The Living Road

106 Pages·2015·1.59 MB·English

by  Ajit Harsinghani [Harsinghani

The Living Road
Ajit Harisinghani is a speech therapist by profession and a traveller by passion.
He lives in Pune, with his wife and daughter. The Living Road is his second
book.
The Living Road
A Motorcycle Journey to Bhutan
Ajit Harisinghani
westland ltd
61, II Floor, Silverline Building, Alapakkam Main Road, Maduravoyal, Chennai 600095
93, I Floor, Sham Lal Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110002
First published by westland ltd 2015
First e-book edition: 2015
Copyright © Ajit Harisinghani 2015
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-93-85724-43-5
Typeset in Dante MT by SÜRYA, New Delhi
The author asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired
out, circulated, and no reproduction in any form, in whole or in part (except for brief quotations in critical
articles or reviews) may be made without written permission of the publishers.
For Meena and Juhi

Contents
Prologue
Bhutan on My Mind
First Day on the Road
The Singing Goat of Meherabad
Celebrating Buddha in the Ajanta Caves
Akola Anyone?
Nagzira
Dhaba Guru
Time For a Joke?
IIT Kharagpur
Strikes and Broken Bridges
Kishanganj
Elephant, Ahoy!
Entering Bhutan
A Paradise Called Gedu
Thimpu
Paro
I’m on Bhutan TV
Back to India
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Prologue
SUNDAY IS JUST about winding up when my cell phone buzzes. I wonder who is
calling so late. It’s almost midnight. I press the answer button and say, ‘Hello.’
‘Hello, sir. I am Rahul Bhatia calling from Nagpur. Remember me?’
Food and drink have diverted blood to my stomach and my brain is not at its
alert best. I have no idea who the caller is. I’m ready to sleep and am in a half-
daze already. Besides, Rahul is a common enough name.
What he says next jerks me sober.
‘Sir, I am committing suicide.’
‘What…? Who…? Where are you?’ I finally ask.
‘In Ambajari park, sir, cyanide in my hand.’
I wonder if this is a hoax but the desperate voice sounds genuine enough.
‘Sir, I just wanted to thank you for all you did, but I can’t take it anymore. I had
improved but my stammering has returned. I want to die. I’m useless. I can’t
even speak properly.’ He is sobbing and I’m still trying to recollect who he is.
Obviously one of my old clients but I can’t remember his face.
‘And, you know… my father…today he got angry when I stammered while
attending to a customer. I am worthless…how will I run the business? I can’t
even speak properly. What’s the use of living like this?’
As I listen, I try to find a way to deflect his suicidal thoughts.
‘Rahul,’ I say, ‘thank you very much for calling me. Really, I’m quite flattered
that you thought of talking to me at this momentous time in your life—the time
of your death! I can’t wish you all the best, or even a bon voyage because I don’t
know what happens to souls who have committed suicide. Do they regret it?
Want to reverse it, but can’t? I guess we’ll never know.’
I ask him if he could defer committing suicide for a week. He could come say
his goodbyes in person. A long silence follows and then he says, ‘Yes, but only
if you promise not to try and stop me.’
I tell him that, in fact, I will help him commit suicide, but a week from today.
‘In any case,’ I point out, ‘no one is really waiting for you “up there”. In fact
they’re not expecting your arrival for six and a half more decades!’
The lightness and irreverent humour in my voice must have surprised him.
Maybe he expected me to panic and try to stop him from killing himself. Maybe
that is the reason he had called me in the first place—to get some dramatic
attention? After all, he was ending his life and wanted at least one onlooker.
Whatever he felt, my response seems to have deflated the pressurized balloon of
his mind, which I pictured was slowly coming back to earth.
He sounds a bit calmer now, says okay, he will throw away the cyanide. I ask
him how he’d got hold of it in the first place and he says, ‘Don’t you remember?
My father has a sports trophy workshop where cyanide is used to etch metal?’ I
tell him to be careful where he disposes it. A non-suicidal animal in the park
might ingest it by mistake and die. He actually laughs at that one and agrees to
come to Pune for a personal goodbye. Is that relief I hear in his voice, or am I
just imagining it? After all, it’s a seven-day respite from self-execution. One
more week to live!
I wish him a good night and get ready to slide into slumber land myself. It’s
been a long day. But Rahul with his pinch of cyanide keeps intruding into my
thoughts, not letting me sleep. I switch on my laptop and open up the case-
records’ files. There he is.
Rahul Bhatia.
Age: 22.
Resident of Nagpur.
Only son of a businessman.
I remember him now—a personable young man with a very slight stammering
problem. He’d attended three sessions during which he’d told me he was
constantly afraid of being laughed at because of the way he talked. His father
was another source of stress, pushing him into the family business.
As I read through his case history, I wonder if my gamble has worked. Could
he have been too far gone and dead already? Cyanide is known to be quick. I
imagine him lying frothing at the mouth in a dark Nagpur park. Unsettling
thoughts…can’t seem to switch them off. Having long passed the age for my
mother to sing me to sleep with a lullaby, I pick up the remote to switch the TV
on, hoping to catch a boring programme. That generally does the trick. Not this
time though. Channel-surfing, I pause on a popular news network to admire a
charming, sari-clad woman with a diamond-stud in her nose and Madhubala-lips.
The camera then moves to focus on the person she is conversing with. A
handsome, regal, middle-aged man, dressed in an unusual, maroon, knee length,
checked-tweed garment is talking in the calm and unhurried manner of someone
used to being listened to. Interested, I put the remote down and watch. The lady
is addressing him as Your Majesty. Then a bottom caption confirms that it is
indeed royalty I am listening to. His Royal Highness Jigme Singye Wangchuk,
King of Bhutan!
He is saying that not GNP (Gross National Product) but GNH (Gross National