Road trips and closure

Find one in the other. And a final trip to see bapa.

Photo by Robert Penaloza on Unsplash

This car is our world for the next two hours. It speeds alongside towns yet to wake up to the light of dawn. The raindrops as thin needles. Warning of the predicted storms. Our windows are open. To drown the din that his leaving has left us in.

My father sits in the front seat. The front seat is a family heirloom. Only the deserving is allowed anywhere near it. My father has his stoic mask fixed firmly upon his face. The mask fits the occasion but is tattered from overuse. The odd tear escapes from the frayed edges.

This road, running along the east coast Odisha, has been a familiar companion once a year for all my life. Every year in March on Dola Purnima's day, we undertake this road trip as a pilgrimage. But in this rainy, chilly December mornings the roads are alien. The trees that flaunted the green of their leaves in March look betrayed in their sparseness. We have come too early. Wish I could tell the trees how our hands were tied.

The distant past wells up as tears many times. But I have been taught to keep it in. Instead, I fixate on the hour before this trip started. I had fought with my mother the previous night. As an act of revolt, I had locked the door to my bedroom. I woke to continuous urgent knocks on the door. I tried to ignore it, dismissing it as the side-effects of the fight of last night. When she did not stop knocking, I went and opened the door, ready with the harshest words I had, to resume the fight.

She stood at the door and uttered, "Bapa chaligale. (Grandpa is no more.)". Then she vanished into the other room. I was left holding on to the words I had chosen and could not say anything. They say that dreams are often unconscious desires. As the years go by, this will play in different forms and colours as a recurring dream.

The squeal of the brakes drags me back to the present. A dog has just escaped being splattered under the tires of our car. The moment passes. The dog went back to running across the road in search of shelter. Our car went back to rushing ahead to its destination. The roads are not a place for endless indulgence and remembrance. Soon there will be other cars and other dogs. The roads do not want to remember everything.

We have reached the midway point of our trip. Here long laces of a packet of chips hang from the shop fronts. Here stacks of sweet syrupy soda drinks stand sentry to shops. During our yearly road trips, my sister makes some excuse to stop here to satiate the temptation of those delights. She is missing in the car. It all happened too suddenly, and her flight will not make it in time. I will miss her today.

In March, Banapur revels in the divinity and culture to celebrate Dola. In sounds of loud bells and frankincense smells, people welcomed the lord of their land, Maa Bhagabati to their houses. To my city-dwelling mind, there was much mystery in what I saw. Why does the goddess look like a giant log? What chants are these that reverberated from everyone's lips? Why does everyone hug the goddess? Why does everyone cry on seeing Maa? Bapa was the treasure map to all these mysteries. In answering my questions, he opened a new world for me. I realized the road trips we took were not a mere drive along beautiful landscapes. It was time-travel to an entirely different world.

I catch the driver looking at me through the rear-view mirror. His kind eyes, full of pity, feel obscene. He was accustomed to long periods of silence on our road trips. As a family, we did not attach much value to spoken words. Yet today's silence hung like a noose – oppressive in its mere presence. I wish I could be him. Not having to deal with these churning of grief. I wish I were only a voyeur to this anguish I felt within.

During my college days, my best friend died by suicide. Everyone I talked to then, recommended closure. Of course, the closure being recommended was romantic. It was where a massive group of teenagers talked like British men in their 60's and then embraced in a river of graceful tears. But as I came to find closure was not that. Closure was drinking alone. Closure was forgetting what words meant. Closure was waking up in the middle of the night shaking to their memories. Closure was trying to crop images so that you do not get triggered down an ugly rabbit hole. The closure is a myth which you spend the whole of your life chasing. As the car made an exit, which would take it to our house in the village, I was dreading the closure ahead of me.

I can hear my mother sob over the sound of our moving car. I have not looked at her face since she told me the news in the morning. I know with my first glance, I would crumble into a million pieces. I could not let that happen. I believed, then, that men do not cry.

We turned into the last left turn. This is it now—a straight road. The driver seems to be driving slower than usual - perhaps the moment had got to him. I cannot imagine this is the last time; I will see his body when we drive down these lanes. I cannot bear to think about all the people sitting around his body now, grieving in tears and silences. How can I watch a man - who watches Hindi songs on repeat, who borrows my Harry Potter novels, who plays card like a gambler, who scolds Sachin Tendulkar for a missed shot – a man bursting with life, lie lifeless?

The car stops. No one wants to get out. No one wants to make this final. I wish I could have said some last words to him. Maybe that could have made this better? And there is so much that has been left unsaid. I wish I could ask him about his novels. I wish I could ask him if he had any memories of pre-independent India. I wish he could see what I write and tell me that exploring grief through writing is all right. I wish he could see my partner. I wish I had talked more to him—just a few more words to make sense of it all. A few more road trips to let him take us to a different world.

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It has been nearly 10 years since that road trip. I miss him.

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In other news, I have decided to do the features post once a month, towards the end of the month. The September one will be in your inboxes on the 27th September.

See you next Friday.