Karjat Station.
It was 2am and we were on a desolate railway platform with a solitary tube light which glowed on its own will and even dimmed on its own, a closed tea stall as last passenger has passed an hour ago and some suspicious employees of railways for company.
Stretching away on both sides as far as the eye could see, which wasn't far in the darkness, were dense ink-black thickets.
With clouds pulling a veil over the moon, light was at a premium.
"Why are we here at this godforsaken place at this time?" Kiran screamed with more than a touch of accusatory inflection in his tone.
I and Amit smiled enigmatically, and Kiran got the answer.
All three of us were feeling dizzy but were trying hard to talk to each other and maintain as cryptic a tone as possible.
Plopping our bags down, we propped ourselves and waited.
Soon enough, like flies zeroing in on a box of goodies, the nosey cops came.
And they were full of questions.
Who were we? Why were we here? Why were we alone?
Looking at us pitifully and giving huge amount of strain to the wrinkles on his forehead he finally decided to leave us alone.
Three of us sighed in chorus.
"I am hungry," Amit's voice unnecessarily interrupted my forty winks.
Bleary-eyed, Kiran and I popped out stuff from our sacks and started eating without considering Amit as if we were just set free from a month long hunger strike.
After that it was time for tea and we crossed the rails as the tea stall on the opposite platform was getting ready.
After taking all the time available in this world he gave us our tea, but only two cups instead of three.
With lot of pain in our eyes we looked at him but finally decided to share the two cups.
Tea was wonderful and after some time we headed towards bus depot for a bus to Ambewadi.
We reached Ambewadi and were delighted to see the countryside beauty.
A pink glow began to creep in, slowly obliterating patches of darkness as the sun rose leisurely.
Peth; an incident in our history when the Killedar of the fort mistook the Mughals as his own people and permitted them to come in and then all the Maratha soldiers on the fort were slaughtered.
This sad incident made us feel sorrowful.
The climb towards the summit was a celestial experience and seemed as if we were ascending a tower.
At a height of around 1500 feet we came on a very small plateau, sheer drop on all sides.
With capturing the seraphic views of Bhimashankar, Kalwantini's Mahal and Nakhinda we decided to have a small nap.
After an hour of rest, punctuated only by Kiran's snorting, we began our descent.
On one hand, the crumbling remains stood testimony to one man's power; on the other, it spoke volumes of his helplessness.
The price one had to pay for another man's freedom.
— Harshal Ravindra Mahajan