The Riddled Hill

This goes back to the year 2003 when I was in 8th grade.

I live in Mumbai and back then we group of friends used to explore the outskirts of my city by bicycles whenever we had free time during our holidays. It was one of such days and we have started our journey in morning somewhere around 9am. By 9.30 we have almost reached to the end of city from where village and farm part has begun.

Roughly around 11:15am we have reached near the river. My friend has brought in the camera and we have decided to use it to click the pics of marvelous beauty of the area around the river and beautiful birds which you may find too rare to encounter in city. While we were busy in doing so three of our friends has decided to climb a small Hill nearby river to check what's there on other side of that Hill.

Nearly half hour has passed and we have decided to regroup under a giant tree and though we can clearly see our friends on a hill and waved our hands signaling them to come to a gathering point, they stood there like a statue without moving even an inch watching at some different direction. We were looking at them for 5 minutes and shouted their names loudly but no response. We thought they can't see us or hear us so we decided to go there. But before we go, someone laid a pat on my back and to my surprise those friends were behind us and asked us why we are shouting their names by looking somewhere else when they are totally at opposite direction. In a flash we have looked back at the mountain and to our horror neither there was a mountain nor our friends on it. Mountain was there at our opposite direction and exactly from there our friends has come back to us. When told this to our friends they too have confirmed that yes there too was a mountain and now to our shock there was nothing but huge farmland.

We told this to our parents and they took it as a joke.

Years have passed now and few years back we have decided to know if what we have seen was an illusion or truth. In 2015 we went back there and reached exact that place where we believed we have seen that mythical mountain. When asked about it to a farmer working nereby he told us shocking fact that there was indeed a mountain 3 decades back which was destroyed using dynamite to make plains. What happened back then and who were those three men which we thought are our friends is still unknown.