"We don't want to talk about it . . ."

One dark and rainy night in India, three sopping girls found themselves walking down a narrow, muddy dirt road in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains . . .
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Just earlier, they had been eating at "The Four Seasons," a fine dining spot above a storefront downtown, hungry after a full evening in the bazaar. The three girls, who were sisters, by the way, had filled themselves with chai tea, Afghani chicken, and joyful conversation---for the moment, forgetting that they had a long walk back home and neglecting that the hour was getting late, and the sky, more ominous outside the diner window. Their awareness had not even been jogged by the loss of power in the restaurant mid-meal, requiring them to continue their conversation by candlelight.

The girls hadn't even noticed that the TV in the corner, which had been in the middle of showing a heated cricket match when they had arrived, had moved on to showing a couple of overly-enthusiastic sports commentators, finishing the recap of the day's events by the time they paid their bill and left.

The indicators seemed so obvious in hindsight.

Now they were bearing the brunt of their oversight. Literally.
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The rain was coming down so hard that one of the sisters, we'll call her Jaimi, quickly gave up trying to keep the lenses of her glasses clear and took them off, shoving them into the pants pocket that was not already occupied by her camera, which she was trying desperately trying to shield from the rain. With this visual handicap, she found it hard to tell whether or not they were alone on the road, so she did the only logical thing she could think of: she hummed any and every song that she could remember (and even some that she couldn't), her rationale being that humming makes you appear more confident . . . and confident people are less likely to be mugged.

The terrified trio quickly realized that no one in their right mind would be out in this downpour to even think about victimizing three soaking, and obviously insane, females. They crossed "muggers" off of their list of worries---all that was left were monkeys, drunk drivers, rabid dogs, landslides, cows, cliffs, and electrocution.

The streetlights were, you could say, barely worthy of their title, flickering a faint fluorescent green glow with every few steps that they took. The girls found that they were getting more illumination from the lightning, with each strike flashing across the sky just as the crack was heard from the last.

And then the lights went out . . . completely. The sky went black, and not the weakest glint was offered from the streetlights overhead. The girls' first instinct was to stop in their tracks, but they were immediately pushed to moving again by the increasing rush of water flooding down the mountain, racing them home---and beating them mercilessly.

The oldest of the sisters, who, for our purposes, we'll call Tami, was the most familiar of the three with the area---and was relieved that she had not yet told the other two about one common effects of the great rains in the Himalayas . . . leeches. And she was, at this point, sorry that she knew of them herself. For this was early for the monsoon season to be starting, and she hadn't thought to pack her bag of salt, used in these parts to keep people from becoming permanent leech taxis. So there was nothing that she would do about them, even if she could see as far as her soaking ankles.

The youngest of the travellers, who will remain nameless, was frantically praying that the wild animals and strange men would be as scared of the dark, stormy night as she was as she pressed herself against the muddy hillside and bravely put one foot in front of the other into the pitch-blackness.

It seemed like hours before the girls reached the gate to the dorm where they were staying. Tami pushed anxiously on the gate, only to have her heart drop when her hand found the padlock latching the entrance shut.

The girls were about to drop from exhaustion right there in the rain, when an almost-blinding light streamed from the guard's hut beside the gate. A little chuckle filtered out through the window---the travellers knew that they must have been quite a sight, sopping from head to toe, as if they had been the unlucky targets at a carnival dunk-tank---so it didn't even cross their minds to be offended by the guard's laughter . . .

Next time, they decided unanimously, they would take the taxi.