Happy Campers

When in first year of law, 10 students from our college were sent to a leadership camp. The gist of the camping experience is that, the resource persons tried to break our ego, made us questions our goals, and we did get to do a few fun things too. We were made to walk the Burma Bridge, which was much easier than multi wire traversing. There was also a nice pond in the camping area and we were warned not to swim there. So the day we were kayaking, we were given a task, which we were to do on our kayaks. Our team was without oars so two members had to manoeuvre the kayak to its destination while two sat in it as passengers all this was to be done without us talking. For the first few minutes the whole exercise seemed to be going right and suddenly chaos broke loose. I had been eyeing the pond since we got to the camp. For this task we were made to wear the life jackets, which only made me uncomfortable. Taking advantage of the chaos I removed the safety jacket and started swimming. The resource persons had no option but to allow everybody to take a dip. There were 10 other students from another college, and one girl from that college was petrified of water, her kayak had catapulted and she was in the water screeching her lungs out, I decided to go help her. (!) I held on to her arm to help her get to dry land and that ungrateful creature pushed my head under the water (I wasn’t expecting that) so I just left her hand and let the resource person take over.

But after this chaotic incident a meeting was called where we were told to get into dry clothes and were then driven off to a village called Megni. On reaching Megni, we were again divided into groups and me the unluckiest of all was sent off with this other guy to a villager’s house. There we were told that we would have to earn our meal by working for them. It was already 8pm when we reached the village, and I hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch, and all the exercise in water had made me hungry. So I was all set for dinner, only to be told by the family that they don’t eat dinner but just breakfast and lunch. Then we were led to the kitchen. The other guy who was my teammate was TOTALLY useless. Since we were not having dinner he inquired about breakfast, the lady said she’d be preparing akki rotti (Rice dosa). But they hadn’t yet ground the rice. So “I” had to grind the rice on an antique grinder with my silly teammate criticizing my methodology. It took me 2 ½ hours to finish that. I was really very happy to finally sleep.

Next morning we had to wake up at 4 and start watering the garden sans hose. Remember the heavy pots? Yeah… had to use that to pour water. Not being used to carrying that I had to fill half the pot for each trip. I’ve never enjoyed breakfast the way I did that morning! Later we had to go into the forest to collect firewood and dry leaves. When “firewood” was mentioned, I could imagine pieces of wood cut neatly in a pile. But that wasn’t to be! We had to haul a tree trunk ( not exaggerating) all the way back to the village with a basket of dry leaves hanging on our backs. For lunch we had unpolished rice, curds and pickle. The family also had a pet dog named Raju, who was our constant companion. I was told he was very notorious as he had a tendency to have a biting spree. But he and I hit it off pretty well. Which surprised the family very much. In the evening a vehicle came to collect us. We bid good-bye to the family and headed for the camp. What happened there later is just not relevant. We stayed on at the camp for two more days, and knowing that it would come to an end and that I’d be on my way home soon was the only thing that kept me going for the last two days. Finally at the bus stop my friends and I heaved a happy sigh. Our journey back was uneventful and even if anything did happen I was oblivious to it.