Road Trippers

It’s been almost exactly 2 months since my birthday. And what have I got to show for those 60 days? Well, nothing much, I suppose, until you count the two road trips I’ve undertaken. So what’s so great about a couple of drives you might think? Well, nothing much, unless you count the distance—some 7000 km, done across just 20 days. Which translates into, hold your breath, some 350 km every day, with New Year’s and birthday celebrations thrown in for good measure.

So, what exactly did we do that had all our friends think we were crazy? Driving daily, a distance they normally drive in a week? Well, it depends on how you look at it. You could say driving all the way from Delhi to Goa to spend the New Year’s Eve on a crowded beach is painful, and then driving a car all the way to Bombay again, to be with your son on his birthday, is foolhardy. Especially when you’ve just turned 48!

Why did we do it? Is it because at that age one starts going potty in the head, and becomes completely oblivious to good sense? Or is it because as one advances in years, one become desperate to cram in quality time, especially when it concerns one’s children?

Yes, that was my reason for attempting the first of those trips. Saattvic coming home from Oxford for his winter break and wanting to hit the sunny beaches was certainly the foundation. But far more important was the chance to be together, all four of us, in a car. I reckoned that being thrown together for so many hours would create that much more togetherness, so what if some of those would be spent bickering and shouting at each other!

And, to be sure, that’s exactly what happened. The drive to Goa was warm enough, if you don’t count the couple of the early morning hours we spent getting out beyond Jaipur. And the condition of the roads on the Golden Quadrilateral was pleasantly illuminating, to say the least. But the camaraderie within the car was payment enough for the investment in stiff backs and necks. After a long time, it felt like a great family—just like the old days—non-stop yakking, eating, cursing at truckers who wouldn’t keep to their lanes and so on.

Goa itself was fifty-fifty, at its best if you consider the discovery of Palolem in the South, and its worst, counting the crowds gathered there from all over for the Season’s revelry. Add on the traffic-jams and an unbelievably crowded Baga beach on the 31st Dec, and I’d make that thirty-seventy! The only sad point: the heart-break at leaving behind Gautmik at Bombay on the return trip.

The genesis of the other trip was somewhat different. And the decision to embark upon it almost split-second once we decided to listen to our hearts and not our heads. For an 18th birthday deserves a special present, and that’s what we decided to give Gautmik, no matter if it sounded impossible. We drove his present to Bombay, where he’s studying and took him by surprise, completely. Leaving work, and driving over a 1000 km a day, heading straight for his college in town next morning were all worth it, if only to see his face when he saw us. And spending the entire day with him made it as special for us as, we hope it was, for him.

And now, after those two marathon driving trips if you ask me whether I’d do them again, ‘when I’m sixty-four’, I would emphatically nod and say yes: as long as my wife and sons are with me in a car—any car, on any road. After all, as the family joke goes, we were all truck drivers in our previous births!