We, me and my younger brother, had set for a strange journey. I was a teenage girl and he a primary school kid. The sun had already set and the husky darkness had started getting peach black, setting a chill in our minds as we were travelling through the forest in a self-driven electric cart. We want to meet a forest researcher who is staying at the heart of this forest. We knew that this journey is dangerous as the path we have taken is infamous for a big wild cat! The car is running without its headlights on may be because it is not supposed to disturb the jungle creatures. Suddenly it topples and we get thrown into the surrounding swamp with tall grass around..and the holy shit..we hear the grrrrowl!! I could see the silhouette of the big tiger in that moon light. It wasn’t far. In fact it was approaching us. The best thing we thought we could do was hold on to our positions without moving a bit and even hold our breaths. The tiger came close. It started sniffing over us, continued doing that for some time. We did not sense any intention of attacking or any kind of aggressiveness in its manner but we were frozen to death for sure. The cat was gone and not we had somehow made our way to the researcher’s abode. He was glad to see that we had reached to him safe in spite of the odd accident on our way. We spent the night with him.

Next day morning we started our return journey. This time we were on foot. The researcher warned us that we have to reach our home before the sun sets. The tiger is out in the jungle as soon as the sun sets. We had finished almost 75% of the journey. The sun was about to touch the horizon. Suddenly Mandar remembers that he has to go across the valley and collect the water of the fountain that we could see across. We did not have time to go there and in addition to that the water spring is the first location where the tiger makes his appearance when he sets out every evening! I tried to pursue Mandar to leave the thought but he was determined. He wanted to accomplish the task. He asked to hold on and he proceeded towards the spring alone. I was supposed to keep a close watch on the surrounding area and inform him if I notice any sign of the big cat. I was watching him moving towards the spring, crossing all the odds in his way as fast as he could. The sun was dipping down more and more with that my heart started pounding harder. The sun touched the horizon and at the same moment Mandar had reached the spring. I shouted loudly towards him “ RUN..the sun has set..run as fast as you can and don’t stop till we reach our home.” He had finished collecting water by the time my warning was over. I had already started running. When I looked back I saw him running hard, running for his life, running with the speed of wind! Finally we made it. We had reached our yard safe…this was the yard of our Aarey colony house………..this broke my sound (??) sleep, I revised what I remembered so that I can add it to the croniclez!