"Goosebumps"

It was a wonderful morning. I, alongwith three friends, were in Nasik for a trip. Today we had decided that we will go to “SABUTARA”, a place near the border of Maharashtra and Gujarat. Everything went well and we reached our destination around 11.00 A.M. We roamed through the place. Did some horse riding and all the fun activities you can do on a hill station. We wanted to see the sunset. We had heard that it was very beautiful to see from here. So we waited till the evening. We were so busy having fun amongst us that we lost track of the surroundings. We enjoyed the sunset. Took a lot of photos. But when I looked around to see what other people were doing, to my amazement there was not a single person around. It was nearly getting dark and all my friends were equally afraid of the deserted place as I was when I alerted them.

It was like all the people had suddenly disappeared or taken away by spaceship of “ALIENS”. There was noise of “CRICKETS” everywhere and “HUSH HUSH” of the leaves of trees. We didn’t have a torch, so it was our cell light that provided little view of place around us. Suddenly we even forgot the way we had come as each of us was giving different directions. We finally decided to move in one of the directions. As there was no light we had made a human chain and were moving down the hill with me leading the way. There were “GOOSEBUMPS” all over my hands and frankly speaking all of us were really frightened.

As we had started moving suddenly there was some movement behind us. I don’t know whether my senses are strong or not but I picked up the noise and suddenly turned back to see from where the noise was coming. My friends said my ears are ringing when I told them. I thought the same and we moved on. Five minutes later there was again a noise and this time it was loud enough to be heard by all of us. All of us stood frozen in our path. We waited and continuously stared in the direction of noise but nothing was visible and nobody dared to go back and see what was making the noise. Not even me. That time I came to know how “DARPOK” I was, but in these circumstances I preferred to be a “DARPOK”.

We decided to continue our way down the mountain. We were moving more briskly now, but even the footsteps behind us had gained pace. We looked back but there was no one to be seen. But now someone was “GROWLING” breathlessly behind us. In a unanimous way we all started running without even bothering about the direction in which we were going. I saw a street light down somewhere and I shouted the directions at everyone. Within five minutes we were there. We all were out of breath. We stood behind a big tree near the street and waited for the source of noise that had frightened us all the way. Now we were quite secure as there was a crowd of people at a little distance. The noise became louder and it was coming towards us. In the dark we could see two sparkling eyes making its way in the dark. And then it came into full view in the light. We all looked at him as if we had not seen a “PUPPY” before.

Yes it was a puppy, who we suppose had lost the way like we had and had followed us to get down the hill. The four of us exchanged weird looks. We were not even able to breathe out of exhaustion but all of us burst into a great laugh. Suddenly the fear was gone. The puppy came towards me and started licking my leg and I thought this little thing had scared us out of our souls but it was happy to come back down the hill and we were happy that even we came safely down the hill. We thought later that due to small height of the puppy it was not visible in the dark. I reached to a conclusion that fear is inside us and it grows as we allow it to get over us. But really speaking I get GOOSEBUMPS even now when I think of that evening.