by Abhishek Roy
Directly in front of me was a set of big double doors. Both of them had two small windows through which daylight filtered in. On the left side of the door, snuggled up in the corner was the reception desk. Standing next to that was a familiar woman whom I recognized as Mrs. Dawson. She was really young, barely in her early thirties. I had this intense feeling of nostalgia kick in. I wanted to run to her, hug her and forget this nightmare. But all I could do was watch in silence.
“I need to talk to you for a second,” she requested. My parents walked up to her.
While I stood in solitude again, my parents spoke to Mrs. Dawson in hushed voices.
The discussion was not audible to me and when their conversation came to an end, my parents turned to face me while Mrs. Dawson walked up to me and stood behind me holding my shoulders. My father opened the door and before they went away they gave me one last look, a look of assurance and walked out of the doors. The same thing happened. I tried to speak but nothing came out of my mouth. My dream slowly started to fade and the last memories were that of Mrs. Dawson consoling me and me crying. I held her hand tightly and everything began to move in slow motion and suddenly all of it evaporated.
I woke up with a start. The rumbling of the aircraft’s engine had morphed into a silent hum as it taxied along the runway. Ram, on the other hand was looking at me with concern. Well, he had the perfect reason too since I was holding his hand in an iron grip. With the intensity of my dream, the hardness of my grip increased. I released my grip. I was sweating profusely though the air conditioners were running.
“You okay Mathias?”
“Yeah...yeah... I reckon. I saw this dream about.... “
I thought it was better not to tell him about the dream right now. After all it was only a dream. Yet I was utterly astonished by the clarity of the dream. It seemed to be a distant memory of my parents locked away in a corner of my consciousness. Again it was the locket or the amulet, as they said, which was prominent in the dream.
“Never mind. Have we landed?” I asked, sounding a little out of breath, overcome with emotion after the vivid dream.
“Do you need the inhaler?” he leaned towards me.
“No... I am alright.”
Ram smiled, “Yes we have. We have just landed in India and it is my pleasure to declare this moment as the start of our quest. We will conquer everything that stands ahead of us and will not give up even if circumstances oblige us to,” he said with his chest and chin held up high like a great orator.
And that is how we ended up in India.
Kapittel 6
Mathias’s story
NEW DELHI, INDIA
March 7, 2017, Tuesday, 1120 hours 1ST
The airport was huge and majestic, and for a moment I forgot about our circumstances and kept staring at large murals on the wall. This was my first time out of UK and I did not know what to expect. Though Ram had told me lot of stories about India, I wondered whether we would be able to make our way through an oriental land.
Immigration officers stared suspiciously at us, being so young and travelling alone. When asked why we were here, our too quick response of tourism did not seem to have gone down well with them. It took them a long time to process our case. However, after long stares and aided by broken Hindi from Ram stating that we are off to Agra and then Rishikesh and Goa, we were finally inside India.
As we came out, after changing some of the pounds into Indian Rupees, Ram’s immediate concern was to find a vehicle. I left him to research the taxi counters while I went to the washrooms. As I came out, he seemed to be negotiating with one of the counters.
“This vehicle might look big and odd but let me tell you, once you drive this TATA SUMO on the rough gravel roads of the north you would consider yourself blessed to have this jeep with you. I will not force you. It is your wish whether you want it or not. Besides I will also be charging you less....” The man in the counter was saying.
“We cannot hire a car for ourselves. They only give out cars with drivers,” Ram looked helpless.
“It’s fine. We will take it,” I interrupted since he was getting on my nerves with his blabbering.
Within fifteen minutes we were in the SUMO vehicle which was nothing but a souped up jeep of some sort, very metallic on the outside, but reasonably comfortable inside. We were driving through Delhi en route to Meerut in Uttarakhand. The first thing Ram did was to stop at a nearby market and shop for a handful of different maps, largely road maps of Northern India as well as a large geophysical map. For the first few kilometres the driver, Kartar Singh drove us on his own, but soon Ram got restless and started fiddling with the map.
Once out of Delhi, India started to appeal to me. The cold wind that had a hint of warmth in it was seducing as it assaulted my face. The city life started to disappear as the thick concrete jungle of buildings started to thin. The buildings that were once huge turned to small colonies and gradually started to space out so much that a house appeared every mile. Whilst Ram was busy with the maps, I was busy basking in my first time out of London, in a country that was thousands of kilometres away.
Except for the whirr of the engine of our car and that of the numerous other cars that travelled on the highway everything was silent.
I took advantage of the silence to open the notebook that we took from Mrs. Dawson. After a moment of hesitation, I opened it to the first page. Written on the first page were few words:
The contents of this book are reserved for you Mathias. We love you and care for you Your Father and Mother.
I flipped to the next page.
The pages seemed to have been written in a language which was not comprehensible to me. They looked faintly like English but there were significant differences. The writing was cursive and that made it even more difficult. However, there was a particular alphabet which looked like an ‘o’, but clearly with a line across it. A few pages inside though, I hit jackpot. There, written in elegant cursive in English was a short poem-
The First family can be reached through a window,
Where the Rainbow guides the way
On top of the world,
Only on the fateful day,
For those who can move the egg shaped rock,
Only when you can make hay.
While I was thinking about it, the silence was however broken by Ram as he said,” Are you hungry?“
“Well...” I felt my stomach rumble, “I am famished.”
“Fortunately, a Mcdonald is going to appear after half a mile or so,” replied Ram after a hurried Hindi consultation with Kartar Singh.
“Ah, Mcdonald’s, huh? I can’t wait to eat a delicious cheeseburger and the hot and crispy French fries.”
“Don’t have high hopes. You never know, in the middle of a Highway in India you may not get the same material you get back in London.”
“Nevertheless let’s see,” I said with glee in my eyes as I thought of the meal.
After the quick meal, we stretched our limbs.
“The McSpicy chicken burger was pretty nice, no?” I asked Ram.
“It sure was!” replied Ram. A short while later, we resumed our journey.
I took out the map that Ram had been tampering with. It was a physical map of the northern regions of India. He had marked our route and had also encircled a small area in the north of the state of Uttarakhand. That circle surrounded a very icy area located in the Himalayas. At the dead centre of the circle was written in bold letters - NANDA DEVI BIOSPHERE RESERVE.
“So this is the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve, huh?”
“Yes,” he said with his eyes to the road.
“That area must be seriously guarded. It would be very difficult for us to get inside.”
“I was talking about the same thing on the plane but you preferred sleeping over listening to me.”
“You were?”
“Yes I was.”
“Do you mind repeating?” I asked him.
“Not really. Th
e area is 2240 sq km in area and is situated around the mountain of Nanda Devi. Its periphery is heavily guarded by the border control and one needs to be a scientist or a very special person to get inside since it is very close to a sensitive border area. Hence only a miracle will aid us in getting in. To add to the trouble the fauna over there includes some very vicious leopards and black bears. There are frequent blizzards and rainstorms over there. I don’t think we will have frequent encounters with animals but I cannot say anything about the climatic fluctuations there.”
At the top right corner of the map some very complex numbers had been scribbled which were no doubt coordinates. They were 30.97542, 79.458572. I was yet to fiddle with my laptop and find a way to get into the mobile networks here so it was all conjecture on Ram’s part.
“It will be pretty difficult to reach the exact location represented by these coordinates. If we don’t know the exact place we might end up searching the whole damn reserve and we do not have time for executing a rigorous search of the entire stretch of land. Hence we need to know the exact rendezvous point. Could you pinpoint it?”
“I did,” said Ram, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. “In my bag, I have a folder of maps in the second compartment. You will find the place marked in the first one.“
I folded the map in my hand and stuffed it in the seat pocket in front of me. I turned back, leaned and found the map in his bag. Slumping back to my seat, I opened the map and started studying the map. It was a detailed physical cum political map of the mountain range just above Uttarakhand. There was a band of white splotches of mountains but most of the place was green. The boundary of the Reserve was outlined with black. Hidden amidst the menagerie of mountains was a location pinpointed by red.
“That red mark is the location the coordinates point to,” said Ram without veering his eyes from the road.
“It is basically a lake in the Reserve with a cliff enclosing it, acting as a vessel. The next few maps would show you. I have no idea why my father would have gone there. The place is desolate, obscure and absurd.”
“There must be a science behind it,” I said.
“For you, there is a science behind everything,” Ram smirked.
I punched him on the back and he doubled up laughing. We were feeling more relaxed and safe now, far away from the explosions in the orphanage.
Kapittel 7
Mathias’s story
MEERUT, INDIA
March 7, 2017, Tuesday, 1530 hours 1ST
Our drive had been peaceful until we reached the town of Meerut.
After a long and tiring drive of almost two hours we needed to stretch our limbs and so went rather deep inside the city into an area called Subhash Bazaar. Meerut is quite a bustling city and has small brick houses interconnected to each other and forms an in-navigable forest of such dwellings. Thanks to Ram, we were however successful in finding a reasonable eating corner after much interrogation.
It was amazing. I never thought that Ram would be able to speak Hindi after living in London from his birth. His Hindi was no doubt marked by the British accent but that was negligible.
How is it that you speak Hindi so well in spite of living in England for the past 17 years of your life?” I asked Ram on the way.
“Well, though I am now a British citizen,” he said, back to his British self, “I never wanted to leave Hindi. I have always had this gut feeling that some time or the other in my life I would have to return to India. So, I guess that is pretty much it.”
“You keep surprising me Ram, you do.”
While we were still in the car, Ram asked me, “Did you open the notebook that Mrs. Dawson gave you?”
“Yeah. Just before we stopped at McDonald’s.”
“May I?” he asked me. I fished the diary out of my bag and handed it to him. He turned through the first few pages. “This looks... Scandinavian!”
“Maybe but...” I quickly flipped the pages, “Here you go.”
Ram and I read the poem written in cursive English.
“The First family can be reached through a window,
Where the Rainbow guides the way
On top of the world,
Only on the fateful day,
For those who can move the egg shaped rock,
Only when you can make hay. “
“Mrs. Dawson wanted us to find the father of the Gods. This looks surely like it’s referring to something heavenly. The First family, the Rainbow guides the way, On top of the world... “ mumbled Ram.
“What do you think it means?” I asked him.
“Well, the verse is trying to lead us to a window from where we can reach God but I can’t understand the rest of the sestet,” Ram scratched his head. “Anyway, I need to check the map. Let’s see the route we have to take to go the reserve.”
Ram pulled out the map of India from his bag, the one on which he had scribbled the location of the coordinates. He unfolded it and studied it carefully. Shortly afterwards, the car stopped.
“Here it is. You can have tea here,” Kartar Singh pointed at the café.
“Thank you Mr. Singh. After this, we would have to go to the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve. I think we have to pass Rishikesh and Badrinath, no?” asked Ram.
“Yes...I think so too but I wouldn’t be able to take you there.”
“Why not?” I asked him.
“No tourist services go there. It is a totally militarised zone and civilians aren’t allowed there. I would have taken you to Badrinath but I don’t know the way from here on.”
“Then how are we supposed to go there?” Ram asked him, a little annoyed.
“If you don’t mind, there are many truckers who go that way each day, I mean towards Rishikesh. You won’t face a lot of problem in hitching a ride,” he suggested.
Ram looked at me. “Are you sure?” I asked Kartar Singh.
“Yeah! I know many friends who have gone to Rishikesh from Delhi by just hitching rides. It won’t be a problem,” he smiled.
“Fine then. Is it okay, Ram?”
“I think so. Anyway, take us to the place where we can find a trucker,” Ram told the chauffer.
“Alright. Not a problem.”
Singh drove us to the place near the highway where all the trucks were parked and the drivers were having their late lunch in a small restaurant. We got off there and asked him to wait while we found ourselves a trucker. As we walked into the restaurant, many people stared at us since we were after all foreigners.
“Sahab, aap kya Rishikesh ya Badrinath jaa rahe hai?” Ram asked a random trucker.
Sir, are you going to Rishikesh or Badrinath? — I translated in my head after hearing the two proper nouns.
The man shook his head and probably said that he was going to Muzzafarnagar. Ram tried a second one but the man refused. Finally, he asked another trucker who also knew good English.
“Yes, we are going to Rishikesh.”
“Actually, we want to go the Nanda Devi Biosphere reserve. So we were wondering if you could take us there,” said Ram. The middle- aged trucker and a young man who looked like his son, exchanged glances. They did not seem to be comfortable with the idea.
“We can’t take you there. It is a totally mili...” replied the son but Ram cut him off.
“We know that but still, if you could try?” pleaded Ram.
“I am sorry but we can’t do that. Why would you want to go there?” The trucker replied.
“Alright but you could at least take us to Rishikesh, no?” asked Ram. The trucker and his son thought about it but agreed nonetheless. They asked for a nominal sum of money but made it clear that we are to arrange our own meals.
“Alright. We meet here, near the highway. We have had a late lunch, so we will be ready to go by 5:30 in the evening,” said the trucker.
Ram and I were elated. We told our SUMO driver that we had arranged for a ride to Rishikesh. The truck was a decent looking Eicher pick up truck with a large enough storage area. The truck
looked like it was around five years old, judging from the rust developing in the scratches and the small dents in the metal but it was surely in shape for running for a few more years.
On hearing that Kartar Singh drove away, happy with his tip in pounds.
“We will also be back shortly,” said Ram. “I need to treat ourselves to some delicious Indian Chai and Pakoras”. I made a mental note of the licence plate of the truck. Thankfully it was an easy number for me to remember.
***
We drank some tea, ‘chai’ as the Indians call it, after settling comfortably in a shabby roadside restaurant. While we were eating some batter fried cauliflowers a group consisting of approximately eight tall and robust men came walking and halted just opposite to the eating joint. In the midst of all the bronze skinned people they stood out since they looked as if they were from the west, closely related to us. They spoke to each other very seriously and glanced at us occasionally. Their attire was more or less identical. They wore black parachute cloth jackets, beneath which they wore denim shirts and corduroy trousers. Their attire was out of the norm. The humid and dusty environment forced everyone to wear light cotton clothes. However the fact that they were glancing at us in a clandestine manner was disturbing me.
Something wasn’t right.
I knew it.
“Ram” I said in a low voice.
“Hmm” he said in the middle of bites. He was really hungry and felt that the cauliflowers were fantastic.
“You see those men across the street?”
He glanced back casually.
“Yeah. They seem to be from Europe. Let’s go say hi.”
“They are eyeing us occasionally and I am not liking it.”
The party of men continued talking among themselves and for the first time did I notice how pale their skin was. Their skin was almost as white as ice. Apart from that, they were quite brawny and had a giant-like size. They must have been 6 feet 5 inches to 7 feet tall and were hulking over the locals who in turn looked at them in awe and fear.
One of them received a call on his cellular device and spoke in a strange language. Since I could not make out any English word from their lips I concluded that they must have been speaking in one of those European tongues. After talking for a while he dropped the line and gave orders to his mates in response to which they moved elsewhere.
