doubt it." Prakash cut Naveen off.
"Actually Naveen's right… remember what Captain Samar, Brigadier Chandokh and even Major Nair kept stressing on? 'Stay alert at all times'."
"And that means we can't laze off after having laughed a fellow soldier." Added Rajveer, who had been sulking till then. Divya stood up and started putting his things back in. "Uh… why are you…?" he asked.
"Well, I took them out, so isn't it my responsibility to put them back?" she handed him his backpack. "Plus, I have to make up for laughing when you were in trouble… sorry about that." She smiled apologetically.
"Right… thanks, and it's OK." He smiled back at her, his mood lightening.
"If you two are done with the formalities, shall we resume?"
"Hey you're the leader… you tell us!" Divya told Naveen.
"What's the next clue again?" Prakash asked. Naveen hit him on the back of his head.
"Since when is your memory as slow as your pace? We just discussed it a while ago, remember? After we reach '3 km in the Eastern-"
"'3 km to the Eastern Front'." Divya corrected him.
"Same thing… after we reach that place, it's 'follow the trails of nature'. So we'll know when we go there… which will be never if you guys keep slowing down so much! So hurry up, it's already dark!"
They went on for about fifteen more minutes when Prakash suddenly stopped on his tracks, 'psst'-ing the others quietly. Frozen on their tracks, they tried to look for or listen to whatever Prakash had noticed. Soon they spotted it; a small group of five or six men with a few boxes were walking towards somewhere near their direction, arguing about something.
The four exchanged horrified glances and tried to hide as quietly as they could, but in vain. Rajveer's foot got stuck with a root and even though the sound wasn't all that loud, it was enough to alert the group.
"Oye who's there? Come out now! Or else you'll have a hole in your head…" A bad-tempered voice demanded. Divya thought about the irony of what he had said; they'd have holes in their heads if they showed themselves, and hiding could avoid that. She decided this wasn't the best time for philosophy and took out the gun from the gun-holster on her waist. She saw the others do the same out of the corners of her eyes.
Suddenly there was a very familiar pain of her hair being pulled, except for this time the large, rough hand pulling it wasn't as familiar to her as her sister or mother's. A thin, lanky man heaved her up by her hair in one pull, and she felt some strands being yanked out from the pull. His smelly and hot breath on her cheek and shoulder was something that she knew she wouldn't ever be able to erase, along with the horror building up in her as she saw her friends either being beaten or held by the throat against a tree as forms of interrogation.
Writers Corner: Books, Stories & Poems
Anupamaa
