The news felt unreal as long as it came in an aerogramme. During the 15 to 20 days an aerogramme took to reach Norwich the news from home would go stale. It would of course be lapped up by the receiver, who waited for it as the Chataka bird does for the rain.
Heaven forbid that Swarnima or the near and dear ones she wrote about in her letter got themselves in some kind of trouble, sometimes of the feared ultimate kind, while the letter was in transit. Such an eventuality was always lurking in the corner.
In a situation like this the telegram had the solidity of the real, the force of a fait accompli.
….
And Subrat was right now holding a telegram in his hand, as he stood in front of the mail room in the Students’ Union building in UEA. Inscribed in it were the words that were a call for instant action: “Arriving on 24 July by Air Jordan 391. Heathrow arrival time 5.00 A.M.”
The news that had hovered over Subrat for over two months had at last broken over him with all the ferocity of a cloudburst. 24 July. That means the day after tomorrow.
Subrat had sorted out the tricky problem of accommodation. His guest would stay with him in his single study bedroom. Olav, his Norwegian friend, had kindly offered him his inflatable air bed for the duration of the visit. The hard part was going to London to receive his guest and bring him over to Norwich. He absolutely had to do that in view of who was coming. To put it bluntly, the visitor was among the uninitiated, neither experienced in air travel nor exposed to big cities, leave alone London. After his retirement from service, he had intended to make the big leap, but with no preparations for it whatsoever.
….
Subrat reached terminal 3 of Heathrow at 8 am. That was the earliest he could make it, as on weekends tube services in London started at 7 am. He was apprehensive. Following his friend Kishore’s advice, he had telephoned Heathrow from Kishore’s Euston front flat to arrange for an announcement that a passenger by the name of Dasarathi Mahapatra, flying Air Jordan 391, was to wait in the reception area for his relative.
The arriving passengers would take an hour or so to go through immigration, collect their baggage and walk through customs to the exit. So his guest would have an additional waiting time of two hours. Clearly that was the last straw for a man who probably had reached the end of his tether. Who wouldn’t after a nerve-wrecking journey of 1500 km from Berhampur to Bombay by train and then another 7000 km from Bombay to London by plane? But he would know better than to tempt fate by venturing out alone.
The sight of the empty reception area, bereft of the known presence, was like a devastating punch in his solar plexus. He looked again. No sign of that familiar baldy head and smiling face that grew out of a simple outfit of pale blue shirt tucked into grey trousers, without a waist belt. He checked every inch of the exit area within a 50-metre radius.
“Bhai, he wasn’t there. The flight landed on time. Where could he have gone? Maybe he didn’t board the plane at all. I’m at my wits’ end.” Subrat belted out the words into the phone for Kishore at the other end. “Oh, my God?” Kishore didn’t know what else to say.
There was precious little for him to do except to head back to Norwich immediately. Only the sufferer knows how it feels to return, with nothing accomplished, with the expected person not just tagging along but dematerialized.
….
When he got off the bus at the university roundabout in the evening, he ran into Rajan.
“Hey, where had you been?”
“To London.” Rajan had a sly smile and an impish look on his face. Subrat strode faster to put some distance between them. But Rajan wasn’t the one to give up.
“Ashok Sahu has a surprise for you. He has been to your room a few times in the day. Why don’t you go to him?”
“Okay, I will.”
A tap on the door. The door opened a crack first, then fully. Subrat was confronted with the most incredible sight in the world, his father-in-law as he was resting in Sahu’s bed. “God, how could he be here? How did you come? When? Who brought him?”
“At 11 am, he made it from Heathrow to Norwich and to UEA all by himself, negotiating the three Ts, Tube, Train, Taxi. Rajan brought him from the bus turnaround to my room.”
….
That night there was a celebration on their floor. Rajan wanted to honour the old gentleman. “You have beaten your son-in-law at his own game and on his own ground, Mr. Mahapatra. You have true grit. Here’s to you, Sir. Join us for a glass of wine.”
Mr. Mahapatra, smiling sheepishly and rejoicing inwardly, reached for a glass of orange juice. Rajan was right. At 61 his father-in-law had scripted a rite of passage even more awesome than Subrat’s. That too at twice the latter’s age.
(This story is based on the true incident of the author’s father-in-law’s solitary travel to England in July 1988. The fiction makes reparation for the unsung act of true courage that needs fulsome appreciation. The actual name of the person is given in the story.)
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