Dwarka To Puri

                                               

11 August 2016. I was then Additional Commissioner, ESI Corporation at its Hqrs Office, New Delhi. I had gone to Dwarka with the Director General in connection with a meeting. At 4.00 pm evening, we checked in to Hotel Dwarkadheesh on the sea beach where the meeting was scheduled the next day. My room was commanding a wonderful view of the sea. Post tea, with two local officers I set out on a stroll that led us to the famed Dwarkadheesh temple. Legend has it that after the Mahabharata war Lord Krishna had spent his later life at Dwarka, a fact testamented by this temple.

On return from temple, as we were just entering the hotel gate, my cell phone rang. It was from my brother at Bhubaneswar. In an alarming tone he said “Mother is serious. She needs be taken to hospital immediately. Could you arrange something through ESI?” I spoke to my colleagues at the Bhubaneswar office and asked my brother to consult them and get her admitted to KIMS Hospital.

I was upset with worrisome thoughts about mother and hence didn’t go down for dinner. As my desperation grew with every ticking second I reminisced how two years ago, when she was staying with me at the RD’s bungalow at Kanpur she fell down from bed and fractured her left leg. How unfortunate, I thought of her who was steadily recovering from the fracture to have fallen again at my brother’s place at Bhubaneswar and broken her right leg. A near centenarian, her health never looked up thereafter. Rather it had its toll on her heart and other vital organs.

As I lay in bed lost in musings, I didn’t know when I fell asleep. Twice I woke tormented by criss-cross of dim, dark thoughts. But the third time I was rung up by my cell phone at 4.00am. It was from Bhubaneswar. In a flash I was drop dead nervous. As I stuttered “hello” into my cell, I heard just three words from my brother “mother no more.” After a little pause that seemed like eternity he told again “mother’s fall from bed had caused her cardiac irregularities over last few months which paralysed her vital organs that triggered a cardiac arrest at 3.45am resulting her death.”

I got up, my mind ominously tormented with tempestuous thoughts. Through the glass window I saw a bitch and her pup lying huddled together under a lamp post. And beyond them, the vast apocalyptic Arabian Sea was dancing with deafening, thundering dark waves. I washed my face and sat at the window table. My laptop and the meeting file under the table lamp were hinting at the morning business. I looked back at the dark sea again. Deep down my mind I felt another Arabian Sea turbulent with tempestuous tides. Of twists and turns of family history of sixty long years: a sleepy, non-descript town on the bank of Mahanadi—Sonepur to the city of razzle dazzle modernity—Bhubaneswar and in between heaps and heaps of unforgettable stories of Rourkela, Cuttack, Sambalpur, Delhi, Noida and Kanpur. Everything big and small, far and near from that ever enduring childhood onwards sprang back to life.

While I was lost reminiscing the past my eyes fell on my wrist watch. It was past 6 o’clock. The night’s darkness had already receded away. Riding through the waves three fishing boats were pushing into the sea. High up the sky, amidst floating fluffy clouds scores of chirpy seagulls were flying past in patterns. Call of duty around everywhere. I logged in my laptop to book air tickets from the nearest airport Jamnagar to Bombay and from Bombay to Bhubaneswar. Then after having refreshed as I reached cafeteria for breakfast I saw DG and his wife at a corner table. When our eyes met I wished them “good morning” and immediately thereafter broke the mother's news. DG’s response was very prompt: “Give up everything and rush back home. I will take care of the meeting. Good luck.”

And then began my hop-step-jump. As I sat in the taxi to Jamnagar my cell phone rang. It was my brother from Bhubaneswar. “You inform when you are reaching. We shall be waiting for you at Swargadwara with mother’s body.” Driving down to Jamnagar under the scorching sun and flying through Bombay, I reached Bhubaneswar at 7.00pm. As I sat in the taxi to Puri I was struck by severe migrane accompanied with acute headache and vomiting. Braving whatever, lying in the backseat, vomiting all through the way, running cell phone commentary to brother I finally hit Swargadwa just past 9.00pm.

On the Bay of Bengal, Swargadwara is the popular hub of Puri sea beach. It is said it is from here that a highway stretches straight to the heaven. Today’s event in the midst of family members and relatives is in reverence to mother’s last wish. All were awaiting my arrival. Alighting from taxi I straightway went to that pyre where in the midst of searing funeral fires lay the body of my beloved mother draped in a white cotton sheet. I bowed at her feet, my last respect ever to that phenomenon called mother. And then as I took the white sheet off her face I felt a one thousand watt electric shock run down my spine. I could not believe one who gave me her sixty long years’ love and care could lie so listlessly to all around her pyre. To my utter dismay, blurred between dream and reality, I could see a strange expression of blissful contentment on her face and a stranger hint of smile on her lips. But ironically I had no time for the most surrealistic spectacle presented by my life. As the priest in charge of cremation asked me to move away I heard my inner voice reaffirm life should better be lived with reason rather than emotion. And then in no time the flames leapt up from the pyre engulfing the mortal remains of mother and with her, the era that was.

            Swargadwara. The very thought of it is awesome. Perhaps in some distant past it was far off from the city habitation. But today it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say after the Jagannath Temple this is the most popular city centre of Puri. At any point of time at Swargadwara one can find ten to twelve pyres burning. And around the place vie against one another crowded hotels, restaurants, shops and service centres. Business as usual.

Suffocated in heat and smoke from the burning pyres I moved to the sea beach. There was a different kind of celebration there. In the backdrop of thunderous crashing waves, the beach was rollicking to the music and dance and merry-making by numerous tourists home and abroad. Walking through the cool wet air as I looked up to the pitch dark sky lit up by millions of twinkling stars I recalled it was August 12 Shravan Shukla Ashtami. Suddenly, as though prompted by these celestial bodies, I remembered father’s Shraddha would be due the following day as I wondered aloud could it be then that mother waited for father’s date all these days?

I looked back. The pyres of Swargadwara were still burning steadily. What a wonderful confluence this Puri beach has been, I reflected, of dream and death!  Standing at the crossroads of life I felt utterly lonesome and forlorn. As I was still grappling with the myriad myths and mysteries of Swargadwara I heard my brother call me back as I saw all others getting ready to return to Bhubaneswar. Prostrating to Swargadwara from the beach I returned to Bhubaneswar with friends and relations. But behind them all, as that deep, dark August night Puri beach stood an infinite testimony, under heaps of hot specks of sands of Swargadwara she slipped into eternity, my dear, dear loving mother.

                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                                11/2017