Mystery Girl
Close Shave Suspicion Rise of Slum Boy The Lame Panther Legend of Snakes
I wonder who that beautiful girl was, whom I saw at our construction site one fine morning in a small remote village long ago.
It is an ancient but real story I experienced in
1974 when I was posted in a remote hilly town near the Indo-Bangladesh
border.
We had a sanctioned scheme to construct an embankment
on the bank of a hilly river to protect four villages.
Those days road communication was abysmal. There
were two options to reach the work site:
1. Travel by four-wheeled Jeep for 24 km and then walk
on foot for 10 Km. The road used to remain mostly closed those days due to frequent landslides.
2. The Second option was to go by a small, one-log wooden boat (Dinghy) for about 10 Km and then walk for 5 Km through dense forest.
We always preferred the second option, going by boat for 10
Km and then walking for 5 Km.
The work was a simple construction of earthen embankment with
manual compaction by rammers, stone pitching on the slopes, buildings of boulder sausage spurs, and construction
of reinforced cement concrete culverts with sluice gates.
The supervision was done mainly by our junior engineers
and section assistants. And during important works like R.C.C. Concreting, I would definitely visit the site.
The visit to the site by one-log wooden boat (dinghy) and
then walking through the forest used to be very adventurous and
exciting, as we could see live fishes
and rocky beds of the hilly river clearly as well as frequent encounters with snakes in the forest. At times we met herds of elephants, deer, and wild boars.
Now coming to the core of this story which is based on my
actual experience, it goes as follows:-
One day, when I reached the site for constructing an RCC sluice culvert, about 50 local laborers were already working. The concrete
mixers were running, and the concrete mix was being prepared and carried manually
to the culvert site. The masons were pouring the concrete mix into the wooden shuttering
and frameworks. The work was progressing well under our directions and supervision.
Lunch for us was under preparation by our staff. It was a
hot day, and we did not have electricity in the village or at the site. The villagers served us local rice beer with our lunch, which consisted of bread (Indian Roti), chicken curry, and fried vegetables. It was like a
picnic in the forest on the bank of a significant hilly river, where the water was natural, clean, tasty, and stored in clay pitchers.
Suddenly, our eyes fell on a very beautiful female laborer.
She was a rustic beauty with a fair complexion, slim, dark eyes, and natural pinkish lips. We visited this work site frequently, but this was the first time we met her. So, it was an honest and genuine curiosity to know about her. I called the contractor and asked him
from which village she belonged. He replied that this was her first time at work, and he had no idea about her native town. The labor supplier had never seen her earlier but engaged her temporarily for one day without asking for her details.
The time was about 4.00 P.M. when the concreting works were completed, and the laborers started leaving for home. I was curious about the
rustic beauty, but she had already left.
It was high time for us to return because it was risky to
row the boat in the dark. We had to walk for 5 Km to reach the ferry ghat, where our boat was waiting.
As such, we were walking fast to get the boat (dinghy), and then suddenly,
we saw the girl walking ahead. She, too, increased her pace and was
almost running, and then what happened was shocking and unexpected. Suddenly, she turned into a water monitor and jumped into the river.
We never saw her again, but a picture of her is still vivid.
I could not believe that a human being could change into
another matter/creature. So I narrated this incident to many local people and sought
their views, but no one could give me adequate information or explanation. One day I met the tribal village head (headman) and stated the whole incident to him.
"You will not believe me, but there are people in our tribe, who have the power to change into another form,” he replied. He mentioned the occasional visit of a mermaid at the ferry ghat, but I was not at all convinced. How could a mermaid (even if in existence) have an average human body? And why she would work as a laborer!
I had also heard earlier that there were people in their community who could
transform themselves into some other creature.
Anyway, I have shared what I have seen with my own eyes in
this short story, and I know most of you will not believe it. And you should not
believe in such superstitions, and please consider them fiction only.
As far as I am concerned, I saw it happening with my own eyes about 50 years back when I was young but mature, so the memory of the Mystery Girl is still alive in my heart.
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