Rendezvous

You’re real

Now, I know,

I doubted your presence

Not anymore.

 

Your existence

I feel and see

Your love too

Isn’t denied to me.

 

You make me proud

You make me free

I rest with peace

My mind at ease. 

 

Encircled by the blue of the water of the Bay of Bengal, the ship steadily travels to its destination. To tone with the colour of the water, the sky too is adorned with the same hue, giving a vastness of a single shade all over. The sun is yet to be strong; the passengers on the ship taking their morning stroll on the deck are enjoying the perfect weather. The ship is not a luxury liner and therefore only ardent lovers of nature are adopting this mode of transport to the Andaman. This place has become a tourist attraction in recent times, in spite of its recurrent natural calamities. Although nature has shown its wrath so many times, it has been generous as well to the group of islands that this place consists of. And thus there is no dearth of tourists.

Rudra is, however, an exception, a traveller of different genre. Standing among his co-passengers, his detachment is visible. His eyes looking towards the horizon are exuding a kind of apprehension, as though expecting another Tsunami any time. He finds the fun and frolic of his fellow passengers, quite annoying. He shrugs off any initiation from any other passenger to get introduced to him. In his mind, he has already started travelling to a different time zone, to his childhood.

He remembers his mother, an upright and independent lady. She was so proud of her freedom fighter husband and his work that she accepted widowhood gracefully when she lost her husband during this struggle. She was a martyr’s widow after all. Instead of feeling devastated and weak she gathered all her strength for the baby that was slowly taking shape in her womb. Rudra, a posthumous child, born three months after his father’s death, was brought up solely by his mother, a school teacher, who unfortunately, had little support from her extended family.

Being the only child and that too a posthumous one, he was of course, doted on by his mother, but not before learning the basic tenets of life. Truth, honesty, courage were some of the virtues he was impregnated with. He was constantly reminded by his mother that he was a freedom fighter’s son. His action and behaviour in public should be representative of his genealogy. Rudra, always a respectful son never forgot this and always took pride in his ancestry. He was respectful of the man he had never seen in his life, in a different way, not the way he was of his mother. During his childhood, he would think of his father as another Gandhiji or Netaji. The way these two great men were beyond his access, his father too was. Inaccessibility was regarded as the sign of greatness, by him.

With age, he learnt many things about his father, from his mother—how he managed to con the British, running away to an apparently safe place so that he could work for his country’s freedom without interference. He listened with heavy heart how his father got caught and was beaten black and blue by the police. To add to his agony Rudra learnt how he was dispatched to the notorious cellular jail in the Andaman. Rudra learnt these stories by heart because his mother was never too tired of telling them again and again with a hope to instill the same patriotic feeling in her son. During his childhood, when his mother would put him to bed, she always narrated his father’s adventurous operations; no lullaby, no fairy tale for him. Brought up in such an environment it was impossible for Rudra not to have a strong feeling for his country. His father’s fight was against the British in a country under bondage, and Rudra’s fight was against the corruption gradually affecting the newly born independent India like gangrene.

In the sixties, when he was a college student, he started doing social work, travelling to remote villages and serving the people there by educating them. These frequent visits to remote areas affected his studies as well as his health. His mother belonging to a different class encouraged him in his projects so that he could play a significant role in the development of this young country. He completed his post graduation, though not with flying colours, but got a job that paid all right. He balanced his professional life and social work quite well, so much so that unlike many of his contemporaries, despite his dedicated service for the villagers, he managed to hold on to his job.

Rudra always wanted to visit the notorious cellular jail, especially with his mother. And he suggested this idea to his mother so many times. Although it was a little difficult for him to make time out of his busy schedule, to get away from his social commitments, he thought that his mother would be happy to go on a pilgrimage like that. Surprisingly, his mother was reluctant to consider such a journey. Since her husband’s death, she had been living in a world of memories, memories of his greatness. These memories were so pure and true that she didn’t like to adulterate them with any element from outside. She got so used to live with the data of the past that the present had become irrelevant to her. Besides, his mother’s recurrent ailment was another reason why Rudra eventually decided against this trip.

After his retirement and after his mother’s death, once again, he ponders over his long cherished mission. He has now enough time to visit the Andaman. A confirmed bachelor and having no one in particular to worry about him, he has decided to take this journey, to visit the shrine, which is a mute witness of torment and torture meted out to freedom fighters, including his father. He wants to meet his father in his cell, where he was captivated for six years. He wants to meet the person whose untimely death took away all colours from his mother’s appearance so prematurely, which made her stark white even when her first baby was born.

Rudra had always been proud of his father, but somewhere in his heart he could not accept the fact that his father’s early demise had been the cause of his mother’s sufferings. He always saw unconditional love mixed with adoration for his father, in his mother’s eyes. He too wanted to feel the same way. But not having any interaction with his father, he lived in a vacuum. Had he seen his father or had he spent a few years with him, he was certain, he would have different emotions for him. As far as his father was concerned, his mind was almost a tabula rasa. His mother succeeded to a great extent, to make meaningful imprints on it, but his empirical knowledge being nought, there was no means to corroborate. His blind faith in his mother had never given him the courage or any desire to doubt any of the stories regarding his father because he firmly believed that they were as true as the sun or the moon. However, he desperately wished he could have some memory of his father, of his great activities.

Rudra isn’t growing young and so isn’t getting stronger and therefore, before it becomes too late he wants to meet that impalpable persona. He would like to confront him at least once just the way a child has a conversation with a pixie or a goblin because in a way, his father is as unreal to him as any fairy or a ghost. The natural extravaganza surrounding him at present is more real than his father’s existence to him. And he thinks, no other destination could be a better rendezvous than the cell where his father had spent an important chunk of his life.

Rudra comes back to his present and is eager to reach his destination, not any of those beautiful islands but the cellular jail in Port Blair. He will stay at Andaman for five days, but he has no desire to visit any of the tourist attractions. He has a purpose of his own while embarking on his journey. His detachment from other tourists might appear queer to them, but Rudra couldn’t care less. And as soon as he sets foot on the soil of the Andaman, he heads toward the cellular jail before it gets too dark. He doesn’t have any intent to watch the light and sound show. His memory is full of such anecdotes thanks to his mother. He first thinks of taking a guide but then decides against it. He knows the cell number; he doesn’t need any introduction.

He directly visits the cell where his father was once a captive. Once again he travels to another time zone; he sees his father cooped up in that dingy, dirty, claustrophobic cell, an ethereal smile pervading his glowing face. He patiently replies to Rudra’s volley of questions—why he left his mother for the country, why he took so much risk, or if he could not balance between his family life and public life. His father’s answers are so convincing and assertive that Rudra’s belief in his father is vindicated. Now, there is no iota of doubt in his mind that his father had chosen the right path. He himself would have followed the same footsteps given the exact scenario. Rudra now appeals to a lesser god and asks his father if he had missed the birth of his only child who happened to have grown up without a father, without his memory as well. All of a sudden, Rudra sees a different person altogether with abrupt change in his expressions, no more a martyr, but a father giving a bemused and sad look.

“It’s almost five, sir. We’re going to close the jail.” The maiden confrontation between father and son comes to a sudden end. Rudra leaves the premise with a promise to come back again to his father, although he knows that a few days of his stay here can’t compensate the loss he has suffered throughout his entire life.

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