A Journey of A Life Time: Part 3 (The Eye Corner)

The journey towards Netrokona was funny. At first, we came to Mashkanda bus station via the microbus. It was a somewhat quiet journey. All of us had our bellies filled up, and most of us tried dozing off. But the next part of the journey was quite different. We got aboard a local bus from Mashkanda station, which would take us to Netrokona town. Now this was literally a local bus....the bus didn't start before all the seats and all the standing spaces got filled up by people. We took two facing seats, side by side, from each row. Me and Ashik sat in one row, while Afzal, Pintu sat in another. Tushar and Shujit sat In another seat (situated a bit farther). The place was really congested, and the journey was the most painful journey during our tour. We reached Netrokona at around 9:30 PM. It took us a while to get some rickshaws which would take us to "Ukilpara", the residence of Sujit's uncle. We got aboard, and the journey was pleasant. The place looked calm and quiet--a typical "out of Dhaka" town. It was cold, and I was loving the feeling. It is never too cold in Dhaka, and the feeling that we call "Chilling" is a rarity. I know, people who live in cold countries would say that "I've never seen cold enough, and that's why I can write about loving cold weather". Agreed, and accepted--but as long as I'm here, nothing should bother me from enjoying the lil' chill phases. The house had an adjacant pond. There was a thin walkway on the right side of the pond where two persons can walk side by side. The house was a brick build house...not a house made of tin or soil. However, this house was surrounded by tin built houses. There were two houses, side by side. The house we got had two rooms and one toilet. There was a tubewell at the left of the entrance, and the 1st floor was actually the roof. Sujut's uncle used to live in the bedroom cum living room ever since he lost his wife. The other room wasn't being used. We got the whole house for ourselves, and the place looked nice and cozy. We were tired, but not exhausted. The weather was nice enough to keep us cheerful. We passed a few jokes, and had our dinner a little while later. We were supposed to leave Netrokona tomorrow, and get back to Dhaka by evening. In that way, me and Afzal could reach Dhaka and attend office without any hassle. The dinner was great. We were really hungry, and the food was deliciously cooked. We ate to our heart's content. The begun dish was really, really good. I just salivated while writing about it, and now I am feeling hungry. After dinner, we went to our rooms, and started addafying. We knew that Tushar is scared of ghosts, and thus Sujit started telling about the neighboring woman that commited suicide a few months ago. It is known that many of the people around have seen her ghost in the night, walking by the little pond, and lamenting. Funny enough, the story turned in to a high thought discussion on "belief in afterlife and ghosts". That discussion eventually branched out in to atheism, belief in God, big bag, how we came to earth, where we are going, etc. It was a lively, and participative discussion. We spent half of the night discussing things.

At around 2 AM (if I can recall correctly), we decided to visit the roof. Sujit was a bit protesting, but eventually we all went upstairs. The surrounding was calm, but not quiet. Some birds were chirping, some lights were still on, and a gentle breeze was refreshing our minds and bodies. Not too surprisingly, some weird ideas and jokes came out of our minds. We shared a prolonged joke on the supposedly horny bird, which was singing(!) in a seductive voice...and how her efforts were going in vain. Finally when the bird stopped "kooing", we deduced that some fox got interested, came in and ate the poor little bird. Though it was supposedly a sad story, we laughed so loudly that it caused Sujit to panic. His reputation(!) was on the line, and we had to get down after that.

After coming downstairs, he resumed our chit chat, and finally at around 4, we went to bed. We were supposed to get up early in the morning, and set feet towards our final journey to Biri Shiri....a place in Netrokona, which has some nice viewables lying here and there.
Another day ends...