One Wild Trip...

You may hardly come across a guy who would probably refuse to any opportunity of being alone with four girls. But my situation was a bit different. I was in the middle of an unknown jungle in Auroville, Pondicherry, trying to figure out where 'Ganesh Bakery' was, at around 7 pm, without a torch! I could hear murmurs of protest all the time from Shraddha, Smriti, Rini and Pragati.

They would walk four steps then wait, make faces, curse and then walk again. Every now and then, Smriti and Shraddha would scream as if they saw a monster. If I was given an option either to walk with these girls or the wild bears, I would have chosen the latter.

"Yaar can we walk a bit faster? Only 25 per cent of my cell phones battery is left," said Pragati, whose mobile was the only source of our light in that dark and dense jungle. Smriti reacted saying, "25 per cent,? And we haven't reached yet. Will we be able to return? Should we return just now?" The girls looked at each other and then at me for a decision. "Come on guys, don’t be negative. Main hun na!" I managed to say, trying to sound valiant.

Suddenly, I got a mighty blow. It was a blow from Shraddha. The others mocked in unison.

When some motorbikes started getting a little closer towards the girls, they began to bunch closer to each other, holding each other firmly while making an attempt to hide behind me (as if I was an eight feet monster or something). The bike riders commented in some local dialect and whistled past. The girls stood breathless. I somehow controlled my laughter. They feared they were robbers who would return apart from having numerous questions. I obviously I didn't answer.

"It’s enough. I can't walk any more,"...wailed Pragati and the girls nodded in unison.

“Yaar I guess we have almost reached, it’s just about walking for another five more minutes,” I said helplessly.

"And if, we don't find Ganesh Bakery in five minutes we'll throw you deep into this jungle," warned Rini whom I thought was the only non-violent girl in the group.

Done. Having said this, I accelerated the pace of my steps. So did the girls. I have lost many bets in my life but neither have I had any bet in a jungle before. Luckily, approximately after walking for some two to three minutes we saw 'Ganesh BakeriI' in bold letters.

There was a huge sigh of relief. I ran and ordered a bottle of Dew. It tasted good like never before.

“Is this the right place for a shop? Don’t you get scared here? Do you have any idea how much scared we were? You know we all have been walking for the past one hour….” The barrage of questions rained on the poor shopkeeper….

I was just relieved to see that the girls found someone else to answer their questions.