THERE IS NOTHING MORE TO SAY
My home town was a small one of a million people or so. The night we left, workers from my father’s mill, recognising they were losing an extraordinary boss, gathered at the railway station to farewell us. They brought garlands of perfumed red roses and bright yellow gayndhas, or marigolds. Out of respect for my father’s rule of not accepting gifts of any kind, only a few brought fruit or Indian sweets. Breaking with the tradition of presenting them to my father, the food was shared around instead. The atmosphere was almost festive, the moment momentous.
As the train crawled slowly out of the station a resounding cheer went up from the crowd. Tears flowed openly as people called out Salaam, Hazoor – “I salute you, Sir.” My father stood stock still in the compartment doorway looking straight ahead, neither smiling nor waving, his usual stoic self. My mother stood half a breath behind him, her usual supportive self.
It felt like the end of an era.
Listening to the chugging of the train as it gathered speed through the night I was caught between a mixture of excitement and trepidation when unbidden feelings for my great-grandfather (plus or minus one or two) popped into my mind. He, who had started it all, moving far away from the land of his birth, those lush green fields of Goa, to the dry arid plains of the north, who had built a life for himself and laid enduring foundations for his family and descendants, whose bones now lay peacefully in Simla, many miles from where he belonged.
With no understanding of my own mortality – young people the world over know they are invincible – I wondered idly where I would end, where my body would be interred. And with that thought, lightning struck, making me limp like a rag doll whose face is painted on by another’s hand, who has no control of her movements or her destiny.
In that moment I knew that though my future belonged to me it would be influenced by other hands, by people who had role-modelled ethics and ideals and values that had soaked through my skin to become an intrinsic part of me.
My heart thudded, my chest hurt, so I inhaled deeply to imbibe the rose perfume that filled the compartment. Trying to relax, telling myself all the decisions, the drama, the anguish of leaving were behind us, I pushed down into the cushions of my berth. It was then another realisation overpowered me.
I couldn’t leave.
Not forever.
Not totally.
I knew for the rest of my life I’d be incomplete; that just a breath below my consciousness I was with Uncle Hugh in that silent, serene graveyard, where together we would watch the laburnum sapling grow to maturity. Another part of me would grow old alongside Reg, under the already mature laburnums where each May we would glory in the bright, yellow blossom and each June we’d be protected from the searing heat.
Nihil enim est, ut dicunt. There is nothing more to say.