Dear friends,
Today I will share with you; my trip to Darjeeling and Mirik (a tourist place in North Bengal) with my two school friends in 1986.
Three of us on June ’86 planned to go to Darjeeling for four days.
We were unemployed at that time
and the pocket money we used to get; we have accumulated that for the trip.
It was the rainy season, and we traveled by night service and reached Siliguri in the morning. From Siliguri, we traveled by share Taxi to Darjeeling and reached around 11.30 am. It was raining the whole day, and we took shelter in Youth Hostel.
We could not go out for site seeing, as the rain was heavier as the time passed. In the evening we heard that landslide has happened in a different part of Darjeeling and the roads got block.
The same thing continued for the next two days, and we got stuck in the hostel for an entire day without visiting any place. The food stock and water was limited, and we have to manage by that as many
other tourists got stuck also.
On the third day, we have decided that by any means, we have to come down from Darjeeling as our limited; money was also drying down.
We spoke to the local administration in the evening and requested them to help us reach Siliguri by any vehicle. The Block Development Officer assured us that the next morning the administration will try to manage one bus.
So that along with us some other tourists can come down.
At that time of ’86, Darjeeling was in political turmoil situation.
And the death of many people was a regular phenomenon.
The linguistic differences were very common.
Anyway, after waiting for around 4 hours in the drizzling at about, 10 o clock in the morning;
A bus had been arranged and three of us along with other tourists boarded the bus. Luckily we got the very
best seat just behind the side door of the bus.
One of my friends got a window to the side, and I was sitting
just beside him. We were happy that at last, we could come down from the hill to the plane.
But the story unfolded after some time. When the bus driver; stopped at a place and allowed a local person to board the bus from the roadside.
He was intoxicated and, after boarding, waited just in front of me. After some time, he started using abusive language about our culture and spoken
language.
My friend and I were staring objecting him and told him to stop the foul language. He was carrying an umbrella, and all of a certain from the umbrella stand, he opened a sword and stabbed my right femur.
It was bleeding profoundly, and I was in tremendous pain. My other friends trying to stop him and started shouting. The bus driver stopped the bus and ran from the bus to the localities.
We saw the man also-ran to the locality, and some local people were coming with swords and other weapons.
Luckily on the other side of the road, we saw some military trucks were coming.
One of us immediately got down from the bus and stopped the truck.
Immediately all the military personnel got down from the truck, and two of them chased the man and caught him.
They immediately treated me with bandage and medicine and boarded us in a military truck afterward dropped us at Siliguri.
It was a horrifying experience for me to share with you.
