Borah

The trip to Assam was so great till today, and tomorrow is supposed to be the highlight of the whole tour. We just arrived near the Kaziranga National Park, Assam. It’s one of the few places in the world where you get to see Rhinos and also other animals, in their natural environment. We were waiting for this part of the trip, but I guess we arrived at the place a little late. We arrived there at about 5:00 pm in the evening, and were supposed to stay the night at the government guest house nearby and go to the national park tomorrow. Since we didn’t have any transport inside and also we had quite a bit of luggage, Dad went inside first, saying that he would talk to the reception about the room and also get some help in getting our luggage inside. So mom, my brother and I were waiting just outside the entrance of the guest house area in a bus shelter. We waited for a while and it was around 6:00 pm by the time dad came back, and it was already dark. I was kind of mad at my father for taking so long. He said that he couldn’t find a boy who could help us carry our luggage, so we were on our own now.

We started walking into the guest house area, carrying our own luggage and then I found out the reason behind dad’s late arrival. This place was huge! And there was no building that was in our visible range. The only problem is that most of the street lights weren’t working and since we were surrounded by many trees, it was very creepy. Dad was fine with it though, may be due to his trip inside an hour ago, but to me and mom, it was quite scary. The road trip was so scary that we couldn’t tell how far or how long we travelled in the dark road. After what seemed like an eternity, we finally reached at what seemed like a junction, around which there were a lot of buildings, which I presumed to be the guest houses for tourists. Dad went into one of the buildings and came back, saying that our room was a little further in to the road towards the left. The road we took led us to a dark area again, and after walking for about five minutes we found a building which looked like an old house. We opened the gate, which I found to be too rusty and my mom was already worried about the maintenance of the house. Since we didn’t have the keys to get in, my elder brother and I decided to explore the outside of the place and take some pictures. We found some broken windows and the paint was also too old. If it wasn’t a guest house belonging to the government, we could have easily believed it to be haunted.

We waited for about 10 minutes and mom started to doubt if we were in the right place. Luckily dad’s mobile came with a torch, which we used to see if anyone was coming this way. Then a local person who we assumed to be a Ghorkha came to us and gave us the keys and helped us get in. He said the watchman of the house “Borah” will look after our needs. The room was enormous. It turned out that the building we explored from outside consisted of a single room with 12 beds. The room was supposed to be given only to a large group of tourists, but apparently they didn’t have much as all the other rooms were filled. Unlike the outside, the insides of the house looked good, and like all other hotels we have been in Assam so far, there were no fans in the room. After a little while the power went off!! It was then that we found out how the beautiful sound of the forest turns into really scary sounds at nights. My dad was the kind of person who likes to take advantage of incidents when people get scared of things. Also since we badly needed some light, he went out shouting “Borah!! Borah!!” but no one was in sight.

“Dad!! Will you stop yelling his name out loud? It’s already too creepy in here!!”

“Hey!! What did I do? I am calling the watchman for candles? It’s already too dark in here.”

“Why not just go to sleep? It’s not like we going to do anything else besides sleep.”

“What are you saying? We still need to have dinner don’t we?”

“Ahh! That again? Dad! We saw through the whole place on the way. We didn’t even see a place which looked a restaurant. After walking for 2 km with the luggage, I don’t think anyone except you can have an appetite. Can we just go to bed tonight and think about food tomorrow?”

And he doesn’t listen. I always knew that Dad never compromised about food. It has always been a difficult task trying to talk him out of it. He goes out and calls loudly “Oye Borah!! Borah!! You there? Borah!!”

And the growls of the wolves were the only replies we got! Arrgh! He had to call Borah! If I ever see Borah, I am going to kill him!!

Fortunately, after a few minutes, a little boy of about 12 years old came to us with a set of candles and lit them. He said that Borah was his grandfather and sent him to give us this set of candles. After dad asked him about the dinner provisions, he said that it was already too late and they didn’t have anything to serve for now. Fortunately mom had some bananas we bought during the journey here, so we got to eat and we went to sleep after I put our phones, camera and the Laptop for charging. Sleep wasn’t easy to come that night, so it took me lot of time to finally get to sleep.

Next morning we woke up a bit early. The same boy appears in the morning asking if we needed hot water. Dad starts enquiring about Borah again! I don’t know why he persists on meeting that guy. The rest of us were starting to wonder if he really existed. And my bro starts saying “Before going, we have to get Darshan of this Borah guy whose name was being chanted by Dad! I want to see his priceless expression.”

After we got ready, we locked the room and got out and I couldn’t believe my eyes. The place which looked like it was haunted the night before in fact looked like a beautiful place. It was filled with lots of flowers, trees and creepers that made it look very beautiful. Had I seen this place in the day first, I would never have believed that the place could scare me like that in the night! And so was the surrounding. All of the beautiful things we saw on our way out also made us feel a bit embarrassed. We just got into conclusions out of some sounds from the forest and a couple of broken windows. After this, we had our breakfast, and went on a Safari on what would become our most awesome wild life experience ever! There were even some animals which we saw from a very close distance and it was really fascinating.

After the wonderful 2 hour trip on safari, we had our lunch, came back to the guest house and started packing our bags. After a while, a group of tourists who we later found out were from Mizoram arrived there. They booked the guest house for that day, so it was almost the time we were supposed to vacate the room.

Few minutes before we were about to leave, a dark old man with a monkey cap was at the door. When my father went to him, he said his name was Borah, the watchman of the guest house and he was asking for the tip. My bro was the first one to fall on the floor, laughing, later accompanied by me, and it took us a lot of time to recover that. Dad’s expression was priceless!

On the way out, my bro says, “Ultimately, we met the mystery guy Borah! The trip here would have been incomplete without meeting him.”

“It sure is! I don’t think we would ever forget his or the place for all the experience!!”

“Next stop is Guahati! Here we come!!”

“Aye Aye Sir!!”