by Navneet Bhullar

 

Train calling out in the night.

Inside, mild chatter hums in the orange bulb’s glow.

Dad reads the newspaper quartered lengthwise,

spine upright, thighs crossed on the black leather sleeper.

I peer out the window, my nostrils speckled with engine soot.

Mum daydreams and looks out for the wandering chai seller.

Dots of light in the fields float like insects mimicking stars.

 

1. Starry sky from our dim lit compartment

One June night I read to my father “Because the night. The enduring romance of the sleeper train,” a magazine essay.

“Booku,” I say, “we had such nice times in those train rooms.”

Yes, he says wanly.

I am referring to our three-day journeys four decades ago, covering nearly 2000 km from Punjab to Howrah in West Bengal, a state nestling below mountains on India’s eastern border.

 

TS Eliot is quoted in the essay: “There’s a funny little basin you are supposed to wash your face in.” I read this aloud so Booku gets more animated to make my day.

Booku is quiet.

I mention our showers in the trains.

I hear him wince and shift on his maroon sofa across the world in India.

My friend, the pain specialist,thinks he has vertebral compression fractures.

Two days ago, he was screaming intermittently. His caregiver had fled.

 

2. Sun on wind blown wheat fields.

The day after Booku starts to wear the back brace in the tropical heat, he is transformed.

Like reverse metamorphosis, he is the exuberant persona from five, maybe six years ago.

“I am in reasonably good health,” he declares to me, as if we were speaking after months.

“It is just my eye sight. I cannot orient myself, cannot find my way. Mummy was busy, so I could not go to the bathroom for 16 hours.”

Minutes before, I have read my sister’s message. Dad had wet his clothes and bed as mummy could not hear him call.

I had expected a crestfallen Booku and livid mum.

But mum has just talked of the news with me, about the protestors near the White House some days after George Floyd was murdered by the police.

And Booku goes on. “And so sorry to hear about Ohri’s death.”

An army course mate.

He tells me stories from a half century back.

Dad and mum were newlyweds and had bought a small carpet they were carrying on their scooter. The Ohris had stopped their car to help.

Then Booku pauses, for seconds running into minutes. Silence. Like delicate glass. I have learnt to wait, not speak. There were jewels to be discovered this way.

He dictates an obituary for Ohri whom he had likely not met or spoken with since that scooter episode.

He spoke of the tragedy of losing a tall and dashing friend, of his fond memories of Ohri as an instructor after an electronic warfare course.

”You may amend it,” says Booku.

“Not needed. It is beautiful,” I say.

Dad then asks about Ohri’s wife.

“It seemed from the messages she had passed away some time back.” I say.

It is a sad thing, dad continues to dictate to me, that good people pass away untimely.

He repeats the words when I fumble.

I have to pinch myself. In recent years, when a coursemate passes away, and I ask for a message to send the family, Booku has offered only “very sad” each time.

 

3. Shadeless station, somewhere on the hot plains. Flies buzzing. Taps dry.

Once. Twice. Thrice.

I tell the medical officer she cannot let my dad go home.

He is too weak. He is in renal failure. with excruciating back pain.

The officer lies she will admit him.

He is discharged after intravenous fluids given at my urging on phone.

Dad still needs two persons to help him to a wheelchair.

This is the first summer of the Covid-19 terror.

 

4. Clamor at Ambala.

This station on the Northern Railways is known for its fried leavened bhature served with curried chickpeas in leaf plates from tiny food stalls on the platform. People spill out of their carriages to eat them.  Dad likes the bhature too. He rarely eats street food.

Evening call June, 2020 after a bustle of messages:

My niece Paree has chatted with Dad. They have discussed swimming.

Phelps, Popov.

Dad is surprised Paree has been to Greece.

You did not tell me, he says, like Rip van Winkle.

You were not interested then, she replies.

I read the China article his army friend has written.

“He usually does not spend much time on anything,” Booku laughs about the writer.

The Chinese had bloodied noses in one skirmish, I read.

Booku explains: General Gill had ordered his troops to fire on the Chinese at Nathu La in 1967. One of many skirmishes on the Indo-Chinese border.

 

5. Clanging bridges.

The dark bridge frames run like a noisy saw past the window for too long, jarring, specter-like.

Dad alighting in his shorts to refill the saraee* on a busy station.

Craning my head out the window to follow him weaving through the crowd,  I see coolies in red, their heads stacked with precarious mountains of metal trunks or suitcases. Saree clad women in slippers rushing with their kids’ hands clutched. Men or women with baskets on their heads selling trinkets or snacks.

I look out at the color of the signal. Red.

The train lurches forward.

No Booku.

“Put your head inside,” mum admonishing me.

Then Dad at our compartment door, beaming, saraee neck in hand, sliding the door shut: “The water was a little way down”.

 I read him this essay. He says only that it was hard traveling with children.

To my seven year old eyes, Booku and mum were gliding with us,swan like on this lake of tracks through such ephemeral vistas.

*** 

 * a long necked clay pot, sometimes with a handle. It keeps water cool