travel to a dark place

by kajal tejwani (India)

I didn't expect to find India

It was mid-July, raining so heavy you could feel water like stones hitting your body. First good rain after a long summer, thriving. little did I know what I was about to discover, deep into the unknowns of the place, it filled me up with terror. Horrifying it was, what was it? 1st week of July (1 week before), we planned to take a trip to a very quiet yet beautiful place, Igatpuri: a small place outside Mumbai. We Booked a villa, everything was ready. A week after, we had our car ready for the day. As we left with the first ray of sunlight was just about to come up, it was still dark, people were still sleeping and we? we were filled with excitement and the loud music in the car didn't reach our ears. We were too busy planning the day we wanted and have been waiting for too long. Me and My boyfriend we hadn't slept the whole night, too energetic to sleep we talked and just went on like a person with a million dollars thinking about how he is going to spend it, we planned how were we gonna spend our million moments. As we reached there, we saw a beautiful piece of architecture never to be forgotten again. It had really fine details on the walls and also on the ceiling. It looked like ancient hand-made art, I didn't think that the daylight was doing it any justice. Also, without the clouds around it could've looked like the art is dancing on the walls just enjoying the sunlight. We started our day with a walk deep into the jungle not knowing what we were looking for, we just had a map and some necessities in our backpacks and damn were they heavy. Heading deep into the jungle we were looking for an adventure, but the silence around felt too loud. Birds were probably not amused, something was weird about that day. Trees looked like they were screaming darkness, trying to say something to us that we can't hear. We were disappointed not to discover anything different and we were just plain tired. At the exact moment we heard a voice it was a really sweet one, it sounded like a bird is singing to all of us, trying so hard to make all that darkness go away. But what we saw was something entirely different from what we ever imagined. There was a bird but it wasn't singing, it was wounded and there was a very weird old lady, her hair was all around her face. My!, she had a beautiful voice, we just sat there listening to her and watching that bird as she put a paste-like something on his wounds. It felt like one of nature's blessings. "Beautiful isn't it?" I murmured. There was also this house (probably hers) in the middle of nowhere. It was small with really less or almost no hard walls around it and was built on some sticks with grass all over it. Although It had a solid ceiling made I am guessing because of the rains but it was surprising how that was decorated with feathers and flowers just spread around, it looked absolutely effortless like they were sitting in a particular way making it look appealing. After some time we left. It started raining and we wanted to go back to our villa, we headed a different route since we didn't remember the previous one but as we were going back we saw a beautiful waterfall just a little further I think that was more appealing than the house. That pure crystal white water just flowing through the slope, you could see right through the water and suddenly we saw something just floating over the water, it was black. Pitch-black like a cloth wrapped around something, but it looked like darkness or some evil slipping away impuring that crystal water, we knew something was weird about that day. we couldn't follow it because the water was too deep and it passed away really fast like a glimpse of wickedness but whatever that was it sure hadn't left my mind till this day.