Safe Travels
Author: Sumona DasGupta25 March 2026
Today is a “nothing in particular” day. Not a birthday, not an anniversary, not a festival…yet I felt you peep at me from behind the hibiscus flower this morning. I am reminded of the song by Rabindranath that I would find myself humming time and time again after you left your body. Pothe chole jete jete, Kothai kon khane tomar porosho lage….As I walk along the path, who knows where and at what point I will perceive your touch.
Today I want to tell everyone who knew you: when you see me please call out his name! Speak to me of him! Tell me the abiding memory you have of him! Tell me a story about him I did not know! Share a photograph of him I have not seen! Do not change the subject when I speak of him! Please do not create a silence around him because your silence and avoidance whether intended to protect yourself or protect me hurts me in ways you cannot even begin to fathom.
I do not want people to tiptoe around you Apu! I want them to acknowledge your presence – in the house, in your room, in my room, in the drawing room, in the garden, in the terrace, in Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Mangalore, Pune, Bangalore, Phoenix, in the cricket fields across the length and breadth of this country and beyond where you travelled with or without me. I want people to understand that just because you are not here does not mean you are gone! The biggest blunder people make when they come to know about a death specially the death of a child is to pretend it has not happened. Or use a staged whisper, the shhhh he has “passed away” tone. And what is this “passed away” anyway? What an unimaginative turn of phrase! And no, “passed on” is no better! The English language is singularly unequipped to handle death don’t you think?
You know in the old fashioned Shraddha cards in Kolkata the announcement of death was uniquely framed. It said on x date y “left for another realm”. The Bengali words were Parolok gaman. I see you smile and say really Maa, how old fashioned and quaint! But think of it this way Apu. Look at the depth of that communication that in two words summarized what the Tibetans knew all along and articulated starkly in the book of the dead: that there is no such thing as death. And I do not mean this in some romanticized “those who love us are always with us” kind of way. I mean it in a much more literal visceral way to mean that ultimately death is …travel.
And how you loved to travel! You were always on the move! A memory unlocks as I write this. From Hyderabad where you and I spent three years together. You in kindergarten. Me completing my PhD. I was walking you to the bus stop to catch your school bus. We were running late. Clutching your bag in one hand and your little hand with my other hand I encouraged you to trot along faster …today we have to walk with lightning speed Apu or else we will miss the bus! We managed to catch it but just about. The next day we started out early because I was not prepared to practice the sprint again. And you looked at me and solemnly declared: “We do not have to walk at lightning speed today! Today we will walk at darkening speed.” Now that you are in another realm I have no idea whether you are travelling with lightning speed or darkening speed but regardless of your speed, may you travel light. And may you travel in light. You have travelled much in this realm and to so many places that it could fill a book. I will save the travel we did together on this realm for another time. Today I am writing to thank you for your magical travel postcards from another realm! There I have said it! And thanks also for not dropping abstract art on me! You have not been subtle when you have sent these postcards from the other side. I hear you tell me: “how much more direct can I be? You get it now don’t you?” Yep! I get it Apu.
As you know I was in Sariska on my new post Diwali retreat place to avoid the pollution in Delhi. Delhi saw me have one too many near death experiences as you know very well – there was meaning and learning in each of those episodes - but two is enough for one lifetime! As you would say mum this ICU business is becoming a bit of a habit – please leave the city when the AQI hits 500! As I settled into my new workplace in the winter of 2025 I looked outside one morning to see the gentle slopes of the Aravalli hills and a flood of memories rushed in. I was reminded of the last road trip you and I had taken in Arizona. 2019 driving through that beautiful state which you described to me as one of America’s better kept secrets. Just the two of us. You at the wheel sometimes chattering sometimes in quiet companionship. Same rugged terrain. How excited you had been about driving me to Sedona to see its stark red beauty.
I finished my tea and walked in to start the day’s work. I switched on my laptop. And as the morning light that had bathed the Aravalli hills outside filtered into the room Arizona’s rugged terrain flooded the screen! Out of nowhere. In the corner of the laptop it even mentioned a detail about Sedona. I registered a “goose bump moment.” Is the laptop into mind reading? Of all the images that could randomly appear, this one? I took a screenshot of the postcard you sent. It was 10:10 and later I was told this is a magical number for those who work on numbers. A friend informed me that seeing 10:10 on the clock is often given symbolic or spiritual meaning specially in numerology and “angel number” traditions. I have not dabbled in either so I would not know but it was amazing to learn of this.
Fast forward to the evening. As I shut the laptop to step outside for my walk at one point the lights in the property came on as they do at the same time every evening. Suddenly I froze and stopped dead on my tracks. In the distance the letters MA flashed right in front of me. Illuminated letters. Which resort in the universe has MA written in illuminated flashing letters and even if it does why on earth would it appear right in front of me when I was thinking of you, Arizona and Aravalli? I captured your MA signal on the camera recording yet another of your postcards for posterity. From Arizona’s rugged hills to the gentle slopes of the Aravalli you are there dropping your postcards. Always. Anytime. Every time.
The magic of Sariska did not end here! On a weekend the resort fills up with families with kids and I see them swimming, playing cricket, scampering around with the adorable resident dogs that you have placed there to tell me that this is the right place for your retreat. Suddenly a little girl ran to the cottage next to mine shouting Apu Bhaiya, Apu Bhaiya! Her brother! He revealed himself, a little terror who eats everyone’s biscuits and snacks in a jiffy! And suddenly everyone was shouting hatao hatao Apu Bhaiya will eat everything! And the lines of a song from my childhood drifted in from the recesses of my mind like a gentle breeze. “You just call out my name and you know wherever I am, I’ll come running to be with you again”! And the image of a little boy running to me etched itself on yet another postcard. So Apu thanks for running back to me that day and snatching the biscuits!
Flashback. August 2022. You had left the previous month on your long journey. I was going to Kolkata to meet my mother – your beloved Dida - for the first time after you left. I was travelling alone like I do most times. As I entered Delhi airport and mechanically checked in and walked towards my boarding gate my eyes suddenly filled with tears at the prospect of meeting my mother – she who loved you so dearly - what would I tell her? How would I face her? For a second I felt myself trembling, blinded, paralyzed. The moment passed and I steadied myself and looked ahead. Suddenly I saw a store selling makhanas. Remember makhanas? After my first stint in hospital a few months before you left you were part of my caregiver team and you would bring me tea and makhanas every evening. Every single evening. The store was selling makhanas but the story did not stop here. The makhanas were wrapped in a packaging that had Mom with a heart embedded on it!! I kid you not! Blue, pink, green all colours of the rainbow each with a different flavor and everywhere I looked on the shelf all I could see was … Mom! Suddenly I was no longer afraid. Your colour coded postcard wrapped in love helped me make that difficult journey to our Kolkata home.
There have been many “postcard moments” in Kolkata but let me share one here from those early days after you left this realm. I had a terrible painful swollen cheek while travelling to a village school where we were setting up a drinking water facility in your memory. Normally I respect your space and since I did it in this realm I have extended you the same courtesy when you decided to travel beyond this realm. Reluctant to disturb your journey, I do not summon you from the realms beyond randomly but that day the pain was excruciating and I recall saying furiously: Ops where on earth are you? And lo behold. Hotel Ops appeared on the horizon on the highway as my car whizzed pass as if to say “here I am”! The car went past too quickly for me to take out the phone and snap it up. So I did the next best thing. I opened google maps to check whether this Hotel Ops was indeed “a thing” as you would say. Why would a hotel have such a weird name, the very nickname that only your Mashi and I used affectionately for you as a short form of Apu. And to my utter amazement as I searched on my phone, Hotel Ops jumped out at me from the google map along the very highway (NH 16) I was traversing! No I was not hallucinating. Hotel Ops with was very much on the ground. As solid as things in this life are solid when seen from our waking perspective. Unthinkingly I had said “where on earth are you” and with your inimitable humor you had replied: “See Maa, here I am! Look look! I can always meet you on the road along which you travel!”
This is what my phone unearthed.
Hotel OPS-Google
Set along the NH16 road, this unpretentious hotel is 20 km from Nilanjana Park and 31 km from downtown Kolkata. It's 35 km from the Science City museum.
May we continue to have these delightful encounters Ops! Even though I understand perfectly that we were two souls on a journey and that our work together on this earth is now over, may our paths continue to cross once a while till I meet you on the other side.
Om Sadgati beloved child. May you travel in love, light and laughter.
Maa
Today is a “nothing in particular” day. Not a birthday, not an anniversary, not a festival…yet I felt you peep at me from behind the hibiscus flower this morning. I am reminded of the song by Rabindranath that I would find myself humming time and time again after you left your body. Pothe chole jete jete, Kothai kon khane tomar porosho lage….As I walk along the path, who knows where and at what point I will perceive your touch.
Today I want to tell everyone who knew you: when you see me please call out his name! Speak to me of him! Tell me the abiding memory you have of him! Tell me a story about him I did not know! Share a photograph of him I have not seen! Do not change the subject when I speak of him! Please do not create a silence around him because your silence and avoidance whether intended to protect yourself or protect me hurts me in ways you cannot even begin to fathom.
I do not want people to tiptoe around you Apu! I want them to acknowledge your presence – in the house, in your room, in my room, in the drawing room, in the garden, in the terrace, in Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Mangalore, Pune, Bangalore, Phoenix, in the cricket fields across the length and breadth of this country and beyond where you travelled with or without me. I want people to understand that just because you are not here does not mean you are gone! The biggest blunder people make when they come to know about a death specially the death of a child is to pretend it has not happened. Or use a staged whisper, the shhhh he has “passed away” tone. And what is this “passed away” anyway? What an unimaginative turn of phrase! And no, “passed on” is no better! The English language is singularly unequipped to handle death don’t you think?
You know in the old fashioned Shraddha cards in Kolkata the announcement of death was uniquely framed. It said on x date y “left for another realm”. The Bengali words were Parolok gaman. I see you smile and say really Maa, how old fashioned and quaint! But think of it this way Apu. Look at the depth of that communication that in two words summarized what the Tibetans knew all along and articulated starkly in the book of the dead: that there is no such thing as death. And I do not mean this in some romanticized “those who love us are always with us” kind of way. I mean it in a much more literal visceral way to mean that ultimately death is …travel.
And how you loved to travel! You were always on the move! A memory unlocks as I write this. From Hyderabad where you and I spent three years together. You in kindergarten. Me completing my PhD. I was walking you to the bus stop to catch your school bus. We were running late. Clutching your bag in one hand and your little hand with my other hand I encouraged you to trot along faster …today we have to walk with lightning speed Apu or else we will miss the bus! We managed to catch it but just about. The next day we started out early because I was not prepared to practice the sprint again. And you looked at me and solemnly declared: “We do not have to walk at lightning speed today! Today we will walk at darkening speed.” Now that you are in another realm I have no idea whether you are travelling with lightning speed or darkening speed but regardless of your speed, may you travel light. And may you travel in light. You have travelled much in this realm and to so many places that it could fill a book. I will save the travel we did together on this realm for another time. Today I am writing to thank you for your magical travel postcards from another realm! There I have said it! And thanks also for not dropping abstract art on me! You have not been subtle when you have sent these postcards from the other side. I hear you tell me: “how much more direct can I be? You get it now don’t you?” Yep! I get it Apu.
As you know I was in Sariska on my new post Diwali retreat place to avoid the pollution in Delhi. Delhi saw me have one too many near death experiences as you know very well – there was meaning and learning in each of those episodes - but two is enough for one lifetime! As you would say mum this ICU business is becoming a bit of a habit – please leave the city when the AQI hits 500! As I settled into my new workplace in the winter of 2025 I looked outside one morning to see the gentle slopes of the Aravalli hills and a flood of memories rushed in. I was reminded of the last road trip you and I had taken in Arizona. 2019 driving through that beautiful state which you described to me as one of America’s better kept secrets. Just the two of us. You at the wheel sometimes chattering sometimes in quiet companionship. Same rugged terrain. How excited you had been about driving me to Sedona to see its stark red beauty.
I finished my tea and walked in to start the day’s work. I switched on my laptop. And as the morning light that had bathed the Aravalli hills outside filtered into the room Arizona’s rugged terrain flooded the screen! Out of nowhere. In the corner of the laptop it even mentioned a detail about Sedona. I registered a “goose bump moment.” Is the laptop into mind reading? Of all the images that could randomly appear, this one? I took a screenshot of the postcard you sent. It was 10:10 and later I was told this is a magical number for those who work on numbers. A friend informed me that seeing 10:10 on the clock is often given symbolic or spiritual meaning specially in numerology and “angel number” traditions. I have not dabbled in either so I would not know but it was amazing to learn of this.
Fast forward to the evening. As I shut the laptop to step outside for my walk at one point the lights in the property came on as they do at the same time every evening. Suddenly I froze and stopped dead on my tracks. In the distance the letters MA flashed right in front of me. Illuminated letters. Which resort in the universe has MA written in illuminated flashing letters and even if it does why on earth would it appear right in front of me when I was thinking of you, Arizona and Aravalli? I captured your MA signal on the camera recording yet another of your postcards for posterity. From Arizona’s rugged hills to the gentle slopes of the Aravalli you are there dropping your postcards. Always. Anytime. Every time.
The magic of Sariska did not end here! On a weekend the resort fills up with families with kids and I see them swimming, playing cricket, scampering around with the adorable resident dogs that you have placed there to tell me that this is the right place for your retreat. Suddenly a little girl ran to the cottage next to mine shouting Apu Bhaiya, Apu Bhaiya! Her brother! He revealed himself, a little terror who eats everyone’s biscuits and snacks in a jiffy! And suddenly everyone was shouting hatao hatao Apu Bhaiya will eat everything! And the lines of a song from my childhood drifted in from the recesses of my mind like a gentle breeze. “You just call out my name and you know wherever I am, I’ll come running to be with you again”! And the image of a little boy running to me etched itself on yet another postcard. So Apu thanks for running back to me that day and snatching the biscuits!
Flashback. August 2022. You had left the previous month on your long journey. I was going to Kolkata to meet my mother – your beloved Dida - for the first time after you left. I was travelling alone like I do most times. As I entered Delhi airport and mechanically checked in and walked towards my boarding gate my eyes suddenly filled with tears at the prospect of meeting my mother – she who loved you so dearly - what would I tell her? How would I face her? For a second I felt myself trembling, blinded, paralyzed. The moment passed and I steadied myself and looked ahead. Suddenly I saw a store selling makhanas. Remember makhanas? After my first stint in hospital a few months before you left you were part of my caregiver team and you would bring me tea and makhanas every evening. Every single evening. The store was selling makhanas but the story did not stop here. The makhanas were wrapped in a packaging that had Mom with a heart embedded on it!! I kid you not! Blue, pink, green all colours of the rainbow each with a different flavor and everywhere I looked on the shelf all I could see was … Mom! Suddenly I was no longer afraid. Your colour coded postcard wrapped in love helped me make that difficult journey to our Kolkata home.
There have been many “postcard moments” in Kolkata but let me share one here from those early days after you left this realm. I had a terrible painful swollen cheek while travelling to a village school where we were setting up a drinking water facility in your memory. Normally I respect your space and since I did it in this realm I have extended you the same courtesy when you decided to travel beyond this realm. Reluctant to disturb your journey, I do not summon you from the realms beyond randomly but that day the pain was excruciating and I recall saying furiously: Ops where on earth are you? And lo behold. Hotel Ops appeared on the horizon on the highway as my car whizzed pass as if to say “here I am”! The car went past too quickly for me to take out the phone and snap it up. So I did the next best thing. I opened google maps to check whether this Hotel Ops was indeed “a thing” as you would say. Why would a hotel have such a weird name, the very nickname that only your Mashi and I used affectionately for you as a short form of Apu. And to my utter amazement as I searched on my phone, Hotel Ops jumped out at me from the google map along the very highway (NH 16) I was traversing! No I was not hallucinating. Hotel Ops with was very much on the ground. As solid as things in this life are solid when seen from our waking perspective. Unthinkingly I had said “where on earth are you” and with your inimitable humor you had replied: “See Maa, here I am! Look look! I can always meet you on the road along which you travel!”
This is what my phone unearthed.
Hotel OPS-Google
Set along the NH16 road, this unpretentious hotel is 20 km from Nilanjana Park and 31 km from downtown Kolkata. It's 35 km from the Science City museum.
May we continue to have these delightful encounters Ops! Even though I understand perfectly that we were two souls on a journey and that our work together on this earth is now over, may our paths continue to cross once a while till I meet you on the other side.
Om Sadgati beloved child. May you travel in love, light and laughter.
Maa