Barapani Diary 

My job as an air traffic controller needs me to be posted at small and very small practically non-existent airports for a certain duration of time. In year 2011, one such posting led me to Barapani, an airport around forty kilometres away from Shillong. An entirely different world where from around thousand arrival departures at Delhi airport there was a lone flight to control, that too the flight played truant and missed our airport many days! In the place where my toddler grew up amidst nature, I read, wrote, introspected, reflected, and missed my husband at times!

Check out all episodes of Barapani Diary – https://www.storyberrys.com/category/series/barapani-diary/

Till next time! (Part 11)

15th May 2012. The verdict is out. I wait impatiently for the attachment to download, the order I have longed for, transfer order to Delhi. Happiness, joy at the expected news coming to a notch earlier, phone calls to a husband who is unreachable as usual (being away watching IPL on that night switching off mobile), parents, in-laws. Guess my mother-in-law was the happiest of all, which mother in law would love to see her daughter-in-law pack her bags and kid off to a far-flung place and ‘leave’ her son’ alone’ ( alone in the city of Delhi!!) for a year for the sake of a job, whatever the job might be.

Waves of joy coupled with a tinge of loss for leaving the place and a feeling of not being able to deliver, deliver what the place deserved. It may sound redundant and philosophical after the transfer order but then this one year apart from loving the hills and clouds, mourning for Delhi, my husband, planning for leave, suffering bouts of illnesses, and blogging at random, what did I do!! Strange question! I did discharge my duties and did what I was supposed to do. I would have done the same in Delhi too, do what I am supposed to do. Then, just an excuse to sigh and get philosophical, my husband would have quipped at once, ‘Getting all sad and melancholy is kind of your hobby, pack up your bags and rush off from that place.

I am going to do the same. Pack my bags and flee. Yet I know I have not been honest or not been able, to be honest to these hills I claim to love, to the girls who work so hard. Yet I know the seat I hold in my office, the salary and the respect it draws I should have been able to do a lot more than just what I am supposed to do. Apart from getting aircraft safely on the ground from my tiny tower, indulging in office gossip, imparting a few English lessons to a part-time plumber, being sympathetic to local young office girls, being the ‘ Agony Aunt’ to my young Malayali colleague, sometimes the protective elder sister making her life a bit smooth in this alien land there is hardly anything worthwhile I did…

The hills are now green, rains have started not the incessant ones ( global warming and all) but one shower almost every day, and while the rest of India burns in the sweltering heat Barapani whisks off the raindrops from her body with a brush of her clouds. This is bliss… cool breeze in the evening and the invariable chill in the wee hours of the morning. The brush of green has painted the landscape in all shades, youth at its best, beauty radiating from the hills just enough for a long breath to escape, the hills did not get their due nor its people from ages, wanderlust travellers being beckoned, enchanted, loved and then they move on leaving these hills for greener pastures.

I would go back soon very soon, doing little for this place, little for the hills, nothing for its people. I would forget this land as a fling, a passing phase and this land would bid me adieu with her open arms, would welcome other wanderers, other souls trapped in this exile, love them, caress them and send them back happily after a year.

Barapani Diary coming to an end… a tale of our discoveries, me discovering Barapani and Barapani discovering me. A few more pages, fewer readers..!

Soma Bhattacharjee