Flash Fiction: A Bend in the River
Time is mysterious, and so are humans and the journeys they choose to embark on in life.
It was a pleasant Saturday morning. There was something light and uplifting about the air. The sun was up in the clear blue sky. As he was driving to the marketplace for some errand his wife sent him to do, mentally, he went over the list of things he had to do that day. After returning home, he had to take his ten-year-old son to his school soccer game, paint a window in the kitchen that he had been procrastinating, and then meet his friends and their families in the evening at a birthday party. Some of these friends were his childhood buddies. They had gone to the same schools, and after finishing college they found jobs in the same city.
He recalled that one of these friends recently complained about his father, who was insisting that he leave his job and join the family business. The friend thought he had no choice but to yield to his father’s wishes.
Why is it, he thought, that people believe they have no choice but to act in an expected manner? He has heard similar complaints from others as well. Of course, people have a choice! Right now, there was a choice between buying groceries and going back home—or deciding not to go back. At the next traffic light, instead of going straight for the store, he may turn left and not return home.
And so, when he reached the traffic light, just out of playful curiosity, he felt the urge to explore what would happen if he didn’t proceed to the store. He turned left and kept driving through the streets. Following his whims, he drove whichever way he pleased without caring that someone might be waiting for him at home. He wanted to see how far he could go on like this, resisting the inner command to return home. As he drove through the city aimlessly without any particular destination in mind, he reached the harbor area.
It was already close to two hours since he had made that unusual decision. He was sort of enjoying the excitement of the experience, though not without a tremor of anxiety at the back of his mind. For the first time in his life, somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind, he wasn’t sure of what he was doing. So far, he had been an obedient son, a diligent student, a good friend, a loving husband, and a caring father, doing exactly what was expected of him; believing that he knew what he was doing but never giving much thought to it.
The experience of making this unusual and unprecedented decision was exhilarating. Breaking a rule or an expectation produced a mild burst of energy, which generated an elevated sense of awareness that was new to him. In the interest of sustaining the experience, he thought of extending the experiment a bit longer, and left on a boat to an island a few hours away. Under the spell of that excitement, he walked around on the island and decided not to take the return boat.
The next morning, after spending the night at the terminal, he took a boat to yet another island. Although somewhere deep inside he was embarrassed to have left his family uninformed and wasn’t sure how he would face them upon returning home, his mind was still. The realization that it was the first decision of his life that he could actually call his own made him keen on exploring its consequences as much as possible. What was the worst thing that could happen? A vague sense of freedom, which came with excitement, spurred him forward in his adventure.
He kept switching from boat to boat and then to ships going to bigger ports and cities. Days changed to months, and months to years; how many years he did not keep count of. Through temporary, small jobs here and there, he earned enough to support himself, and then he moved on. Gradually the thoughts of family started to fade away. Often their faces would float in front of his eyes, and then disappear.
Continuous travel was beginning to affect his thinking.
One day, while watching a massive river gushing forth with big branches of trees and logs caught in the flow, it occurred to him that time too has the same effect on people. They are trapped in the flow of the immediate reality of time. Just like home, time too imprisons people. It throws them forward helpless. Since by now he had no plans for returning home in the foreseeable future, he decided not to care for time. Past, present and future lost their meaning. Life was one stretch of existence.
Before embarking on this unplanned, unexpected, and seemingly interminable trip, he only had a theoretical knowledge of different people living in different parts of the world, but now he came face-to-face with these diverse people and their cultures. He was seeing things through his own eyes. The lens of the culture which he acquired while growing up was now discarded; it seemed too narrow and blinkered for looking at the world. His mind was now expanding. He felt free. The standards of right and wrong were changing. What he would accept earlier unquestioningly was now open to interrogation and deliberation. At the same time, life for him was becoming a big affirmation, a big Yes.
And so, the journey—external and internal—continued.
One morning, while finishing breakfast in a modest roadside cafe, his eyes fell on the calendar hanging on the wall. It was more than seven years since he left home. Momentarily, the mind flashed back to the family, but the heart had no urge to go back, no desire to see them, and no remorse either. Time had washed away all that was once part of his life. No longer was he fit for that world; he knew that!
Jaidev Dasgupta has been a scientist and an entrepreneur. He writes on Indian culture, history and philosophy. He authored the book In Search of Immortality: An Introduction to Indic World-Views (New Delhi, India: Manohar, 2015)
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