Kapitel 14: Danny– his story

Danny was sharing his tent with Ben. Their tent was adjacent to the tent occupied by Zia ma'am and Zoya on one side and that of Sunny and Sherpa on the other side. 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 good night and headed for their tents to sleep, the boys also made their way towards their respective tents. Danny and Ben 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 forest side as they had pitched their tent there. The tent of the girls and ma'am were after their tent. Next to their tent was that of Sunny and Sherpa.

Danny had been very 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. Like Chris he wanted things to run smoothly but if then there would be nothing exciting about it. But if they met some obstacles/difficulties on the way and cleared these obstacles, then the trip would really become adventurous. The night sky and the moonlight being reflected by the snow covered mountains was a dream-like scene and it was 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.

Danny wished that they would take another route than the one they had used to reach the camp. He liked to study stars and was a stargazer. His father had even bought him a powerful telescope to do stargazing. He found the night sky fascinating here in the campsite. The clarity of the stars was astonishing. At home, he had never been able to see so many. There was no pollution here so there was no haze and you could see an abundance of stars. In the cities and due to pollution there was a constant haze and you could only see a hand full of stars. He had not packed his telescope for the trip but he had used the telescope that Luke Sir had brought. It seems that Luke Sir was also a stargazer.

He saw that his tent mate was also getting into his sleeping bag.

Due to the excitement; it was perhaps not easy to sleep as sleep would not come into his eyes. Sleep was playing hide and seek with him. Anyway, he decided to follow the example set by Ben and jumped 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 and started humming the tune. 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. They all were getting a taste of no connectivity, no phones, no mobiles, no net, no YouTube, etc. and no electricity.

He knew that in the early 1980s, people 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. There were a number of call booths called Telia in Sweden, PTB ( Public Telephone Box- the Dr. Who's Tardis type phone booth) the UK or some other name like PCO (meaning Public Call Office in the Subcontinent of India and Pakistan). You could call within the city, outside the city and even outside the country.

Now everyone used mobiles and many people had surrendered their landlines unless it was an add-on for internet plus mobile and landline and nominal charges. Progress is a continuous process and it takes time.

Anyway, it was quite peaceful without phones ringing everywhere. He had never realized that people had made this technology from helping in connectivity into a nuisance value to some extent. He was disgusted with the way people used this mobile technology. People were always on their mobile phones. Even when driving or while crossing the road they would not stop using them. These chaps were a hazard to others as well as themselves and such action on their part caused major accidents as they walked looking into their phones and drove while looking into their phones. Technology had its disadvantages too.

All said and done, he still needed to call his parents to let them know that all was well with him. Parents do tend to worry about their children. In the morning he would try to contact his parents. 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.

Danny felt that Ben had finally fallen asleep as he could not hear any movement from the sleeping bag of Ben.

He still could not sleep due to the restlessness, as well as the psychological reaction of sleeping in an unfamiliar place. Sleeping in an unfamiliar place, that too in a sleeping bag on the first day, was not easy. Maybe, if he spent another night at the camp then he could ensure that he would get used to this sleeping bag and the surroundings. He would definitely be able to sleep as soon as his head touched the pillow of his temporary bed (sleeping bag) in the tent at the camping site.

Though he had not spoken to Luke Sir, he had spoken a little with Zia ma'am. He felt that there was something like romance brewing between them. It would take time for the romance to bloom. He was still young in years but he could feel it in his bones so to speak. They were definitely on their way to like each other and maybe wedding bells would be there by the end of the year.

As far as his life was concerned there was nothing much to tell. His father, Ronny, had brought him up. His mother, Sheila, had died of cancer when he was a baby. She was a Doctor who had specialized in Cancer treatment. His father was also a doctor and had specialized in Pediatrics. He and his father were very close.

He had managed to teach himself about stars after visiting various websites. He had downloaded apps that indicated the night sky over a particular area at a particular time at night. He would then try to see the stars with the naked eye as well as through the telescope. There was a lot of information on the net if you really wanted to learn something. To quench his thirst astronomy he would read a lot of books, gauged a lot of information from the internet, or he would watch other such channels to enhance his knowledge.

His plan was to study Astronomy and become an Astronomer.

He had become quite independent from an early stage and could manage to look after himself. His father was a busy person but he insisted that Danny learned to look after himself as reads to cooking, cleaning his room, washing his clothes. He wanted that his son would not be dependent on anyone.

Slowly he started feeling drowsy and his eyelids started to droop. After a few minutes, he was fast asleep.

It was around 5 a.m. and Danny awoke with a start due to the huge disturbance coming from outside their tent and the screaming of Ben. He could hear the tearing of the tent from outside along with grunt sounds as if it was a pig or a bear was standing outside and trying to rip open their tent to come inside. Ben was screaming and struggling to get out of his sleeping bag.

Danny quickly got out of his sleeping bag and helped Ben to get out of his sleeping bag and they both went towards the entrance of the tent. Ben could not unzip the tent opening as his hands were shaking. They were about to rush out when the heard a gunshot. Sherpa was outside their tent and helped them come out. Luke was running towards the back of the tent with his gun and fired another shot. The huge animal which had been trying to rip the tent apart took to his heels after hearing the second shot as the bullet just missed its ear by a few inches.

After the bear ran off, Luke came over to Danny, Ben, and Sherpa who had helped the two boys get out of the tent. He wanted to know if both the boys were ok. When he found that they were just scared and Ben was shaking a lot. He asked Sherpa to give Ben a glass of normal water with sugar dissolved in it to calm him down as he was in shock.

Sherpa immediately ran to the tent he was sharing with Sunny and got out his sugar solution. He carried it in a paper cup to give to Ben. Sunny also joined them and so did the rest of the campers. All of them knew that Ben must have been eating in bed as is his habit.