That unexpected warmth of togetherness

I am a person born in Delhi and brought up in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. Dad had a transferable job so I had the privilege to stay in 3 different cities. I was always pampered a lot in my home. My parents would take care of each and every need of mine. I was never allowed to go alone to any place which was not considered very safe for me. So everywhere I went, it was with my family or in a group.

During the last month of my graduation, one of my friends told me that she is going to get married the next month. I was very excited and so were all of my friends. After all she was the first one in our group who was going to get married. So plan was made. 2 weeks after our exam we will take a train from Mumbai to Varanasi, where the marriage was going to take place. Making plan was the easier part, convincing my parents that I am old enough to be sent alone was the more difficult one. It took me 3 days before my dad finally agreed but not before he gave me a huge list of do’s and don’ts .  Anyways we reached Varanasi as decided. Everything was normal, until that day.

It was a cold horrifying night. There was no source of night anywhere. The only thing that I could see was my own body. There was no human being around. The only sounds that I was hearing was that of stray dogs barking( I thought they were barking at me) and the crickets present all around that dark muddy road. It was the day before sangeet. 5 of us had to go from my friends house to the marriage hall which was around 600 meters away. It was 9 in the night. 4 of my friends had already left for the marriage hall. As I was talking on phone, I asked them to start  and once I was done talking I started walking alone towards the marriage hall. After I had walked some 100 meters, there was power cut. And there was darkness all over. I was a bit scared but I kept walking. As I was walking, two guys entered the road from some crossing street and started walking parallel to me. Both were talking very loudly and the way they were talking and walking, it seemed that both of them were drunk. To make the matter worse I saw a dog barking and running towards me.

I always had a kind of phobia of street dogs. When that dog approached me I thought it was going to bite me. But to my surprise, it came near me, started waging its tail and started walking along with me.  It kept on walking with me till I reached the end of the road where my friends were standing. At times the most unexpected company can give you so much happiness and relief that can change your whole perspective. For me, for those 5 mins of togetherness with that street dog was invaluable and very comforting and certainly helped me overcome my fear of street dogs.

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