Lost in Rameshwaram.

This happened when I was 9 or 10 years old. We had gone to Rameshwaram with my dad’s siblings and their families…that’s about 5 families, in 2 or 3 vehicles. The day we reached Rameshwaram, we went to the temple there and played around in the beach. That evening, the plan was to go to a Raman Temple in Dhanushkodi. After lunch, I was in the middle of my nap when amma woke me up and got me dressed to go to Dhanushkodi. And since I was still sleepy, she asked me to go and sleep in the car, so that I could sleep till Dhanushkodi. I walked out of the hotel room (we were put up in Hotel Tamil Nadu) and walked to the reception and settled in one of their sofas for the rest of my nap. And the whole group left without me. Since we were in a couple of vehicles, I was assumed to be in one vehicle or the other. When I woke up and found myself in the reception, I walked up to the room we were staying in and found it locked. I came back to the reception and asked the guy there, if he knew where my parents were. When he said ‘no’, I didn’t panic. The guy actually was trying to make me feel better and I think he was scared that I would cry or something. I was a bit scared but I didn’t let it show. I’m still very proud of the way I handled it. I asked him if he knew a place called Yercaud because I had seen a Hotel Tamil Nadu there also. When he said ‘yes’ and that he had actually worked there, I kind of relaxed. I told him that since my parents had the key to the room, it meant that they were coming back. And in case they don’t come back, would he leave me in Yercaud? I could go back to school and contact my parents somehow. And then, since I had figured a way out, I was very very relaxed. The guy asked me if I wanted to eat something. About an hour later, when my parents finally figured that I was missing and came back to the hotel, worried and scared, they found me all dressed up in my ‘Pattu Pavadai’, sitting on the Reception Desk, having a plate of bread and jam along with ice cream (which I had been denied the previous day). And since I was quite a talkative kid, I had a group of people standing around me and talking to me. My mom says, she could hear my laughter near the doorway! I’ve never been to Dhanushkodi till date, but I think that the experience I had then was much more enjoyable than Dhanushkodi could ever have been.