Combining five days leave with the year-end holidays I had a grand fortnight to enjoy. My plan was to spend few days at native place and the rest to tour. But there was a sudden demise of wife's grandfather and the touring part did not happen. But I had good time at the villages in the interior parts of Orissa.
I had not been to my relatives’ places after marriage and everybody was asking to visit them with family. This was the perfect time to cover those places.
We hired a car and covered some of the places in two days. Meeting those relatives after a long time was very exciting and they were also very happy with our surprise visit. We received a warm welcome at all the places.
Life in City and village are poles apart. People seem to be simpler and generous unlike city dwellers, who are sophisticated and mostly cunning ;). Comparing the lives would go on for pages but I would cut it short here itself. I will focus on the experience.
One thrilling incident happened to us during our visit to my cousin's village. Most of my native villages are in the hilly areas and are now affected by Naxals(Maoists). All the villages are surrounded forests and for kilometres together you would not find anyone on the road. Just at the entrance of my cousins village there is a small jungle, which is mostly populated by mango and tamarind trees. As the road is curvy the visibility is hardly 100 meters. While passing through it, our driver suddenly asked to see through the front glass. We saw a group of around 6 people armed with machine guns (may be AK47s) were standing on the road. Our driver was damn sure that they were Naxals and alerted us that he would speed past through them. There was very little time to understand and react to the situation. As we approached towards them, the gang started to point the gun towards the car and forcibly asking us to stop. This was a moment our heartbeat almost stopped. Actually our driver didn’t have any option but to stop!
We were just peeping through the windows as they surrounded the car. I saw there was a small tent onto our right, a mud water pot with glass on top and there was a cot. Within seconds, one of them started knocking the drivers window glass. The first question to our driver was the reason for speeding up, and asked that whether the guns were visible or not :)
Few seconds later, the same person asked me about my identity and our destination. He gave me full chance to speak up and then he asked, whose house we were visiting. As I told my uncle's name, the situation calmed a bit. One of the gangsters knew my uncle personally and it seems my uncle was his guru :O
Few moments later those guys introduced themselves as CRPF personnel and they came to village as they had some information. They did a routine checking inside the car, noted down our names and left us. We said thanks and didn’t even look back. It was a trembling experience for us.
Hmmm....enough for today. I will write on the next part of my trip in next post.
I am very happy to start writing again.
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