Chapter 15 Ben – his story

Ben was sharing his tent with Danny. 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. Ben and Danny 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.

Ben 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.

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.

Ben had a huge eating problem. He was always hungry. Where ever he went out to lunch or dinner, he would take a heaped second helping or he would carry something to eat with him. In school also he carried two lunch boxes and was a butt of many jokes in the school. At present,he was only 18-19 years of age and his weight was beyond manageable level. He was slowly getting obese. His lateral growth could be due to a metabolism problem or there was some other issue like worms in his stomach etc.

His father's name was Raj and mother's name was Rani. He had a baby sister named Kiran.Kiran was 4 years of age and was presently studying in the Nursery school. In the school session commencing soon she would be joining primary. His father was running a huge shop of confectionery items and mother helped his father in the shop.

His parents had gone to their family doctor who had advised them to take their son to an endocrinologist to rule out any issue of hormonal imbalance. He was still young and at this age it was better to try to solve the problem with diet control, medication, Gym or Yoga rather than go for bariatric surgery.The doctor had explained that Bariatric surgery was done on the stomach or intestines to help a person with extreme obesity to lose weight. Basically this surgery changed the digestive system's anatomy, it limits the intake of food than can be eaten and digested.

His parents had agreed to this camping trip so that he would have had to walk to burn up some of the 90 kg he had accumulated at such a small age.

He found that the trip was tiring and had made him hungry. He had eaten his lunch on the way but as others were also eating, he did not eat as much as he normally ate. His dinner was also limited as all his class fellows were around and he did not want to eat more than they were eating. He felt everyone would laugh at him. He liked Luke Sir and Zia ma'am and felt that they would never laugh at him.

He liked to watch the stars like the rest of the kids. As soon as all headed to their tents, he also went thinking that today he would not need to eat more.

He quickly got into his sleeping bag thinking the quicker he slept, the better it would be as he would wake up in the morning and he would not need to eat anything extra as a mid-night snack. Danny, his tent mate,seeing him getting into his sleeping bag did likewise.

Ben pretended to be sleeping. Sleep was playing hide and seek with him. He tried to sleep by counting backward from 100 but sleep was not coming.

He thought of his parents and tried to visualize his mother singing him a lullaby that she used to sing to him when he was a toddler. 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.

In spite of push buttons phones and dialing the numbers phones in those times these were also advancements in technology. The dialing phone was cumbersome. One had to place the index finger in the respective slots, one after another, and dialing all the way around till a click sound was heard. Thereafter one proceeded to the next digit and so on. After completion of the dialing of all numbers could your call be connected. The computers used to be huge even occupying one full room. Slowly and with time they became compact. The then huge computers were instrumental in sending someone to space and the moon in 1969. At that time, that technology was advanced.

What one imagines, another person creates. The old TV serials of Star Trek shows communication devices that looked something like the present day flip type mobile phones which were launched by Motorola Company. Who could have imagined that these communication devices seen in Star trek could become the communication devises called mobile phones?

Anyway, it was quite peaceful without phones ringing everywhere. Technology had its disadvantages too.He liked Luke Sir and Zia ma'am. Mobile phones fascinated him.He was quick in repairing watches etc and had once or twice dismantled his mobile.He wanted to go into mobile technology when he got rid of his eating problem.

He also wanted to call his parents to let them know that all was well with him. Parents do tend to worry about their children. His parents would be more worried about him eating less due to shyness, as he was in a group. If he ate more there was an acidity problem and if he ate less then also there was an acidity problem.

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.

Ben dozed off for a short while. He woke up around 3.30 a.m. with a rumbling stomach. He knew he needed to eat something. So he slowly got out of his sleeping bag, so as not to disturb Danny. He took out his second lunch box and started to eat trying not to make any noise.At night time when there is pin drop silence, a tiny noise is likely to aggravate.

He ate a little and kept his lunch box with left overs on the side of the tent. Unknown to him there was a hole in this tent through which the smell of his food permeated out and spread towards the forest some distance away.

A sleuth of Bears had been moving through the forest areas and had followed their scent and the food scent right up to the camping site. The bears had stopped at their stoppage area where they had had their lunch. They even found a few pieces of food dropped by the campers.

They neared the camping site and found the fire, but there were no leftovers there. The rest of the bear moved to the periphery of the forest and one daring bear made his way sniffing at the food scent right up to Ben's tent. He was the hungriest and thought he would get something to eat from inside this tent.

It was around 5 a.m. when the bear started to pull at the tent in which Danny and Ben were asleep. Ben woke up to the tearing sound and the grunts from outside the tent. He could see a hole in his tent was enlarged with the teeth of an animal. Some people were running outside around his tent.He started to scream and started to struggle to get out of his sleeping bag.

Danny got up to the screaming and the noises coming from outside the tent. Danny got out of his sleeping baghelped Ben get out of his sleeping bag and then they both ran towards the entrance of the tent. Ben could not unzip the tent opening as his hands were shaking so Danny unzipped the opening of the tent. Just then a shot was fired. Sherpa was outside their tent and helped the two frightened boys to 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 his 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.