A Long Road Trip

Senior citizens with creaking joints might be disinclined to travel especially if it involves a long road trip; but when cruising high with birds of their own flock, and in a Hyundai luxury coach speeding gently across a well-maintained highway, it’s another matter.

Meeting friends after ages is not just fun, it’s an aphrodisiac and an analgesic. Who has time to think of aches and pains and routine worries that afflict old men and women?

What is special about that bond, the little sapling that sprouted when chance brought these men and women together more than four decades ago, and grew and grew even when many of them had never met again after their training in the picturesque hills. Now, after hanging up their boots, it was time for periodic get-togethers, and travel down the memory lane; the group jaunt was just an enabler.

A lot can happen over a long road trip!

Their destination city was 317 kms away with a travel time of six and a half hours including lunch break and two loo breaks. Surprisingly, even though they had boarded the bus after a lavish, leisurely brunch, no one dozed, for the gossip had begun by the motley group at the back, soon pulling friends from the middle and the front, with several standing close to the epi-centre, risking a fall but unwilling to miss a word of the tittle-tattle.

Tour Manager attempted to brief them about the destination city, but he was politely requested to sit down.

‘Why don’t you brief us tomorrow morning when we begin our tour of the city? We’d be fresh and ready for the sights and sounds of the beautiful city,’ someone suggested.

How to spend more than six hours in a bus? Nothing had been planned, but the spontaneous bonhomie took them in her lap and rocked them so gently and tenderly that the city arrived too soon.

I hope the long journey was worth the trouble, said the group leader.

‘What trouble? This was the best part of our holiday, and the most memorable. In all our future trips, a long road journey must be included.’

Snacking started as soon as the bus began moving. Packets of namkeen, thepla, murukku, tangy lightly-roasted makhana, gud ke pare, khas-khas ki barfi, and home-made sweets made in shuddh desi ghee moved up and down the bus with the clock-work precision of a conveyor belt. Intermittent fasting had given way to non-stop snacking, and worries about blood sugar level were tossed out of the window. No one was hungry, but everyone munched and nibbled to savour the delicious snacks to honour the thoughtfulness of the ladies who had lovingly packed it for friends. Companionship, as is well-known, grows from eating together. The word companion comes from the Latin com- (“with”) and panis (“bread, food”)!

A gifted storyteller narrated an anecdote from the Trekking trip during FC.

“Reaching well after nightfall the forlorn, bare-boned rest house with no rooms and no electricity, we had a quick dinner and spread our bedrolls on the floor in the dormitory hall. Very tired, we fell asleep quickly. When Bahadur, one of the porters kept turning from side-to-side Rana, his boss spoke sharply to him, ‘What’s your problem? Why are you disturbing everyone?’

Bahadur lay still for a while, and then began shifting on his bed-roll ever so cautiously. ‘Stop that,’ hissed the Chief. ‘If you do that again, I’ll boot you out to sleep in the open veranda.’

When they woke up in the morning, Rana asked, ‘What bothered you last night?’

‘Why don’t you see for yourself?’ said Bahadur, and rolled up his bedding under which lay a snake about two feet long but flattened by the heavy weight on it during the night. It took several minutes to regain consciousness and slither away slowly and in pain.”

A closet poet read a few poems addressed to his beloved spouse and composed during their brief separation when they had been posted in different cities for a few years. A lady took out her old diary where she had hand-written her favourite lyrics and sang a few charming songs. After the good singers had entertained the group, a few ladies and gentlemen who had never sung in public took the mike and sang their favourite songs, following the lyrics from the phone. Two gentlemen sang Ja Jaa Re Bhasi Bhasi Ja, the same song that they had made bold to sing at the cultural evening at Mussoorie, with an improvised band comprising three ladies (a Punjabi, a Bengali, and a Marathi), two tuneless Odias, and a much better Assamese.

A dark cloud appeared over the horizon, as it were, and moods soured when the terrible incident was revisited with a few eye-witness accounts not known to the rest of the group. But that unpleasant recall was swiftly buried, and the rest of the trip was filled with banter, leg-pulling, harmless jibes, and joyous laughter.

‘Your turn now,’ a gentleman told a lady colleague, ‘to tell us about the whispers from the rooms of the Ladies Hostel.’

She hesitated, but only for a moment, and stood up. She was at the back of the bus.

‘Please come to the front, and take the mike,’ requested the eager group.

“A few skeletons may tumble out of the cupboards. I hope no one would mind, especially the spouses. Anyway, I won’t name names. It’s easy to figure out, though,’ she said.

During FC, the group was too large for any close bonding which began with Phase I. A few pairs looked promising, and sparks began to fly. Sadly, none reached the destination. Maybe, destiny ruled otherwise; or was it a lack of decisiveness?

We were thirteen of whom one had already married. Of the 115 gentlemen, only a few were married. What happened? Were the ladies and gentlemen too timid to take the plunge? Or, just over-cautious, mulling over pros and cons? When Phase II ended, and it was time to bid adieu to the Academy, a senior Faculty chided in friendly banter a group boarding the bus, ‘A hopeless batch, that’s what you’re. There were several happy pairings in all the recent batches!”

Can you be a little more specific, please? A friend requested the lady teller of tales.

“Sure, I’ll, but without naming names. A lady had several suitors of whom one is here with us. A gentleman, also present here, so gawked at all the girls that he was nicknamed majnu by us. How could any sensible girl take him seriously when he was enamoured by any lady, mercifully excluding the one who was already married?”

‘Tell us about the marriage proposal hollered from the porch a little before midnight.’

‘Well, we were about to tuck into our blankets when we heard someone address a lady by name. Parting the curtain a little and peeping out of the window, we saw a batchmate shouting. ‘Hey, why don’t you marry my friend? He’s a very good boy, and madly in love with you.’ The ‘good’ boy was so very ‘good’ that he stood behind a large, manicured Thuja bush at a discrete distance.

The proposer had not bothered that his loud proclamation might wake up the Course Director whose residence was adjacent to our hostel.’

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