The Adventure of the Violet Hill

By Deepa Banerjee

This is the story of Adi and Arko, the two teenage boys coming from two different levels of society, madly in love with MAGIC. They get “kidnapped” by Ashimda and his ally, the mystery man. Hence starts a tortuous ordeal for them- sometimes within the closed doors of a dingy room, sometimes while travelling in an unventilated van. They have to traverse miles and miles, across the fields, the jungles and the mountains. In search of what????-------What are the verses of the mystery poem? Who is the MASTER and why has he collected only the three of them? Where is the magic wand? Do they finally succeed?
The story is a cocktail of many interesting turn of events which every child is bound to devour. It exemplifies the win of endeavour and willpower over any odds, be it a fatal decease or physical problem or extreme weather conditions or unfriendly companionship.
Happy reading.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Point Six Technologies Pvt Ltd
• Release date: Jan 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9789388573719

Deepa Banerjee

Deepa Banerjee worked as a teacher for almost twenty years before turning her hand to fiction. Born and brought up in Kolkata, in the eastern part of India, she lives with her husband and son. The Adventure of the Violet Hill is the first novel of her trilogy. She also writes in Bengali, her mother tongue, from childhood. Besides being a writer she is a voracious reader and an enthusiastic traveller.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Slowly he became conscious of his surrounding--or was that a dream. He could see a violet light. But from where it was coming he couldn’t find. Beside him someone else was lying, whose face was turned on the other side. So he couldn’t identify him, though he seemed very familiar, but he could not remember any name. He was breathing heavily and had a nasty cut on his head. He felt very sick and nauseated after seeing the blood. Was he dying? Slowly his eyelids closed but he could feel someone was coming near him. No, there were two people who had come.

One asked ‘is he gone?’

‘No, I think he has only fainted.’

‘If he dies what is the use of the whole thing?’

The first one didn’t answer immediately. Then very slowly he murmured ‘No other use?’ Both remained silent and at that moment the other person who was lying beside him started to stir.

Then someone said ‘See the spare one’.

The lying person suddenly screamed ‘Arko run, run. What have I done? Please get up, please.’

Like an electric spark the whole thing came back to him. That was Adi, his best friend. But most importantly, he could not run, let alone move. With tremendous effort he could open his eyelids a bit and saw the other two persons. One looked familiar but he couldn’t think about him then as his attention was on the other person. He looked odd. At first he could not understand why, but slowly he realized that the person was not showing any part of his body. He was covered in a white cloak and was very tall. He wanted to see Adi desperately and suddenly felt very scared for him. He turned a little, to see well. Then something hurt him on his ribs and he felt the hard thing inside his T shirt.

Instantly he remembered everything. He became fully alert. He had the wand, the very wand for which all these started. He felt strong, powerful and brave. He was ready for the attack.

CHAPTER 1

The FAMILY

The room looked well furnished and well maintained. The furniture present there clearly spoke about the wealth. The owner of that luxurious flat, Mr. Samar Sinha, was sitting on the big sofa, reading the newspaper lazily. The television was on and loud sound was coming from it. But it seemed nobody was paying much attention to it, as the only other occupant of the room was totally engrossed in a book hidden under his science book. That was the reason why he could not see his mother coming and standing just behind him.

Actually nothing registered to his mind until his mother shouted ‘What do you think you are doing, Arko?’

The boy with his unusually bright eyes in his rather pale face looked back to his mother and continued staring for few seconds. Then suddenly he smiled and the pale face, as if by some magic touch, changed into a rather thin, handsome face of a young boy of ten years.

‘Oh mom, why did you hide those books again? You know I always find them back. You know I have special abilities.’

But his mother was not at all impressed. She said, ‘this is the reason why I hid them. You can’t see you are becoming obsessed with them.’

He said, ‘May be, but I can pass time with them so well, I can feel like being with my friends, I can feel energetic,’ and then added almost inaudibly ‘I can almost feel normal.’ Mother didn’t say anything, neither did his father. They just pretended as if they didn’t hear the last portion of his words. The Sunday morning went on uneventful, just like any other day, just like any other Sunday.

The boy with his fantasy world and his parents with their reality.

CHAPTER 2

THE PAST

The symptoms were not there at the beginning. So, the parents didn’t take them seriously. Arko felt tired easily and his mother grumbled everyday for his increasing laziness.

One day the matter went out of hand when he fainted in the park in their complex while playing with his friends, four years back.

The next few days were like hell for the whole Sinha family as their one and only son was diagnosed with Leukemia, the blood cancer.

Till now Reena could not believe that her beloved son had this dreadful disease. It seemed it always happened to others; they read about them in books, watched them on the television and showed sympathy for them. She never felt that it could happen to her or rather to her son. Then only it felt real, so pathetically real. All the donation money given to the social service organizations every year seemed to be so small; so useless, so artificial.

They found that in many cases juvenile blood cancer was curable. But for Arko there was almost no chance.

But, the son didn’t get the courage from nowhere. His parents were the fighters and they were the persons who fought from the forefront and their strength only tightened the bond between these three persons, for whom the other two persons were the most important persons in the whole world.

The disease might have shaken them but it could not affect their daily lives very much. Arko did his usual work, went to school, did homework and most importantly, got normal scolding for doing wrong.

In a way they were stable now. Only to their small family, like a new member, the disease had entered and like a small baby, it had to be taken care of regularly, as the other things had to go on as usual.

The boy adjusted to the situation with flying colours. He never cried, never complained of anything. He had to reduce his time in the field, reduce time for playing with his friends and reduce time to be alone. The only thing which saved him except medical support was a series of books written by a person thousands of miles away from his own home. They were J.K. Rowling’s story about Harry Potter.

It all started accidentally two years ago. One day they were out for his treatment and after finishing the checkup, he was sitting in the car. The parents were still inside, buying some medicines. The small bookstore was almost hidden by the big building of the Diagnostic Centre. But as Arko was feeling a bit out of breath and was trying to ignore it, he was looking here and there. That was the time when he saw the books displayed on the dirty counter. A discount coupon was hanging loosely from the ceiling on all the Harry Potter books. Just to pass the uneasiness he took the permission of the driver and went to the stall.

The first book was with the bright red cover and the back cover had a brief account of the story. The story somehow bypassed his brain and directly touched his heart. The boy felt he did not want to go to the fantasy world but he felt as if he was in the fantasy world. His whole world took a new turn. It seemed to him the earth was a bit tilted till then and suddenly it had become straight. By some magic, the magic touched him from the book.

The book he started reading in the returning car trip was finished within three days… but the story never ended.

He relived there in the Potter-magic-world; every day, every minute. He imagined himself as Potter (just like any other normal boy of his age). As if at one point Harry’s struggle to live against all odds was similar to his own fight for his life. He started thinking that he could also live if he fights back.

So time passed and there our story begins.

CHAPTER 3

CLASSROOM

‘I would prefer to see you sit on your seat like a human being rather than swimming on it like a fish Aditya!’

‘Sorry ma’am, I didn’t see you.’

Mrs. Anjali Bose didn’t answer and went straight to the front of the class. Her facial expression didn’t show any trace of humour. But students couldn’t control like her, most of them were smiling broadly, few those who were brave enough to laugh in Mrs. Bose’s class were laughing loudly. Arko, sitting just beside Aditya, had seen ma’am coming but couldn’t warn him as ma’am was also expecting that and had already, in sign language, asked him not to do so.

The class settled down almost immediately when Mrs. Bose started the chapter. She was their English teacher. She was very good in her subject and rather strict. Children loved her, though they could rarely talk in her class. The lesson went on.

After the class Aditya burst out, ‘You saw but you didn’t warn me and you call me your best friend?’ Arko started laughing and at the same time mimicked his swimming action. He looked so funny that after a while Aditya gave up, smiled and sat beside him. ‘Hey, did you really see two Potter badges?’ (This badge was a special badge for them as it showed Harry’s picture on one side and Harry with Ron and Hermione on the other side. Not only that, with the change of position they could move and change their position).

‘Adi, why will I tell you otherwise? Let us buy and I will give you your one. You like blue, isn’t it?’

‘ya.’

They didn’t get much time to talk then as their next teacher Mr. Vishal Sharma had already entered the class to teach History. Both of them were poor in History and had to concentrate more. In the break time they again started sharing the information.

‘How did you know that Mihirda was selling those badges? You go by car!’

‘Actually I saw Soham buying those stickers and badges from him on the day before yesterday. I asked him and he said only two badges are still left there, one red and one blue. Yesterday I asked mom for a fifty rupees note. You want the blue one, isn’t it?’

Arko was a bit tensed about Adi’s preference. He himself wanted the red one, but didn’t want to force Adi to take the other one. But Adi was so happy to get one of the badges that he didn’t bother about the colour ‘Yes yes I like blue.’

CHAPTER 4

BADGES

It took two more periods to be able to go to the school stationery shop, which was at the back of the school where buses and pool-car owners wait for the students at the end of the day. Generally Arko never came down during school hours except at the time of release but today they ate like machine and then came down three floors in the break time. He felt breathless and nauseated (he could not eat so fast) but he didn’t tell anything to Adi. Generally Adi was very much concerned about his friend’s health, may be sometimes a bit over protective, but today, to finish their mission he ran normally (he always ran leisurely to make Arko feel comfortable without making him realizing it). Both of them went into the shop and asked for their precious badges. The shop keeper, Mihir Das, known as Mihirda by everyone, was a round faced, fair and very fat person with a friendly smile. When he saw them he asked, ‘Why are you here now? You could have come at the releasing time’. Adi said that due to road jam, the private cars were not allowed to wait outside the gate for a long time and as Arko went