Saturday, March 1, 2014

A lifetime deal....

They say memories of your first kiss never loses its charm. I guess, there are a few others … smoke billowing from a wooden cottage perched atop a small hill, snow capped peaks right outside the window, the euphoric scent of kingfisher-strong, the shrill honk of a solitary engine cutting through dense fog, Momos and Sizzlers!!! … But if you are a adventure freak… you may replace all that by one word …. RIVER-RAFTING.

5 folks, named Chandu (The Money-man), Amaresh (The Initiator), Ranjan (The Planner), Dipankar (The Executor) and Satya, all from Finance Team went on a trip to Sikkim/Gangtok in Feb 2014.

After a hectic journey of 15 hrs, all the way from Kolkata, we were finally at Melli….. with white sand, cold green water, rushing air and fast-moving waters….!!!!
It was the none other than “Teesta” where I, CP and Ranjan would put down our naked legs inside cold water just to see who resists the colder water for longer time..

What lay ahead?
The raft was all set to float through slow rapids later turning into giant waves amid high hills of Teesta. All set to leave the white sands behind and plunge into green Teesta.

Since that was our first rafting experience, we almost felt as a part of some advanced expert rafting team who venture into dangerous rapids for “I don’t know” reasons.
And we left with a huge roar. -- Cold water splattered and sipped through neck vent freezing lungs and stopping our breathing dead for a while.

After fifteen minutes:
We? drenched. What happens to raft? drenched. Rapids? overtaken us. And here comes a big rapid striking head on with our raft. “Hooooooooooold the rope guys! This one is tough”. I clung to the front ropes and watched a big dreading water wave surrounding us.
Time stopped and life went into slow motion mode.
Splash!! Aahhhhh!!
And again a cascade of splashes.
Someone put thousands of liters of water over us. Drenched and cold!


Shouting like anything by flow of splatter in the middle of monster-rapids had transported us eternally to some other world, while physically we were left behind on earth. --Totally unaware of the mundane world on-goings...
and…….
Another cold wave chilling down our spine, beautiful like a frozen rose. Raft crisscrossing through rock-pivots, getting stuck in drifts and sometimes left on mercy of currents.
For a moment, we were concealed under blanket of cold water. Shout and live the passing moment as much as you can. We cherishing an opaque world for an instance.

Water chilled our bones to the marrow. We still had miles to go. -– Each time we met a rapid, we met with Niagara Falls in a barrel.
Somewhere around 29th mile along Teesta, we met final rapid. It appeared as though somebody was pushing our raft from behind. Facing the truth, I was moving on the fastest ever raft.
Thug!
Tons of water spilled over us. It was crazy. We had narrowly escaped rocks and minutely avoided striking against standing stones.


Raft slowed & Heart regained the normal beating rate.
We got out senses back working and Transported back to the reality of life.


Alas! we had to step down. Fully drenched..
We turned behind, saw the raft, the thing on which we lived thousands of years in a moment was smiling at us. Yup buddy it was a lifetime deal…

Perspective: Back to work, we all have unrealistic goals to achieve, stringent bottom lines to meet, momentary euphoria of achievement drowned in months of despair, but it is the memories of trips like these that last a lifetime, perhaps bringing a smile on our faces as we recollect in the months and years to come.

Acknowledgements:
Amaresh Gupta
CP Jain
Dipankar Dutta and
Ranjan Biswal

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