Night walk

Walking in darkness is nothing new to me, rather I always enjoy venturing out in the open whenever it is possible. At Santiniketan, one of my first night outings was to the Kopai river in December 1999. It was a full moon night and one of our friends was to board a night train en route to his NET examination in Calcutta. We, as usual, went to Bolpur station, about 3.5km from where we used to stay at Gurupalli at Santiniketan, around 12.30am. After seeing him off, three of us thought that how the Kopai would look like in the dead of the night. We took a 6km cycle ride to find the lean river meandering through plantation of Sonajhuri with marvellous silhouettes i never saw on a full moon night before that. Manasda lit a beedi on the small bridge that connects Goalpara and Khanjanpur villages, and i, a non-smoker, jumped from one boulder to another to take rest on a larger one in the middle of the river that turns mighty during the rains. We came back our home, not on cycle, but on foot just to enjoy the moon-lit ambience that would be hard to find in a smoggy city like Calcutta.

Another “long walk” i would never forget was the one in Khoai in October 2007. After a brief adda at Kalor Dokan at Ratan Palli, we — Tanchu and me — thought it was high time we should go to Sonajhuri to experience the thrill and the ambience when it was about 9.30 in the night. It was not a full moon night, but flickering rays could brighten a little space around us. We parked our cycles in the Sonajhuri forest and started our so-called “atel” discussions over a “long walk” suggested by Tanchu, who would leave for Delhi some days after that. After 15 minutes of walk, we came back to the place where we had rested our cycles by a huge eucalyptus tree only to find one of the cycles was missing! Again we had to walk 4km to come back to our rooms, but this time with a heavy heart at the loss of the cycle but brimming with dark night thrill!

But the one that we did last week was the best night walk, i ever did. It’s not the kind of walk when the rest of Darjeeling was sleeping in 2001 and we three went to the Mall on the Kojagari night. I still don’t know whether it was the Kanchenjungha, or any other peak, but the white line on the horizon must be the Himalayan range. Last week, when we were coming back to Manoharpur from Kiriburu, in sheer coincidence both the rear tyres of our vehicle turned flat simultaneously around 7.30 in the evening. We knew how to overcome the crisis at a place surrounded by lush green forests and hills with no cellphone tower on the hand-held LCD screens. The only way out was walk! Manoharpur was good 12km from the spot where we eventually saw moonrise in a valley just a day after Holi. Leaving the vehicle there, we had to trudge with two local persons — driver Suresh and Nirmal — guiding us the way negotiating loose red laterite soil on the dusty road. Only after 7km of brisk walk, we could have asked for a rescue vehicle! When we returned to the small town, it was past 10 in the night, but we did not feel tired, but charged enough to keep our adda alive till 3 in the morning!
©Supratim Pal 2009