Wanderings: As We Keep Searching

Chapter 1 - All Aboard

It's never easy planning a trek - more so when you still haven't gotten a vehicle for your group, the weather forecast says it will literally rain on your parade, you're trying to pass off seventeen people as five, one of your dinners is missing and the only guide you have is a wet-behind-the-ears day-dreamer who can find his way to the nearest kebab shop.

Hey, I didn't ask to become the guide. Everyone else was booked.

Let me start over. It's been three months since I've joined JP Morgan and Chase, Bangalore. I've had short trips with various groups - a half-marathon in Coorg, a short wet-and-leechy walk from TalaCauvery to Mondrute, a small wildlife-spotting excursion in Wayanad and a waterfall picnic on Bear Shola falls in Kodaikanal. However, nothing had left a blog-worthy mark yet.

Towards the end of September, the long-trek itch was eating me alive, and no sooner did I realize October 2nd was a Monday that I had created a 'Bandaje Falls Trek' group with seventeen people in it, faster than you could say 'extended weekend'.

'Yeah, bring all your friends, and tell them to bring their friends, too,' he said while the last bus had three seats left.

As luck would have it - actually, it was the perseverance of Abhishek, Anjana and Parag - we found a 21 seater from Tejas Tours and Travels on the penultimate day. We were saved. One thing was sure, we were going.

Whether we were coming back though, was a different problem.

Before I knew what was happening, me and Abhishek Shankar were making a hasty dinner of our legendary chocolate-cream sandwiches, with our bags lying packed in the hall. We discussed the logistics of the trip with our mouths full, making a rough disaster plan for everything; from the driver absconding mid-way to a team member having a nervous breakdown - or the reverse. We didn't remember anything - the plans were more comical than functional anyway.

'All aboard', I posted on the WhatsApp group, as me and Shankar stepped out.

There's something about locking a door with a packed bag that I can never get over.

Chapter 2 - Picking Up The Pieces

It was drizzling slightly now, but it had been raining heavily for the past two hours. The roads were a potpourri of mud, puddles, gravel and aimless cars. We skipped over stones, avoiding the mud splashes from the vehicles roaring past us and tip-toed along the pavements daintily.

'Warm-up,' I grinned at Shankar.

Slightly ahead of the nefarious Kundanahalli Traffic Signal, we saw a parked mini-bus with Tejas written on it. Heaven be praised. Behind me, Abhinav and Surendra - two JPMC colleagues and fellow BITSians - joined us in crossing the road. We got on the bus to see Anjana and Rashmi already sitting comfortably. Only Radhika remained.

The rain came in waves, just like the traffic. Bangalore was always in one of these two states.

'Bhima Jewellers!' I shouted into the phone as my fellow passengers watched, bemused. 'Just cross the road after that! You'll see us.' It was pure, stupid instinct. If you hear the other person less, you start shouting more.

But it paid off. Soon, we had Radhika, and the bus raced off towards Spice Garden, where we picked up Prajyot, Saurabh, Jaydev, Sushmita and Ravindra. Next stop was Adyar Anand Bhavan on Marathahalli bridge. As I led Vedant and Karthikeyan to the bus, I sighed, looking up at its neon sign. Idiyappam with tengapaal, until next time.

We drove off. I went to the driver to tell him the way to pick up the others. As I closed the door, I could hear everyone introducing themselves, hitting it off like old school friends.

Making friends isn't that hard. Just put people behind a closed door.

Before long, we had Parag from Jeevan Bhima Nagar and Ravneet from Indiranagar, and all that was left was picking up Harmeet, a school friend of Vedant, and the tents, mats and sleeping bags from Harsha, a friend from a previous trek.

'Hey, man. When will you be reaching Yeshwantpur?'

'Give us half an hour. We'll park near the Metro Station exit.'

As the bus roared off, the jokes and discussions flirted with boundaries of race, region, income, gender and any other political grenades you can think of. It made sense - casual conversation can only last so long.

At Yeshwantpur, we picked up Harmeet. Everyone stretched their legs for a bit, while me and a few boys took the four tents, thirteen sleeping bags and eight mats from Harsha, thanking him for bringing them out there so late in the night. On the way back, we got to talking.

'So, chemical, huh? Yeah, no worries, I'm electrical, working in an IT company.'

'Civil, homies. Beat that.'

'All roads lead to coding,' we all chuckled as we entered the bus.

Now it was time to take a road that lead somewhere else.

Chapter 3 - Gangsta's Paradise

'Mafia, anyone?'

It was an age-old (or old age) game full of deceit, manipulation, bluffing and plain-old-messing-around. Ideal for a recently-acquainted group of youngsters. I played God (cause honestly, that was the best role in the game), and watched people go crazy, trying to figure out if they were being played and flinging accusations based on no evidence whatsoever.

'Are you the Mafia?'

'No,' Surendra put on his best poker-face.

'Cool.' Vedant turned to the others. 'People, vote for Surendra, he's definitely the Mafia.'

As arguments got more heated, people administered visual polygraph tests and the entire group was offered insights into each other's characters. Midway, the driver halted for some tea (and a visit to the bushes) by a group of highway-side shops.

The rain was now just a misty trickle, dripping into our paper cups as we sipped hot tea. I looked at the night sky through the musty steam, wondering about the lives of the shop-keepers here; a semi-nocturnal existence, away from the hustle and bustle of city lives - but playing a small part in it. I couldn't help but feel a little envious, and strangely home-sick, as if some part of me wanted to set up my own tiny tea stall here.

We all tend to romanticize everyone's lives but our own.

After buying the standard 'packet o' chips and peanuts', we boarded the bus. Even though nothing had changed, the night seemed darker, and the blue bus lights acted like a surreal Ouija board for sleep - each of us spelt out a letter with every tired breath.

Abhishek tapped out first, curling up in the first seats with his comforter and a bottle of water. The rest of us played on excitedly, introducing new characters; a suicide bomber, and even the post-apocalyptic granny with a shotgun.

As God, I had my part of the fun: throwing obscure hints and red herrings around, watching the mortals scuttle their own ship and run around in descending spirals.

'Wow, this is getting really meta.' I mused.
'It's a metaphor for life,' Parag grinned.

'It's a metaphor for life,' Parag grinned.

Chapter 4 - Midnight Blue

'Danish, you keeping watch for the night?' Karthikeyan queried.

'Yes,' I grumbled in my best Gandalf imitation. 'Get your rest - we leave at first light of dawn.'

He grinned and turned his head. The psychedelic blue lights faded to my peripheral vision as I turned my attention to the murky montage put up by the nightscape. Beside me, Surendra was chewing on the peanuts and Ravneet was anchored on two rucksacks and the window sill.

My eyes refocused as the various shades of black leapt at me. The sky itself was shimmering, turbulent; teeming with teal, turquoise and the kind of black that gets darker the more you stare at it. There were no stars; the clouds reigned tonight.

The trees were tall, hazy silhouettes of dark green and purple, mirroring the clouds above them like changelings left here by the demonic streaks of lightning, searing the sky with electric pink and white; exposing the true colors of the earth for a minuscule, unseen moment.

The soft rain pattered down, contrasting the sharp blows of the battling clouds, racing through my vision like tiny photographs of the world around them, living for a split second before shattering quietly into a hundred more.

The cool breeze whipped my face as hard as we charged through it, hitting me harder as we raced faster; there was a lesson in there somewhere. The rain droplets lingered like faint whispers; fading away faster than they came, stirring the waters of my Pensieve.

I have been through countless such nights, and each of them is different. Even if once the nights hadn't changed, I had. Every night was a different color, a different dance, a different song. Sometimes she fought, sometimes she nurtured. Sometimes it brought back stories my parents would tell me; sometimes the ones I would tell them.

"I see the lives live out the day,

And shun the night and run away,

Running like there's hell to pay.

Let's take a bus, when we're finally done,

We'll croon to the moon, outrun the sun,

Let's take the bus with everyone.

Oh, thank the Lord the world is round,

Let's take a bus and go around,

Eyes to the sky, follow the ground.

Let's hope we never see the light,

On the bus that goes to the land of night,

That lives but to outrun the sun,

Let's take that bus with everyone..."

I saw violet give way to indigo, as cerulean blue appeared at the horizon. The sun was catching up to us. I balanced my way to the front and reached Shankar, who was rubbing his eyes.

'Where are we, man?'

'I don't know,' Shankar gurgled, squinting into his phone. 'I just lost network.'

That was more information than any milestone. We were definitely close.

'I'll ask the driver,' he murmured and got up. As he went through the door, I could hear a faint exchange over the roaring of the bus (how had we slept through that?) as I swore for the tenth time to learn Kannada.

'Two hours,' he gave a faint smile and snuggled back into his comforter. I relaxed and closed my eyes beside him.

I didn't realize I had slept until I woke up to leaves and branches brushing my face.

'What the..' I jumped up awake and saw our bus groaning through a gravelly road that an auto-rickshaw would turn up its nose at. It seemed to magically compress and phase in and out of reality to charter impossibly narrow lanes and avoid locals, who were staring at us like we were a spaceship hanging in the sky.

'We're done for,' I muttered to myself.

I looked back at the rest of the gang sleeping peacefully and took care not to bump into anyone, lest we get a roller-coaster group photo the very next moment.

'Shankar, what is happening?' I yelped at him.

'It seems we don't know the way.' Abhishek grinned back sheepishly, while the driver looked like the bus was squeezing out of his colon.

After a few harrowing turns and a few hostile looks, we stumbled upon a clearing, with an old man sitting on one of the milestones, smoking a locally-crafted pipe. There was a diversion here.

The driver stuck his head out the window and apologetically asked him the way to Gowdra Mane, our base camp in Ujire. He raised a shaky finger and pointed straight; I could tell he felt like he was directing little green men to the nearest solar system.

The roads were better from there on, and we passed some well-constructed houses that grew bigger with every kilometre. It looked like we were passing levels in a Super Mario game, and Gowdra Mane was the final boss.

A turn, a forest clearing and a lake later, we were greeted by our base camp. The morning mist still hung behind it, embroiled in the low-lying clouds, while the sun peeked meekly through the haze.