It was a place where time stopped. The beauty was overwhelming. Rohan couldn’t get his eyes off the scene. He saw his father get the camera out and click a picture.

“Tavleen would have loved being here,” Mr. Rana said. “If only…she were here,” he sighed.

“It is a spell-binding scene of nature,” Rohan agreed in a pensive tone. “Mom missed something.”

Mr. Rana clicked a few more pictures and moved closer to his son. “That’s the reason we got her here, isn’t it?” he put a hand on his son’s shoulder and spoke. “Let her end her journey here now in these pristine natural surroundings. Get her out of your bag,” he told him.

Rohan looked at his father. “It’s in your bag,” he reminded his father.

“My bag? I thought you kept it in your bag,” Rana sounded surprised.

“No, it is in your bag. You kept it there last night, at the hotel,” Rohan reminded his father.

“Oh, did I?” the old man had a frown on his forehead, trying to remember.

After he had turned seventy, his memory had started fading. But it had worsened after his wife’s death three months ago. It was partly a result of age. It was partly because he felt nothing was worth remembering anymore. He got his backpack down from his shoulders and rummaged through it.

He searched for the small pot holding his wife’s ashes.

“They are not here, Rohan,” he reported to his son, in a tone indicative of some panic.

“Don’t tell me, Dad. Have you forgotten Mom at the hotel?” Rohan asked appearing perplexed.

Rana sat desolate on the white sands of Vijay Nagar beach. He rummaged through his backpack again. The clear waters of the sea in front of him waited for Tavleen to merge with it one last time.

“I still don’t see it. Look if you can find it,” he told his son and handed over his bag to him.

Rohan went through the contents of the bag. It had a towel, a cap, sunglasses, a water bottle, some snacks, a mobile phone, and camera batteries. But the pot was missing.

“It is not here. I will check my bag,” he told his father and rushed to open his bag. After a few minutes, he looked at his father and shook his head. “Dad, you forgot Mom again?” he asked.

Rana scratched his head trying to recollect. “This is amazing. You said she always loved going to beautiful places, and that’s why we came here,” he said. “And I forgot to get her to the most beautiful beach in the world,” he remarked with a smirk on his face and his palm on his forehead.

Rohan knew that his mother was a born traveler. She was always ready to go on new trips, start new journeys, anywhere. But his father never let her. Rohan wanted to let her, now. It was his idea to take her ashes to a beautiful place near nature for immersion. Mr. Rana had agreed with hesitation a couple of months back, after much convincing by Rohan.

“You never took her anywhere even when she was alive,” he made a caustic remark under his breath, and bit his tongue. He felt that he shouldn’t have said it. His father was old now.

“You are right, Rohan. I never took her anywhere. She loved to travel, she was an adventurous soul,” Rana said. He stood up and put his backpack on his shoulders. “She wanted to go all around the world to see new places. I never understood it. And now I forgot to get her again,” he said.

“Never mind, we will check in the hotel when we get back,” Rohan said hugging his father tight.

They went back to the hotel in a hurry. Rana paced across the lobby like he was thirty years younger.

Rohan sauntered along. On his way back from the beach to the hotel, a thought had struck him. What if he could take his Mom around the world, at least now? But he wasn’t sure how to go about it. Plus he felt his father would not like the idea. His father had been such an unadventurous fellow. True to tradition, true to duty, true to norms, true to how things should be done.

His mom had suppressed her urge for adventure all her life, Rohan felt. She had no choice. Rohan knew that she was one happy-go-lucky woman at heart, if left to herself.

Rana asked Rohan for the room keys. He walked straight inside the room and opened the wardrobe.

“There she is,” he heaved a sigh of relief, seeing the pot of ashes lying there, silent, waiting.

“She has always been there, waiting. All her life, isn’t it? And even now?” Rohan asked his father.

Rana did not reply. Rohan bit his tongue again. He again felt he shouldn’t have said that. But he couldn’t stop himself. He gave his father a glass of water and asked him to sit down. But Rana picked up his towel and went to the bathroom to get fresh, to change. Like he always did when he came home after a day of work outside. His discipline. His duty. The right thing to do.

“Let us go tomorrow to immerse Tavleen’s ashes,” he said before going in. Rohan felt he had some time to convince his Dad about his idea. He got to work in the afternoon while Rana took his nap.

**

“Dad, I wanted to ask you something. Can I?” Rohan asked his father next morning after breakfast.

“Yes, dear, any time,” he replied, combing the small tuft of hair on his mostly bald pate.

“Did the scene of nature yesterday at the beach take your breath away?” Rohan asked.

“Yes.. of course it did. I have never seen anything so beautiful in my life!” he exulted.

“Wouldn’t It have taken her breath away too?” Rohan asked.

Rana looked up to Rohan and nodded. “Yes. That’s why we got here, isn’t it? What are you getting at?” he asked, puzzled.

Rohan decided that the time had come to reveal his plan. He picked up the pot of ashes from the wardrobe and removed the red cloth cover. He showed it to Rana.

“Where is Mom?” Rana howled in shock. “How is this empty?” he cried aloud.

Rohan now picked his laptop bag from the shelf below. He removed the laptop and started it.

“Rohan, what are you doing? Where are the ashes? We have to go immerse them in the sea now,” Rana yelled, now pacing in visible exasperation.

Rohan calmly got out another bag from the wardrobe. It had a bunch of around ten small plastic bags each six-inch wide by six-inch long. All the bags had a grey-black powder in it.

“Here they are….,” he said to his father who continued to have a puzzled look on his face. “Come here, Dad. I have a plan,” he told Rana and asked him to sit next to him and his laptop.

Rana looked at what his son showed him. It had a set of photographs from all around the world of natural beauty that looked stunning. Beaches, Mountains, Forests, Deserts.

“I want to take Mom around the world,” Rohan said, pointing at the pictures. “These will take her breath away. Even if it is after she has taken her last breath,” he added.

Rana watched the pictures and his son alternately, awestruck at what he had missed in his life and what his son was making up for. He didn’t know what to say. Initially he wondered if it was the right thing to do. His sense of duty questioned such weird plans.

“How?” he asked Rohan.

“These are people I found who stay close to these places,” Rohan said, marking out some emails with a destination against each name. “I ran a campaign last night on a friend’s website. He runs a travel company. He sent it to his clients and partners. These are people have volunteered to take Mom there.” Then he lifted one of the small plastic pouches in his hands and said, “I am going to send Mom to them.”

Rana was stunned by the plan Rohan shared and was planning to execute.

“So that is how you want to end her journey?” Rana asked. Rohan sat in silence. He thought the journey had only begun. For him and his Mom, at least.

“If you are okay with it,” Rohan said, after a few minutes of silence.

Mr Rana got up from the bed and looked at himself in the mirror.

“I forgot your Mom all these years,” he said with eyes welled up. He put his hand on Rohan’s head, and added, “But you remembered her. Let us start her new journey from here.”

***

Ranjit Kulkarni‘s work has appeared in Literary Yard, Indian Periodical, Academy of the Heart and Mind, Potato Soup Journal, Setu Journal and a collection of short stories is expected by the end of 2021. More details about his work can be accessed at https://www.ranjitkulkarni.com.