A white Ambassador car, making its way through the winding sandy road amid coconut trees and paddy fields. I turn around in the back seat and feel like choking. The empty swing of the coconut trees in summer was fading in sight.
Mami and Maman were following us in a van. The van was loaded with coconuts, to be off-loaded at the oil mill. The house disappeared as the car took a turn at the handloom factory.
Ammamma’s gentle hand held me tight. I could smell the fragrant coconut oil in her hair. The smell bought me some relief. We had left before Swetha got back from school; they knew the farewell would be harder with her around. But I saw her running through the paddy fields with her satchel hanging on one side. Cheerappan was with her.
I swallowed another tear. I felt tight knots in my chest, like snakes slithering around my tiny heart and I could barely breathe, but I bit my lips to hold back the tears welling up in my eyes. I didn’t want to look weak. I didn’t want to make a scene as always. I told myself it would get better.
The car took another turn into the tarred main road, and the paddy fields started fading in the distance. Ammamma was trying to avert my attention with one of the many stories she had narrated during the vacation. She wanted me to remember all the prayers she had taught me in the two months. She asked me to recite the latest one. It started with Palaya Daivame..., loosely translated as “God, you are our saviour.”
I knew it very well, but couldn’t open my mouth. My throat had gone dry. Any attempt at singing would need me to gasp for breath, and the gasps would turn into wails. It was a slippery slope I didn’t want to take yet.
I looked out the window. The wind gently wiped off the tear drops that were at the tip of my eyelashes. The salty drops flew in the air and fell on the sandy road, and would have dried up immediately in the summer heat. Tears are really nature’s gift. They take out your agony and give it physical form. Pain can never be measured, nor can it be truly shared. Your pain cannot be compared to mine. It can never be weighed on a scale and quantified. You can only empathise, you can never really feel another’s pain! You can pretend to understand, out of the kindness of your heart. But it’s never so kind when you say I understand what you are going through. Instead say, “I am there, I will be there. You will get through this.”
The greenery on the sides did bring some relief to my bruised soul. I had been in this situation so many times, yet I am never prepared for it.
I don’t remember Achachan coming to the station. Did he avoid the trip on purpose to spare himself the agony, or is my memory playing tricks? His letters would reach our home in Kolkata before we reached. His letters that would talk about life, spirituality and many more things. The letters that I would read only a decade later. They were meant for his daughter, but it is really meant for all daughters and sons, and you can find meaning and wisdom in those lines to this day.
The car neared the city, and the images changed. Buildings appeared and I could hear trains in the near distance. The knots tightened. My hands were ice-cold, I didn’t want time to move any quicker. I didn’t want to say good-byes.
The driver off-loaded the luggage and the mangoes and the coconuts and the jackfruits and the bananas, and the cartons of bottled pickles and jams and sweets and savories, cooked with love and packed with care. The porters swarmed around us and everything was happening in a jiffy.
The knots around my chest were unbearable and it felt like someone had kept a rock on my heart. I felt my mom’s arms around me and my dad held me and patted my back. But the things that are crystal clear in my memory are the neatly parted black hair, the thick rimmed glasses, and the neatly pinned crisp handloom saree of my grandma. I held her tightl until the time of departure.
The locomotive engine wailed to share the agony of the passengers. It was as if someone had attached a loudspeaker to my heart. My heartbeat would be racing to match the train’s pick-up. It paced and panted. The siren at the distance and the bells that announced the departure was a siren of doom for me. All the restraint that kept me from breaking down would melt when that hand let go. I would wail and let out the heaviness inside. Their faces faded amidst my tears, and I hastily rubbed them off to make sure I saw them till the train was far and the station was no longer in sight.
It’s been 20 years since, yet the pain remains the same. Departures are always difficult. Trains have been replaced by flights, farewells less dramatic. Yet the child inside weeps. Leaving a person, a place anything that feels like home has always been difficult. The sorrow, longing and hope to meet again makes life meaningful. You are lucky to feel missed, lucky to have people you hate to leave and lucky to have a place to call home that you can come back to every time you are lost.
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