The Road Without a Driver: A Passenger's Nightmare

Author’s Note:

There are places we reach because someone we love knows the way. When they are gone, the road remains, but the certainty doesn’t.

I don't remember the road that leads to a particular destination. As someone who takes the seat of a passenger, my only job is to sit back and pass the time it takes to reach from source to destination.

That being said, I take immense pleasure in giving my absolute surrender to the hands of my father, who takes the wheel to get me to the destination we both shared. It is always at the destination of TTPS, where my father served, and the source is Puri. Yet not once did I bother to memorise the road. I remember only a few landmarks, a few habitual stoppages where we would pause along the way. Nothing more. The rest of the journey was spent in the comfort of being driven.

The reason I am being so elaborate is that I don't remember whether it is after the passing of my father or before, but I used to have a very particular nightmare. Kind of a recurring one.

Every so often, I would have this nightmare. It is nighttime, and I'm on the road, on a motorbike, and my destination is TTPS. I have never known what my source was. But I would always find myself in the middle of the road, far equally away from both the source and destination.

I was stranded on that road, alone, and unaware of which way to go or which turn to take. But the most terrifying part was that I would not even know how to ride the bike with a physical condition as challenging as it is. Scared and panicked, I would only fret sitting on the engine of the bike, like I used to sit as a kid, hoping for someone to spot on the road, but there was no passerby to whom I could turn for help or to ask for a lift. Also, the setting of my nightmare is always at night, past midnight, to be more precise. 

I have never finished the dream as I would always wake myself up when I reach the extreme of panicking, a point where I could endure it no longer. It's been quite some months since I had the dream, but I still don't understand why I used to have this nightmare in particular for so long.

Nevertheless, I still don’t remember the road to TTPS. I only remember the feeling of being taken there by my father. The safety and security I felt whenever I was on the go with my father is something I could never justifiably explain. Maybe that is enough. Maybe some destinations are not meant to be memorised — only shared.