Zen - his story

Zen and Chris were sharing a tent and their tent was adjacent to the tent occupied by Tina and Nanu. The boys had occupied tents at the extreme ends kept the tents of the 5 girls and their teacher in the middle.

As soon as the girls called it a day and headed for their tents to sleep, the boys also decided to move towards their respective tents. Zen and Chris said goodnight to the rest and headed to the other end of the tents where they had pitched their tent. It was towards the cliff side.

Zen was excited about the camping trip and had jotted down a lot of things he felt were important. Zen was one of the intelligent persons with real high I.Q. He was an expert in computers and especially in programming. He played video games and was an expert. He had even created a character for a video game when the company had advertised a competition for creation of characters. He had made two prototypes. One he gave to the company and he had no claim on it as it was now company property. All those who had created the characters were acknowledged for the creation by the company's website and were given some payment as a reward. The other character was equally good and many wanted to buy it. He had received requests on his email asking him to sell this character. But he was not interested in selling his creation. Can one patent a gaming character? He had no idea. But when he got home he was planning to find out about that. He could think of making such characters for future games. Who knows, maybe within a few years he would float his own gaming company.

He started to go through his notes so as to put them to memory. It is said that if you read before sleeping, whatever you read is stored in your memory in special brain boxes and whenever this information is needed it can be recalled easily.

After going through his notes he got into his sleeping bag and saw that his tent mate was also getting into his sleeping bag.

But sleep was far from entering his eyes. The eyes would open as soon as he tried to close them. He could see Chris tossing and turning in his sleeping bag. Though a sleeping bag does not have much space to move around in but one can move around a little.

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.

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 use his phone and he had not brought any books to read. Even if he had brought a book or two, no one would have let him read it due to the issue of saving torchlight. He could not even read his favorite novels on web-novels.

An rightly informed by Zia ma'am there were no telephone towers at this altitude and there were no landline cables; hence, no connectivity. There was no mobile data which meant no what's app, no social networking site, no YouTube, etc. Zen knew they were cut off from everyone. He also wondered how people managed when there was no connectivity in the past before mobiles and internet. He was from the present day generation and regarded that period prior to the coming of mobile phones with internet facilities as practically the formatting of the present era.

However, most kids regarded that time as practically the dark ages. In the 1980s, you 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 type of phones mankind was able to launch numerous space visits including a landing on the moon in 1969. Progress is a continuous process and it takes time.

Anyway, it was quite peaceful without phones ringing everywhere. He was always disgusted watching people on their mobiles all the time. Even when driving or while crossing the road one would encounter such persons who could not stay away from their mobiles even for a minute. These chaps were a hazard to others as well as themselves and was quite a major cause of accidents as they walked looking into their phones and drove while looking into their phones. Technology had its disadvantages too.

In the morning he would try to get the help of Zia ma'am to contact his parents. They all had been interacting with their friends and family till the forest area. 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.

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

He still could not sleep due to the restlessness, as well as the psychological reaction of sleeping in an unfamiliar place. He could not sleep well in an unfamiliar place that too in a sleeping bag on the first day. Maybe another night and he would get used to sleeping in a tent at the camping site.

Luke Sir and Zia ma'am were heading for becoming a couple and love was in the air, maybe wedding bells too by the end of the year. Luke Sir seems to have fallen in love with Zia ma'am some time ago but it seems they were literally meeting for the first time today. He seemed to have been watching over her in a nice protective way of course. Zia ma'am was a reserved person and it would take her some time to be at Luke Sir's level in respect of getting emotional about him. Maybe by the end of this camping trip, she might really come to like him immensely which would turn into love later on?

He then recalled his life till the present. His father's name was Amos and he worked in a multinational company as a General Manager. Zen's mother's name was Amie and she also worked in the same multinational company as a Sales manager. They both earned enough to support themselves and their only child. Their parents from both sides were no more. Since childhood he was very good in computers and programming. He had taken up Computers as a subject in school. He was the only child.

Being intelligent, he managed to teach himself from the internet. This was simultaneously with the school studies. There was a lot of information on the net if you really wanted to learn something. It is said you can even learn to play the guitar if you really want to. He liked to read a lot and gauged a lot of information from the internet or by watching the Discovery and other such channels to enhance his knowledge.

He wanted to do programming and make his own video game characters for which he needed to study further about various other programmes, etc.

He had become quite independent from an early stage and could manage to look after himself. His mother and father were busy people, giving their son as much time as they could.

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. that Zen awoke with a start. There was a huge disturbance coming from outside their tent.He could hear the sounds of screams from one of the boys, and then there were grunt sounds as if it was a pig or a bear. Thereafter there was the sound of persons running. After that, there was the sound of gunfire. Zen and Chris jumped out of their sleeping bags immediately and rushed towards the opening of the tent. Chris quickly unzipped the opening of the tent so that they could go outside. Just as they were exiting the tent they heard another shot being fired.

By the noises that were coming from outside it seemed that a wild animal, probably a wild boar or a bear, had made its way to their tents and attacked one of the tents. But whose tent was attacked and who could have fired a shot? It would probably be that of Danny and Ben as Ben was always hungry and had habit of eating in bed. The fragrance of the food he was eating may have scattered throughout the night and spread to where the bears were camping. After all Bears also need to eat.

Hopefully, whichever animal it was, would have been scared away by the gunshot. Hopefully, it was not injured as an injured wild animal is dangerous.

The gunshots must have been fired by Luke Sir, Didn't he say that he was always prepared for any eventuality. He must be carrying a gun for using in such an eventuality.