A sojourn

Riding on an a/c taxi from Changi Airport to my residence I was surprised to see the superway that looked new. On inquiring I found out that the look was changed to promote Singapore tourism. 'New plantations and flowers. This will make people like you to come to Singapore more la.' I was struck with an amazement that lasted a whole one hour. The median had been taken off and colourful flower baskets were laid in its place...giving it a very pleasurable feel in the 10 o'clock sun...probably at any hour of the day. The cars on the road followed strict lane discipline. Every 500 m there was a signboard giving directions, speed limits, time required to reach the prominent destinations nearby...a clear understatement - welcome to Singapore..we are a developed country and we would like you to feel at your comfortable best while you are here. 72 hours earlier I was rushing in a fiat taxi to Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji Airport to get the earliest flight to Kolkata. 6 hours prior to that I was drinking from a bottle of bourbon with a mission to accomplish - to the last drop. I was drunk and the 6 am breeze gave me the warning signs of the Mumbai madness that will soon follow as the day proceeds. My taxi was not a/c and at a erroneous traffic signal made the driver bawl out 'Bhenchod, na khud jaate hain...na kisi ko jane dete hain' My sombre self let out a smile thinking about the reaction of my co-passenger. It was my Dad. The man had come to Mumbai 35 years ago and learnt its ways. He sat there unflinchingly...the comment meant nothing to him...the indifference took away my smile. Sushil - the taxi guy - was my father's regular airportman. When you are in Mumbai and have to get around, you need such kind of point men who can answer your calls at any hour. We had called him at 5 am. I saw him rushing down the main road of Vashi and jerk to a stop...and in that quick motion throw out a passenger and his luggage...get back in and pick us up. It took him not more than 23 seconds. We were in time for the Jet Airways flight. The domestic terminal had been recently renovated. Its design will definitely evoke the Shanghai dream among all who plan to see Mumbai there. A quick check in and even quicker take off told me that the bourbon was good. Everything moved fast around me...next thing I remember is staring from the last seat of the airbus to a mega crowd of mostly bengali chatter excited to celebrate Holi in the city of their birth...or something in that effect. I dozed off. Arriving in Kolkata airport has always been a rejuvenating experience. Even the conveyor belt reflects the laziness of the staff...of the taxi unions...of the city. The whole of Kolkata wants to sit back and sip at their cup of tea and filterless Capstan while the world kills itself by running on a mega environmentally unfriendly treadmill. And the airport is a multi-holed veil that fails to mask this image completely. Outside, as the warm and humid Kolkata air played with my sweat pores...the bourbon began to fade. On an ambassador taxi that couldn't do more than a 60 kmph...we were riding through the empty streets streaked in vermillion red and occasional greens and purples and whites. There were people out there willing to take a shot at coloring my solemn face but the driver had warned against rolling down the windows before we left the airport. It was Holi (Dol in bengali) and I was riding my blues. We were on our way to a town 65 km away...and the taxi steadily moved at sixty. It was an old cab and made a lot of creak and whistle. None of the indicators worked and if the driver's hand would be off the steering wheel for 4 seconds...we would be off the road. But it kept riding like a surfboard made out of plywood on a rusted steel surface. There were frequent dents on the road and even if there weren't any...the taxi would have made us felt otherwise. We were on our way to a funeral. There had been a death in the family I had not seen them for more than 3 years...it hardly meant anything to me. I was there for my father but my indifference towards the demise was evident. To me it was a joyride before I got back to my professional lifestyle 3000 miles away. It was important for my father to see the last remains of his elder brother..I could feel that much. And I was willing to go to any length to make that happen...but as it has always been..we are all slaves of time...and I felt helpless like so many times before. We passed through shacks and railway crossings and more shacks and dilapidated buildings and more such and not in that order until my eyes met one of the highlights. I have always been overjoyed at the sight of lush green paddy fields...spreading beyond my horizon. Each square meter of paddy alongwith the hardworking farmers and the shrimps in the thin hand-dug canals and that occasional tree amidst every 30 acres of land said to me in unison - 'Welcome back to the great gangetic plains. Hope you have a safe journey.' I nodded mildly as if acknowledging their message. There were a few songs that I would like to listen at that moment and they moved back and forth in my head...browsing through them...I felt at peace with the lack of my mp3 player because there was music with me. When you are riding on a beat up taxi out on the small towns of rural India...of all the things you are blessed with...there is music somewhere. A lot can go wrong but the music is never over. I glanced through the empty dashboard of the taxi...the beat up knobs and meters. At one of the toll stations that the driver stopped at...he pulled a knob from a row of 7 knobs and the engine died. I was amazed to find this obsolete system still in use...him and the rest around him never felt the need to upgrade and so was evident across the state of Bengal...just the essential. There was a plastic idol of Sri Ramakrishna stuck in the centre of the dashboard. The driver was accompanied with a sidekick. His job was not to speak...just look out on the road and other things on it. Never to complain about anything and learn the way the driver had mastered his skill of driving that tinbox of a car. For all I could see, he was a good student. He had dropped in some jarda at the corner of his mouth when we started from the airport...and all through those 65 odd kms...he kept sucking in satisfaction. At once the driver ordered an agarbatti for Sri Ramakrishna. The sidekick moved in lazy moves to find the box of incense sticks and matches...the driver guided him to the compartment in front left. Out came the box...2 sticks...a strike at the box...2 agarbattis were lit and stuck to the dashboard at some crack. Older agarbattis had left their mild burns on the pleathery surface. 'Atleast pray to the Lord before you that baba...what to teach these young generation,' the driver quipped. The sidekick took the two agarbattis out and moved them around the idol in small circles and stuck it back...disinterestedly went back to his juice of satisfaction and his dull Holi morning. I guess he was thinking about the glass of bhang that he didn't finish before leaving...or maybe he was already stoned. Whatever it was...he didn't choose to bother others with his state. Suddenly my Dad's cell phone rang and the voice at the other end inquired about our current location. He said that the family was moving to the crematorium. They could not wait any longer. It was close to 11.30 am and were still 30 mins away. My Dad couldn't say much to stop them. He was anyway falling short of speech...away from the mild hustle bustle of taxi ride. He was riding his wave of memory with his elder brother I guess. And the lush green plains outside his window were the best screens to project from the celluloids of his memory. When a close one dies...all you care to see at that moment is the body. The Bhagwat Gita talks about the soul being immortal and the body being 'Maya'...but when it comes to the death of a loved one...we want to see the body and not think about Maya...or soul..or Bhagwat Gita..we leave that for 2 weeks after the death..when the sorrow is at a point where we need to choose between it and the pressures and committments of our own lives. I was cursing the lack of upgrade in the entire state...had it been there...it would have increased our chances to get there faster although we were doing a constant 60 given the empty roads. We reached just in time at the crematorium and saw the last of a loved one. There was an air of sadness and stench all around. In a grid of 3x3 there were 9 bodies of the very poor and helpless. My uncle was a well known Vet in the town and so had the precedence over others. All others had to wait. The longer you wait before a dead body..the harder it gets to stop the tears...to stop the images of better times in our minds...to rest the abrupt end of our promised better times. We are so populated as a country that even our dead have to wait in a queue before their last rites.