weakend lite

It was unsettling to see an astonishingly still lake. I even dropped a leaf on it to see if it floated in some particular direction. (but no needle-- learning from The Edge... that hopkins, alec baldwin bear movie)
How-come-it-doesn’t-sound-like-noise cries of monkeys and birds. Tents are pitched on the lakeside, complete with teakwood cots, shampoo and coat hanger (!). A Shikari Shambu hat is handed to you and a lantern is shoved into your hands (no electricity. You’re supposed to grope your way around to the attached bathroom).
But there was the random angry elephant that gave us the spine tingling thrills with earsplitting trumpeting as it crashed down trees right in our jeep’s path, leaving us stranded there for hours. And running around with 8 wild kids (not wild= mowgli wild, but just regular city kids going crazy in the shock of discovering open space and a water body that’s not a bath tub)… err… point was: Running around with 8 wild kids will guarantee that at least 3 will fall “accidentally” into the lake and splash around there. Until a panic-stricken boatman runs down madly gesturing them to get out because… ulp… CROCODILES are there!!!!!!! Mad clambering out later, nervous giggles fill the air as we dismiss the boatman as an old fool believing in tall tales. But no one ever ventures for a swim after that.
A thorough city-bred, I sigh and moan and rave about a liberating weekend in the jungle. “The city pushed me to the brink,” (said with an appropriately dramatic tired tone, hair-clutching and leg stretching) “I needed to get out.”
Bunkum.
Ask anybody in the city.
Mad rushes must be kept alive, missed lunches must be whined about and smoke-induced chest congestion must be taken to the hospital where the wait makes you read 1996’s “current affairs” in a dettol sprayed magazine.
The rain must be braved with a blue plastic cover copiously protecting the head, all just to make sure the bus isn’t missed. Arguments with automen must have “anecdote” written all over them and while laughing over it with friends, it must be cocktailed with the neighbour’s automan experience that was unfairly funnier than your own.
Page 3 faces must be trashed over tea (and the disgust is probably real too) but on coming face to face with one, embarrassingly garbled sentences must spew forth. Potholes and fly-over projects that never take off must be complained about to every person who is even remotely associated with the press—“As a journalist, you MUST take up this issue” over and over and over again. Theatre-owners must go on strike and pirated CD fellows must get all pricey and charge triple.
Cubbon park must be visited by an old greying couple quietly taking a morning walk, by 2 mummys catching up on each other’s lives over their kids’ “mummy! See! Lizard!” and “mummy! I want bhelpuri!”, and by those who want to just stretch that wonderful day out, but can’t think of a wallet-friendly place.
I’m an old city fool.