A Long Way To Go: A Travelling Story (2015)

Chapter 5

The days were gone, packing our luggage and preparing for food such as biscuits, chips and some cold drinks. I packed my DSLR camera but I feared if it would have been lost. After that, when the night was about to come, we went to the train. While the train started, I took out my camera to take pictures of the full moon with nature. Maisha and others were doing their gossips. The boys, Iliyas was reading some newspapers, Saiful was writing a poem and Sameen was reading scripts for his new film.

Suddenly my cell phone was vibrating. When I picked up, I saw the whisperer’s name. He called me by asking about where I was going and the train. As we were going to the VIP train, he said that local trains have a little disadvantage-robbery and poisoned food. The whisperer told me to know about Haroon’s real background from Saiful.  Now I felt that, it’s time to know about him. I sat in front of Saiful and Adreeta.

I asked “Saiful, you are missing Haroon, right?”

Saiful admitted “yes”.

I said “May I ask you something, who really is Haroon?”

Saiful said “Haroon, he was our friend from the university. He used to study so much that we used to take his notes. He was also a sporty fellow and studying psychology was his passion. Iliyas, Sameen and I were best of friends. We used to play together, study together and share our personal values. Haroon’s specialty was his jokes and his open mindedness. We had fun together until a girl named Sheeba who framed him in such a manner that he trusted her blindly. During graduation, Sheeba blamed Haroon for stealing the principal’s expensive laptop. We also insulted him also for stealing his films and research. Later on we came to know that Sheeba was the one to steal but she was rusticated”.

I had sympathy to Haroon.  His story was interesting. It was 12 o clock, I slept. At dawn, Maisha woke me up. She told me that we reached Chittagong. The station was bigger than that of Dhaka Kamolapur Station. We just went to the guest house arranged by Iliyas. It’s more like a mansion than a guest house. As Maisha was aware that I was afraid of ghosts, she scared me with their own spooky Bengali ghost stories. I laughed when she talked humorously about ghosts. Adreeta laughed “it’s not scary at all”.

“The real scare is in Foy’s Lake and we are not going there” said Maisha.

“Then ok” said Adreeta.

Saiful interrupted “that’s enough for scary stories, can we go with non scary stories?”

“Sure” we all said.

A short old man came in front of us. He wore a white silk clothed shirt with a cap at the top. He had a long mustache.

“Dulal, how are the breakfast arrangements?” asked Iliyas to the short man.

“Sir, it’s superb!” said Dulal the short man.

We went inside the house. It was so big as we thought of. We sat on a grand table. Some chefs served the parathas (plain pancake), chicken curry, fried eggs and vegetable curry. It was so yummy that I ate it over and over again. We took some rest and felt that I should talk to the whisperer.