Fellow-Travellers

by Sisir Kumar Chatterjee (India)

I didn't expect to find India

Fellow-Travellers Sisir Kumar Chatterjee We waited for the whole day. But they didn’t turn up. And there was no way for us to know why. It was 1990. Cellphone was not there. And communication with them through landline telephone was impossible because they were not home yet. We met them in December, 1989, while travelling together by a tourist bus from New Delhi to Jaipur in Rajasthan. I talked to the man and came to learn that his name was Robin Rawlinson, and the young lady was Jackie Rawlinson, and that they lived in a provincial town of Australia named Kinkin. We stopped at Sheesh Mahal (the Hall of Mirrors). They took quite a few snaps of us, and we took theirs. Robin was tall, straight and handsome. I thought he would be nearing fifty. But he said he was sixty three, and that Jackie, an attractive lady, was thirty two. After we reached the Hotel Diggy Palace at Jaipur, Robin negotiated with the manager for giving us a room. “This hotel is meant for the foreigners, Sir. Indians are not allowed here,” the manager said. Robin told him, “Look, if they are not allowed here, we are also Indians.” The manager looked disarmed. He said to Robin, “This is actually a hotel meant for the foreigners. But since you insist, we can give them a room for two days only.” Robin smiled and winked at me. We spent the next day together seeing the famous tourist spots in Jaipur by a taxi. The day after, we were to leave the hotel. We were packing our bags after breakfast. Our daughter was sitting in the open space in front of our room, the door of which we had kept open. She was droning, absorbed in tearing a sheet of white paper into as many pieces as she could. We found Robin and Jackie watching our daughter. We asked them to come in. We talked for a while. Jackie told us that she was a writer and Robin added that they had a big firm at Kinkin where they manufactured and repaired boats. Robin also told us that Jackie was his second wife. We invited them to come to our place at Bandel, only an hour’s journey by train from Calcutta. Robin promised that they would. Jackie asked Krishna, “How old is she?” “Three.” “What’s her name?” “Trisha.” “What does that mean?” “Thirst.” I wrote in Robin’s diary the detailed route direction from Howrah Railway station to our house at Bandel, and gave it back to him. He told me that from Jaipur they would move to Bhutan, then to Kathmandu, and finally to Calcutta. They would reach Calcutta on 14th March, and would come to our place on 16th. *** In May, we received a letter from them. They informed us that Jackie had an acute attack of diarrhoea in Kathmandu. So, they had to cancel the rest of their tour. They wrote: “…How is Trisha? Take her for what she is, not for what you wanted her to be. Remember that children are given to us not just for pleasure but also to teach us some lessons. And who are we to say what lessons we need?” That letter also informed us that Jackie was carrying and was expecting in six more months. After four years, they wrote again: We planted a tree in Trisha’s name. It has grown up and even begun to yield fruits. But, none of the fruits ripens. They fall off and rot long before they mature. Anyway, life has taught us that not all trees are meant to bear fruit. And yet they are trees nonetheless. We have a three-year-old baby girl now. She looks as cute and angelic as Trisha did when we saw her. She too can’t walk and talk yet; she only makes a continuous droning sound when she is awake. We call her and the tree JERISHA. However, we are going to India again in December this year. We have decided to spend quite a few days in Calcutta. Now that life has made us fellow-travellers, if you have no problems, we shall travel and visit some places together again.