{"id":893,"date":"2021-07-23T10:32:48","date_gmt":"2021-07-23T10:32:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/?p=893"},"modified":"2021-07-23T10:32:51","modified_gmt":"2021-07-23T10:32:51","slug":"an-afternoon-to-remember","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/an-afternoon-to-remember\/","title":{"rendered":"An Afternoon to Remember"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Chaitanyamoi Chetia<\/em>
St. Joseph\u2019s High School, Moranhat, Assam<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Bhattacharjee and his wife were ecstatic as they would go to Digboi to find a beautiful home to stay in. They heard that the place was one of the leading oils and tea-producing centres of the state and had many bungalows unique to the town. They asked their son to accompany them to see the home together, but their son did not comply, saying that he watched ‘Animal Farm’ an animation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After watching the movie, he would have to sharpen his pencil to draw science pictures as part of his school project, the son said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“OK,” said his mother, “Keep the mobile phone in your pocket and call us when you feel it necessary.” After all, he was happy that his parents were going for a good cause, not knowing that it would be his father’s last driving experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Bhattacharjee said, “Get ready within five minutes; I shall drive out quickly so that we can return soon.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After taking their seats, Mr Bhattacharjee started driving the car from Dibrugarh through the never-ending tea gardens to Digboi. Mr Bhattacharjee wanted to make the journey enjoyable by telling some essential things: he told his wife that India obtained the first oil refinery in Digboi and the first oil city in Asia. He also said that playing tennis on the lawn tennis court, playing billiards sports with a cue stick on a cloth-covered billiards table, and golfing are the luxuries few people can enjoy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 “It is also a beautiful place with greenery everywhere having spectacular, and eye-catching locations and most of the bungalows are in the foothills in an upland area with elevated slopes,” he continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They, at last, reached the uphill knoll where they intended to arrive. The owner of the house grew towards middle age. With a teacup and a saucer in his hand, the owner was sipping and sitting in the front lawn of the house. Near him was resting a golf kit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He welcomed them, handing over a bunch of keys in Mr Bhattacharjee’s hands and said, “Please go and have a look at the house!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Bhattacharjee said to his wife after unlocking the door, “The owner has a sense of contentment and smile on his face. He must be making a remarkable performance in the golf course; he is clean shaved and has got his hair cut in the proper length, he is also putting on trendy attire to give a favourable impression.” His wife nodded with a smile and went inside to see the rooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A soft breeze blew then, and it swept over the top of the trees as they entered the house. There were cloth curtains in the drawing-room, and balmy breeze cooled the room’s atmosphere and made the curtains flutter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Curtains soak up the noise in proportion to the area they cover; this house is nice and well decorated!” Mr Bhattacharjee’s wife said. “Our son will also like the house.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The window shutters were made of movable wooden slats fixed in a wooden frame; also, there was writing and a reading table with sufficient light. “I am impressed by the decoration of the rooms, and our son will be able to enjoy free time in the lap of nature, untouched by pollution and congestion, surrounded by the panoramic view,” she said thoughtfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just then, Mr Bhattacharjee told her that he had a critical meeting with a young man in the outskirts; he would return soon. He advised her to look at the other rooms – the attached bathrooms, hot and cold running water, kitchen, and cabins. Saying thus, he stormed to his car to drive down the road, wondering whether he would be able to come across the young man in the said place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Bhattacharjee’s wife started looking at the grassy knoll and the tall woods, the corridors, and the ventilation of the rooms and then headed for the basin to wash her hands and look at the sink and the cabinets. The kitchen had tiled walls and non-slip floors; there was also germicide cleaning of floors in a cabin and one + UV water purifier mounted on the kitchen wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the houses in the knoll were built uniformly with slider windows and bow windows in all the rooms, but the steep downhill having vastly differing elevation was very narrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Switching on the car engine, Mr Bhattacharjee looked as if there was an obstacle in the surrounding. He put his gear shift in the reverse and looked at the rear mirror; he also checked his positions if there was any hazard on his side. He again checked his left-hand side mirror and the right-hand side mirror and started coming down slowly; till then, he came down a long distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 He started looking over his right shoulder and his left shoulder. “The path is narrow to accommodate only a single car!” he said in dissatisfaction: his hands still firmly gripped in his steering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He craned his neck backwards. Panic started swelling within him as he saw one boy with a school bag on his back in great cheer racing up his scooty to the knoll where the house was situated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seeing the scooty coming up too close to the car, Mr Bhattacharjee was at a loss and confused. The scooty and the car barely touched each other: it looked like there was about to be a collision. “Why are you coming so closer?” Mr Bhattacharjee cried impatiently with a warning to the boy, but the latter was unconcerned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He managed to steer clear of the scooty, but due to some faults while driving, he was not in full control; while negotiating with the slopes and cuts, his car failed and ultimately made the car tumble down beneath a massive and almost impenetrable thickest of thorns and boulders below the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sun was about to set in the western sky then, and the sound of the car slipping down went to a long distance. Then, seized by nervousness and alarm of fear, his wife came down running to see as to what had happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The windshield of the car shattered and broke into pieces. The front windows were all broken; the cracked windshield and tiny chips had hammered back into Mr Bhattacharjee’s face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Bhattacharjee injured his head; blood oozed out of his injured nose; trickled from his forehead, and he scraped his knees badly. It was unimaginable to every pedestrian who was near the site. One pedestrian said that if the long steep road and the elevation had been made a little wider, the accident could have been avoided that afternoon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chaitanyamoi ChetiaSt. Joseph\u2019s High School, Moranhat, Assam Mr Bhattacharjee and his wife were ecstatic as they would go to Digboi to find a beautiful home to stay in. They heard that the place was one of the leading oils and tea-producing centres of the state and had many bungalows unique to the town. They asked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":894,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-short-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=893"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":895,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893\/revisions\/895"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}