The changing sense of farewell

Aveek Jayant

Each of us lives with an intimate personal history. This rendition of the past is unique in experience and recollection. It also is vastly separate from the more universal sense of elapsed time, such as we share of the birth and death of nations, or of the greatness of men and women, and societal endeavour. This is the stuff that links us directly with our parents and, in turn, their progenitors. Interestingly, the subtext of this history is itself woven and warped by the changes occurring in the macrocosm with respect to the ways we communicate and travel today, compared to a time in the not-so remote past.

Thirty years ago, the only ways to communicate in India were sparsely scattered landline telephones and unreliable telegrams. My father lost his 52-year-old mother in the span of a day, after she woke up with diarrhoea. She failed to match the torrential water loss from her bowels with oral intake, causing her diabetes to acquire a dreadful, acute form. In hospital, she was unable to secure intravenous access, and that was it.

It took our relatives a few hours to locate a phone to inform my father in Kolkata. The only Indian Airlines flight had left for Chennai, then Madras. We began a long-winding journey in the general compartment of the Coromandel Express. I remember the journey, sleeping on a wooden upper berth, uncertain mealtimes and very little else.

Years later, I accompanied my father to see off a grandparent on the same train. A 77-year-old was chastising us for spending money on his cataract surgery and an additional Rs 34 on the ticket. As the electric traction slowly hooted its way out of the grand precincts of the Howrah station, I saw my grandparent for the last time. 

A somewhat thicker spread of phones meant that demise could be conveyed more ‘acutely’. I could not understand why my mother cried so much. Death was to come soon to another grandparent in the form of low sodium after prostate surgery. Farewell meant a teary, long and blisteringly hot journey from central India to the coldness of the British railings in Howrah.

As a son who has largely lived away from his parents, I have seen the rapid transition of rites — the grasp of my mother signalling the arrival of the Bengaluru Airport and the wetness of her cheeks punctuating a hurried kiss to beat parking charges in the drop-off bay. The Internet and mobile telephony have made daily contact easy. Yet, as they age, the intensity of physical separation is overbearing. 

With my own son’s arrival, I have shifted quickly to the other side. As I periodically fly now from Coimbatore to Chandigarh, I can mark the deja vu of the moment: of saying goodbye for a few weeks. I observe with great precision the ritual of the Airbus A321 as it departs — the taxi lights come on; a bird saunters to one end of the short runway, pauses; the air-conditioning and cabin lights falter, while the age of the aircraft decides the tenor of the acceleration. I cannot help notice the smudge that tears make on the window. 

Even as the world changes, there is something primeval about how it feels to be separated from one’s children, all the sound and fury around notwithstanding.