Drunken Driving !!!

This is the recollection of an actual incident which happened while I was in third year of engineering. As it was ‘Bihu’ time, most of the crowd had left for their homes to enjoy the holidays and it was only a few hardened souls, who were from far off places or were sick of going to home time and again(reverse of home sickness), occupying the hostel. One of our senior ,who was from Jorhat itself, invited all of us (around 10-12)who were staying back during Bihu vacations to attend the marriage of his elder sister. It was an offer (of great food)that we could not refuse much like the offer made by Marlon Brando in the movie ‘Godfather’. So ,on the appointed day ,we went in full strength to attend the wedding. We were introduced to the bride and the bridegroom and then we made ourselves comfortable. After that we had a nice dinner and it was time (10 pm) to make the journey back to hostel, somebody suggested that a vehicle would drop us but it turned out to be a rumour. We started walking with a heavy heart and even heavier stomachs as the food was too delicious.Suddenly a tempo (bigger auto) appeared on the horizon and a deal was struck to drop us till the petrol pump from where our hostel was a further 3.2 kilometres afar. We wanted the tempo to take us all the way but he refused point blank and we realized that any more argument might not get us even to the petrol pump. We reached the petrol pump and found one auto-rickshaw and 12 of us keen to get on it.But the driver was nowhere to be found. He appeared a little later totally drunk and swaying from one side to the other.He offered to take all 12 of us to the hostel in one trip,we realized that it was the ‘spirit’ inside him which was making that tall claim.It was anyone’s guess as to where he would take us in such a drunken state,the highway to hell was in clear sight with him driving the auto. Any other day ,one would have refused to go along but we had our compulsions,after a hefty dinner the last thing one wanted to do was walk a marathon.The majority decided to take a chance with the drunken master who all this while had kept his auto running.Just then a Maruti 800 driven by another senior came and it already had three occupants.They stopped and offered to take us to hostel but only 8 of us managed to squeeze in.Myself,my roommate and two juniors were left standing as there was no room and we felt that we would take our chances with the drunk driver who in the meanwhile had sobered quite a bit.We started and covered the distance in double quick time , thankfully at such late hour there was no traffic on the road.We thanked the autowala for giving us a frightening experience without any damage to our person.