THE DATE

“Hmm so, what’s the worst thing you’ve ever eaten?” asked Shriya

Aditya chuckled and replied “Uhh that’s perhaps not the best thing to talk about on a dinner date, especially when it’s the first one”

“Ohh come on!” said Shriya “We’re sitting her eating skungk meat, in Taipei! How worse could things get?”

“Pretty worse. Trust me” replied Aditya with a smug smile on his face

Shriya replied with just a raised eyebrow.

“Okay! It’s your call” said Aditya holding his hands up in a surrendering gesture, and he wiped his mouth with the kerchief, pulled the chair closer to the table, sat upright and began “I was 10 years old and my brother and I were pretty intent on going on a vacation with Dad. We were making his life miserable, I believe”…he chuckled “Mother was travelling a lot back then; so she wasn’t around much. Dad was somehow pursued by the both of us but he didn’t want to go on a lame vacation. He had some Interest paid to him or something, and so he was willing to go on a lavish 

kind-of vacation. He had a friend of his who worked in South Africa, who was this…” he struggled to find a perfect word to describe, but having failed at it, simply went on “I don’t know…something but who had connections to this NGO who were working with the very first fully female led tribal people. So long story short, that NGO guy made arrangements for us to stay with those tribals for one night and one month later, voila, we were there”

Here he stopped and taking this opportunity Shriya began “Hmm…you know my father also went to South Africa once. He was working with this IT company somewhere in the outskirts of Johannesburg” 

“Really!? Wow! That’s great…yeah so where was I? Ohh right! So we reach that village on foot by trekking for over 2 miles and we were accompanied by this NGO guy, who was the only one who could speak their tongue. So, we reach there and we are welcomed 

in the weirdest fashion possible, with Spit rubbed on our faces by the Village Head-woman and then by getting us to drink warm Goat-Milk”

“So, this is the worst thing you ate?” asked Shriya, while chewing down on the last piece of meat on her plate.

“No..No.. the best, or in this case the worst, is yet to come. So, we were given the tour of the village and then we were shown a cultural Dance Performance and we played some games with them; so it was a great day. Now as the evening grew darker, they made bonfires and as a tribute to us they even had a ceremony in which people from a nearby village also visited and dined with us. It was more like a barbecue…we were fed what was told to be Cheetah brain and coyote meat”

“Okay, but still it’s not that bad is it? I was expecting really something worse” interjected Shriya

“I haven’t finished yet…” said Aditya “…so things were going very well…it was quite late I believe…when they dispersed and things were really good and we were made to sleep in thatched cottages with dried husk and all. I was sleeping quite well but then Dad woke me and my brother up in the middle of the night, and I distinctly remember the look of sheer fear and disgust on his face. He woke me up and asked me to look out for my brother and he and that NGO friend left the hut. I was too inquisitive to stay behind and so I took my brother and decided to follow them. They rather hastily ran into the woods and after sometime stopped at a place, overlooking something. I crept up behind them to see perhaps the worst thing I ever saw in my life… two dismantled cadavers were lying on the forest floor. From what I could remember both of them were men, and one of them was wearing khakee shorts, and his insides were all splattered around. The other man’s head was smashed in, and he was missing limbs 

excepting the left leg, I suppose. And I remember that distinctly because, he was wearing a pink sock with his name stitched on it…it was Darshan as much as I can remember. Their belongings were spread all around them with many mechanical equipments in addition to it. I screamed at the sight of those and possibly passed out. That thing haunted me for many days to come. I used to have nightmares about that night…and those nightmares were as vivid as the incident. So I never forgot them. Years later I got to know another disturbing fact that according to the NGO guy, those were the people who were served to us that very night for dinner. That NGO guy, had gone to the forest to take a leak when he caught two 

Tribal women disposing the bodies off. He was of the opinion that perhaps those people were out there to do something or I don’t know, shoot some videos…and they were caught and killed grotesquely. But none of us had the idea that we literally came across a Cannibalistic Tribe. So yeah, that’s my story…So the worst thing I ever ate was possibly a Human”

Shriya had a look on her face that was a combination of disgust, fear, sad and empathy. Her eyes were overflowing and her jaws had dropped.

“What happened?” asked Aditya “Did I scare you? I…I…I am so sorry!”

“When did all these happen?” Shriya’s question was sharp

“Huh! What? Ohh… I was 10…so that mean’s it was in…1997…1998. It was in 1998. But why?”

“In 1998, two Indian researchers went to South Africa for some kind of work, with the help of the Government. Those researchers were never 

found and they never went back to India; and extensive search was carried out but to no use. One of those researchers was Darshan Gandhi, my father”