The Fall of a Hero

It was one of those dark rainy evenings when you were fighting the road and trying to reach your destination on time so that your hungry children could have their dinner on time.

I had started very early in the morning to Sambalpur and Hirakud with my wife and two kids on a road trip to experience the natural beauty of our state. Spending time with children witnessing their sibling rivalry and remembering yours and realising how similar in spirit and yet so dissimilar in shape these events are with that of yours. As nature's canvas opened up through the windscreen of our car, the kids realised how many things they needed to know about and with that came thousands of questions. It was a rewarding experience.

By the time we started our return leg, my eldest daughter of fifteen years had forgotten the initial sadness of not having her friend come with us, opined that this was perhaps the best family outing she had ever had and what she learnt from this trip would be useful in doing her project for the School Science Exhibition. You feel good in spite of the pain you have undertaken.

Tired of driving for the last 16 hours, we crossed Badkera, just before Angul around 8.30 pm., quite aware that we were almost one and a half hours away from Dhenkanal and dinner at Dhenkanal would take one more hour; I was visualising reaching home well past midnight. I was in two minds about whether to continue my journey to Bhubaneswar or stop at Dhenkanal for the night. My confidence in doing close to 22 hours of driving on this kind of road was slowly waning.

The road scene slowly changed. From our solitary car tearing through into the darkness of the night to slowing down to the parked truck-lined roads in front of roadside hotels that had just started serving their customers early dinner in total darkness. Absolutely dark  - with few oncoming trucks and vehicles blinding you, you train and squint your tired eyes to see beyond the glistening water drops on your windshield to ensure that you don’t ram into the back of a parked truck whose driver hadn’t bothered to leave the hazard lights blinking.

Just ahead, you see the road suddenly getting wider and with no trees on the side, you are at a loss to assess the width of the road. You spot a row of trucks parked on the left of the road distinguishable only from their backlight and try to avoid brushing against them by maintaining a sufficient gap from them. As you move ahead you see a mound of broken and abandoned concrete structure and avoid that by steering further to your right. The oncoming small vehicles and median to your left make you realise that what you are standing on is the abandoned toll gate at the entrance of the Angul Township which you had crossed this morning and you are on the wrong lane with one brave auto auguring his solitary head beam into your car.

A few seconds of eye-ball-to-eye-ball later I regained my composure to realised that I was on the wrong side and needed to correct my course. Lost, whether to make it to the next available cut in the median and take a left turn or back off, I waived the driver to move to the side. The auto pulls up by the side of my right window to tell me something. I lowered my window to realise that the autowallah was ferrying some 5-6 people, mostly young men with their women folk back to their village and they were returning to after enjoying some fair at Angul- high in spirit.

The visibly angry autowallah with the air of a local community leader chose to castigate me by telling me in an admonishing tone why I couldn’t see the road and warned me that had I proceeded further, the police would have penalised me for the lapse. I told him that because of the dark night, I couldn’t see the road suddenly dividing into two and there were no road signs warning me of that. Suddenly the young, barely out of his teen passenger sitting at the back of the auto spotted my glasses perched on my head and snapped with a sarcastic tone ‘How will you see the road if you keep the glass above your head’ to this his newly wedded wife and other co passengers burst out into peals of laughter.

This language can’t capture the sarcasm and disrespect the sentence packed. Completely flustered and choosing not to react to this unprovoked abuse by a young fellow, I chose to reverse.

About ten minutes into the road I heard the sobbing tone of my son saying ‘Baje Loka’ meaning a bad person; my teenage daughter joined in in an equally disturbed tone and said had there been that so-and-s0 uncle he would have given this man two tight slaps. And I suddenly found myself drawn into the discussion even though I neither wanted my kids to witness the abuse meted out to me nor wanted to discuss it further. I reasoned what can we do if they are ill-mannered? We shouldn’t go down to their level and fight with them on the road? To that my son says but Papa he is so much younger than you. Why did he misbehave with you?

I could sense that their childhood hero had fallen before their eyes. The false sense of security and pride that my perceived invincibility had given them for years lay shattered on the ground and they are standing bare and shaken in that wet dark night. Shaken with disbelief as to how could their Papa instead of pulverizing a minor street loafer like a film hero, choose to take the indignity and walk away. They created a wall of silence between me and them, nursing their bruised and battered ego, all on their own. And we drove on. While driving, my mind was in turmoil -whether I did the right thing by leaving the place or I should not have let my children down.

Wish I could tell them that it's always not wise to jump at every challenge and provocation we face every day, sacrificing the larger goals of life – even if we are right. Couldn’t ask them that, would they have liked to see their papa mouthing the same bad words that hurt them and rolling on the road fighting loafers? What would have happened if this argument had led to a bigger fight involving many bystanders? What if someone had tried to hurt all of us in the car – just not me?

The kids had gone to sleep by then and moreover, I already had lost the right to explain being a fallen hero.