Published and Edited

As I drove through the newly constructed road, I felt as though I was flying. True, my Suvega moped was no sports bike, but racing on it was the best feeling in the world. I rarely got the chance to ride it; my father took it to the post office. The bike was his pride and joy. He was hysterical lest I even touch it; he didn’t trust my adolescent hands. Today, the second day after my father had boarded the train to Hubli, I ran home on the moped. My mother at first was reluctant to give in to my demands, but she relented once I made the promise that I would protect the bike with my life. So, here I was just a few kilometres away from the Sathodi falls. I hadn’t been to the falls in quite some time, and I couldn’t wait to jump into the water.
As the concrete roads vanished and I rode my moped on the muddy roads, I had to slow down for a bit. After a rather difficult fifteen minutes on the swampy roads, I reached the bottom of the falls and perched myself on one of the rocks. I was about to take off my clothes to jump into the water, but something caught my eye, which was on the brink of the opposite bank. For a minute, I thought it was just a big rock, but a rock couldn’t be translucent. I jumped into the stream and crossed it, as I reached closer to the rather huge rock-like structure, I realised there was a boy inside it. I began to swim as fast as I could, but the current was strong. That was one of my worries, the current shouldn’t wash it away, and with it the boy. I made it to the other side, wading through the shallow end, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. It looked like a big block of ice, but that was not possible; it didn’t snow in Karnataka. Could it be quartz stone? I could see a boy inside. Was he alive? I put my face on its surface. That’s when it hit me. It was Neel inside.
I stood back for a minute. How was that possible? Neel had been missing for over ten years now. I peeked again and again for I had made another startling discovery; Neel hadn’t aged one bit. He was still the little boy I used to pick on in the schoolyard. I began to panic, was I having illusions? I walked around the block that held Neel inside. Much to my surprise, his hand was sticking out of it. But wait! The hand was big; it was the hand of an adult. I held it and checked his pulse. He was alive! I peeked in again, Neel’s other hand was small, a child’s hand. I couldn’t handle this on my own.
“What happened?” The Sarpanch waded through the water. I had driven my moped as fast as I could into the village to share my discovery. Neel’s parents were the first to react, his mother was ecstatic his father, however, a bit morbid. He didn’t believe my story; they thought I was pulling a prank on them.
For the past ten years, Neel’s mother had performed several Poojas for the return of her son, and it looked like they had finally paid off. She waded through the water, overtaking the Sarpanch. She looked into the block and shouted, “That’s Neel!” Then, realisation swept across her face. Neel was still a ten-year-old, and she looked at me in disbelief. The Sarpanch, unable to comprehend what he was seeing began to shout “Somebody get a Tantrik!”.
I sighed as I realized my evening at Sathodi Falls had been eclipsed by the past.
 
-Pranavi.P.S