The Trail to Spring

Chapter 18

I quietly walked back to our car feeling a bit foolish.

Rakesh was already sitting on the passenger seat. Sukhiji was blabbering about in Nepali in a very angry tone and it wasn't too hard to figure out that he would not entertain any more halts to our journey.

As the Sun eventually set behind the mountain ranges and the sky turned black, the scenery became more sombre. The mountains that had seemed so welcoming in the daylight now loomed like giant ghosts that could gulp us down at any moment. It felt pretty eerie with not a single human being in sight and only our car's headlight showing the way by breaking through the darkness. We could spot tiny lights in the far distant mountains at regular intervals, marking the minuscule human touch to tame this vast wilderness of the mountain jungles. Back when I was young, I would mistake those lights for fireflies and I would reach out to grab them, much to the jolly amusement of my parents. Little did I know that they were the lights from the little settlements and towns that were situated in the far off mountains which couldn't be touched however much I would have tried.

Initially I had tried to engage Rakesh in a conversation about The Last Mountain Standing but he was not much chatty. It may have been my fault. Maybe I had brought into his mind a sensitive topic. Sukhiji told us a bit about the Gorkha movement and how with every strike in the hills, his business was taking a turn for the worse. But eventually, he also stopped talking. I closed my eyes and finding nothing better to do, grabbed my headphones and put on The Fool on the Hill by the Beatles.

I must have fallen asleep for quite some time after that, because when I woke up, our car was stuck in a pretty long traffic. There is nothing different between traffic in the plains and the mountains. In both cases, they are frustrating. It's just that the roads slope at an angle here. Which makes it a bit more frustrating.

I squinted through the glass to catch a glimpse of the ever present mountain ranges in the background but what with the people and the cars and the buildings and the various shops, I couldn't find any satisfactory scenery to feast my eyes upon at the moment. It was then that I realised that we had finally reached our destination, the town of Darjeeling, the darling hill-station of all Bengalis.

"Where will we stay?," I wondered out loud.

"I know a place," Rakesh replied as our car slowly creeped forwards through the traffic.

He started to give Sukhiji directions after a while and I knew he must have come here before. We stopped in front of a gate. I noticed that there weren't many other houses around this place. We got down from the car and Rakesh asked Sukhiji to meet us in the morning at ten. I held on to the rails of the gate and looked inside. I spotted a gravelly little path leading down a slope to a bungalow. Streaks of light flowed out of a few of the room  and it looked pretty cosy in that desolate and lonely environment surrounded by trees and darkness on all sides.

Rakesh opened the gate with a loud clang and we walked inside.

"This is Mrs. Majumdar's place. She is a widow and her daughter works in Kolkata. I had helped her to trace a lost diamond ring one time when I visited this place and I am pretty sure that she'll welcome our company today," Rakesh said.

"Lost diamond ring?," I asked.

"Well, it is quite a bit of a long story. Suffice to say it consisted of a lot of fake murders, haunted rumours and smuggling which ultimately led to me finding Mrs. Majumdar's late husband's ring. I returned it to her and as a gesture of her goodwill, she said I was always welcome to drop by her house whenever I wanted to."

"You seem to have been doing this detective gig for quite some time," I observed.

"Yes, I guess," he said, "I even once had a friend who used to accompany me on my cases. His name was Riju - a bit dull at the top but a true friend. He moved out a year ago to Pune."

He rang the doorbell when we reached the bungalow and it seemed to reverberate all around the house. Mrs. Majumdar opened the door herself and she looked exactly like I pictured her to be in my imagination- a little fat, spectacled, black hair with tiny specks of white peeping here and there and a warm and welcoming smile on her face.

She welcomed us inside and showed us to the living room. It was very well furnished with a big book case in one corner. The house was a welcoming change from the old dark orphanage and the ridiculously small apartment of the detective.

The moment that I sat down on the sofa in the living room, I felt light- headed and a bit drowsy. It had been quite a tiring two days for me and the reaction finally seemed to be stepping in.

I somehow finished the dinner that Mrs. Majumdar lovingly prepared for us herself. The food was delicious with a mouth watering preparation of chicken. But I felt too tired to savour the food. Mrs. Majumdar entertained us by talking about her daughter and how she had successfully started a business venture or something. I didn't quite register the details in my head.

As soon as I finished my meal, she showed me to my bedroom and I collapsed down on the bed without even changing my clothes. I just needed to sleep. Nothing else mattered much now.