Jayanta uncle's family and our family set out in the morning for visiting the important tourist places of undivided koraput. Our first destination was Gupteswar. This time we found the temple beautification work in full swing. The steps of the temple which meanders upto the hill top are widened and covered with orange-coloured slates. The siva linga which is worshipped at this place is enshrined in a cave which elongates to a considerable distance and mingles into darkness.I could not muster courage to explore the end point of the cave. The thick darkness overpowers all shorts of portable lighting systems. The congenial bats flutter in the cave at the sight of the visitors. The big rocks, which make the roof of the cave, bear weird structures which add a strange sombreness to the place.

Sweating by a hillside

I sat in the college library. Mind developed a kind of tranquility. I loved to sit there away from my home environment. I felt happy because I was sitting their alone in the company of few books. Ajaya was delivering a class to the students. The sounds of his speech I could hear. It was making the atmosphere more study centred. But our college do not have a garden. The campus is not well-kept. This may reflect our neatly functional approach to the institution. We the lecturers come, teach our lessons and go away, so it happens with other staff. We read about environmental degradation but we never put efforts for its restoration. The basic attitude of life has become superficial and rootless. Yesterday I had been to a hill side near our town. And I found that the hills are stripped off the green cover by the local people. The collection of fire wood and other plant products have left the place barren. The hills show up massive hard granites to the blazing sunshine resulting an unbearable temperature rise. In that winter afternoon when I was climbing up the hill I sweated profusely. The winter evening became hell like. There the stay was not at all enjoyable because human interference in the nature's laws had spoiled the refreshing qualities of the hillside.

Reliving some forgotten part of life

The life of an individual and his surroundings greatly influence each other. It would be more appropriate to say that life’s gradual progress accompanies an outwardly imperceptible but steadily deepening bond with the place where we live in and the people who are around us. This truth is discoverable at moments when we attempt at viewing the flashbacks of life which may range from extreme heights of happiness to abysmal depths of despair. Both sweetness and the bitterness in life collectively constitute the emotional bonding that makes life what it ought to be. Heated arguments, lovely hugs, moments of separation or association all go to form the very definition of life. Some memories linger and some memories gradually fade away leaving only a faint trail of trace. But occasions are there, when such old memories are reawakened or reminded significantly by many small things of life. And the influences of such things immediately refresh those faded memories into life once again.


This so happened when way back I had been to my old college for some official work. That was the college where I had graduated. That was the college which was so intimate to me. I saw those old walls, those same old pillars, same class rooms but many new faces and unknown and indifferent staff. In these days Life had changed a lot and I was there out of place. But I was with my old memories and tear filled eyes. The classrooms, the corridors, the common room, the library all reminded me how I was once wandering in those sunny days frivolously in the jocund company of my friends. But I was very nostalgic when I remembered that short-height girl with chubby chicks, lovely lips and that heavenly smile.

The curve of her smile had curved my career graph very downward. And afterwards in the zigzag course of life the smile had faded in some unknown, unseen and unheard land . But that day the concrete structures of the college building and the campus had made me feel the warmth of that smile once again very close to my heart. It was undoubtedly the reliving of some forgotten part of my life.

I looked sky ward and thanked god for reminding me of that lovely smiling girl so that with my tear-filled eyes I can at least pray for her to be happy and smiling so that the smile can continue forever wherever she may be.