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The Lake of Horror


In the summer of 1998, the construction of our house was just about complete and we had a house warming ceremony. Right behind our building, was a lake. People could rent a pedal boat and go boating on that lake at that time. Subsequently, water from the lake was drained out to a different lake and the boating stopped.

I was about 14 at that time. Sravani and Sruthi, my friends whose houses were also in the same building were a couple of years younger than me. While the gruhapravesham was going on, the three of us felt particularly adventurous. We decided to go boat riding, but wouldn't be allowed to do it on our own if we asked for permission. Well, we decided to do it anyway.

The three of us had a little bit of pocket money and we rented a boat. Our plan was to take the boat to the other side of the lake, closest to our house and surprise our parents and to show them, how capable we were to do it on our own. We would reach waters edge on our home-side, call out to our parents and wave at them.

We pedalled our way to the water's edge, slowly and steadily. But, little did we expect the rain to start pouring down cats and dogs just as we were about to make the victory call. Little did we realise that our calling out to parents would turn into yelling out for help and waving frantically to be rescued. The heavy rain made us panic as we couldn't see much and the boat had got stuck in some weeds and wouldn't move. And to make things worse, the look on the our parent's faces - which made us panic even more!

We had it coming - the yelling of a life time! And, I was the implicit gang-leader, what with being the oldest and all. When I think back, I realised, that all we should have done was to stay calm and wait for the rain to stop (which it did, in a few minutes) and then call out to our parents and wave. Well, maybe next time.




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