- Purushottam Agarwal 

Sadanand's imagination had certainly run wild imagining romance every where. However his paradise could not be said to be the product merely of his imagination, it was real. It was open to every one; the barrier was ones own cerebral attitude.  Loveliness strewn so extravagantly in these coveted courts of nature could not be seen without imaginativeness of disposition. With predisposed mind, one gets blind to surroundings.  Mesmerized he sat down on the bank and explored his surroundings. He appeared to have merged in his surroundings and the landscape.

The spurting water created a symphony of tunes  - thundering, murmuring, gurgling, splashing - displaying port of enormous energy. A thought roused in him - roaring and clouds thrown up  by  nature  to gigantic heights  must  have  required tremendous energy , and this energy was being spent  perennially without a visible source. He concluded that the nature was indeed supreme.

On the opposite bank that slopped mildly to the river, wild animals were coming one after the other to drink water. Elephants usually came in large group, and over stayed as their offspring usually started playing games when in water. Sadanand was fascinated by this melodrama staged by nature in her amorphous mood.

He glanced leisurely around himself. What he saw a little distance away was just fascinating. His glance was arrested and he stood transfixed. A young girl was seated on a big boulder protruding into the stream. Her feet were in water upto the ankles and she used to jump in water on even a little pretext.

She was wrapped only in a thin long cloth with intentions to cover her torso too. But villainous cloth was reluctant to hide her youth, and she was indifferent to its gross impertinence. The cloth was meant to be tugged back to the waistband, instead it carelessly floated over water.

The young girl, with complexion of saffron - tinged  - Milk, had tied her jet-black hairs loosely on the back of her head. A blood red rose was tucked into her hairs.  She wore in her conch shaped neck a double string of multicolored beads a typical wear of the tribe. In her earlobes hung large gold rings and on her nose was a gold top. Her body had a grace that was supposed to be monopoly of princesses.

She was engrossed in herself and was totally unaware of a pair of foreign eyes savoring her beauty greedily. Suddenly she got alert as if tipped by her sixth sense, and glanced in the direction of her anonymous admirer. She was startled by the alien glance and tried to cover her modesty. But in this endeavor her only cloth got drenched. The wet cloth clung to her superbly molded body and the poor fabric lost its identity to that of her skin.