Chapter 13 Chris - His Story (1/2)
Chris was sharing his tent with Zen. Their tent was adjacent to the tent occupied by Tina and Nanu.The boys had occupied tents at the extreme ends kept the tents of the 5 girls and their teacher in the middle. This was to provide protection to the girls in a way.
As soon as the girls bid all good night and headed for their tents to sleep, the boys also made their way towards their respective tents. Zen and Chris also bid good night to their fellow students, Zia ma'am, Luke Sir and Sherpa. Then they headed towards the end of the tents towards the cliff side as they had pitched their tent there. Others had protection of their tent but they would face the cold wind blowing down from the snow covered mountains from the cliff side.
Chris had been excited about the camping trip. He had read up about the area where the camping site was and he was intrigued with the three days trip. In a way it was an adventure. If things ran smoothly then there was nothing exciting about it. But if they encountered some difficulties and surmounted the obstacles, then the trip would really become adventurous.Looking at the mountains arising from below the cliff was a scene so beautiful. The moonlight was shining on the mountains and the white silvery glow was being cast on the tents. The sky was so clear that one could see clearly even a few bats flying around on the other side of the hills from where they had come.
Chris had a premonition that they would not be going back the way they had taken when they came here to this camping site.
Chris was psychic since birth and could gauge many things to happen in future including danger. It was quite uncanny. Sometimes in class, he would get to know what would be the next question, the teacher would be writing on the board.Sometimes, he was on the 2nd question which had not even been written on the board yet. He had checked this premonition thing a number of times. Because of this he wanted to study further into ESP in Russia. Even in India they had things like Past Life Regression which he knew would help him deal with people with mental trauma they had carried into this life from the previous life.
He saw that his tent mate was also getting into his sleeping bag.
But sleep was evasive. Anyway, he also decided to jump into his sleeping bag. He tried to sleep by counting backward from 100, then he also started counting sheep but nothing was happening. He was also restless and unable to sleep. After all, it was not his bed and his bedroom at home. The comfort of one's bed and one's home is the best.
Ultimately, he tried to visualize his mother singing him a lullaby that she used to sing to him when he was a toddler. He had to sleep as lights were out and there was nothing to do to pass time till sleep would take over. Without phones life was extremely difficult. He could not even read his favorite novels on web-novels.
Chris knew they were cut off from everyone. He also wondered how people managed when there was no connectivity in the past before mobiles and internet. He belonged to the presentgeneration, and regarded that period prior to the coming of mobile phones with internet facilities as practically the formatting of the present era.
However, most kids regarded that time as practically the dark ages. In the 1980s, you had those landline phones which were the push button types. Earlier than that, the phones had a dialing system where slots were from numbers 1 to 0 and you had to place your index finger in one slot then dial it all the way around one after another to dial a number and call someone. His father used to tell him all these things. Even with those types of phones, mankind was able to launch numerous space visits including a landing on the moon in 1969. Progress is a continuous process and it takes time.
Anyway, it was quite peaceful without phones ringing everywhere. He was always disgusted watching people on their mobiles all the time. Even when driving or while crossing the road one would encounter such persons who could not stay away from their mobiles even for a minute. These chaps were a hazard to others as well as themselves and was quite a major cause of accidents as they walked looking into their phones and drove while looking into their phones. Technology had its disadvantages too.
In the morning he would try to contact his parents. They all had been interacting with their friends and family till the forest area.The guest-house should be having a system whereby they could contact their relatives just to tell them that they were safe. If the guest-house could not help then, of course, there was the Sat phone with Luke Sir.He had mentioned that he possessed one when they were trekking to this camping site.