Word: Away
Word courtesy: A kind Substacker from my community who sent me this word. I think they meant it simply. But for me, it triggered a sweet treasure.
The story I have with it:
Some words do not need context. They just land and take you somewhere immediately.
Away took me straight to when I was a plump five-year-old.
My father worked with Vostok, a Russian publishing house that had set up branches across India. As their sales and area manager for West Bengal, he was required to travel. Establishing the distribution channels for the company in the deeper pockets of Bengal and other states. Which meant he would be away on short work trips.
But the problem was that I had built an entire cosmos around him, and he was my quizmaster, my encyclopedia, my bedtime jukebox, my personal masseur after a particularly exhausting day of doing nothing useful, my storyteller. I had no shame about any of this. I performed my possessiveness in front of guests, relatives, neighbours, and strangers who happened to be nearby. He honoured it, which only encouraged me further.
But something shifted in this universe whenever he started packing his bag for the work trips. Looking back now, I think it was psychological deprivation dressed up in a five-year-old's confusion.
Incidentally, his travel plans were never for a long duration at a stretch. At most seven or eight days. But it felt like a longer spell, as if he was away for months.
Ma, wisely, had a system in place for these few days. The moment he left, I was immediately made busy with a hundred things. Competition participations. Relative visits. Activities that ran from morning until I was too exhausted to feel anything by night. The idea being that a sufficiently tired child would simply fall asleep instead of lying awake calculating how many days remained.
It mostly worked.
But the most beautiful part of those away days was my nightly phone calls with Baba.
Every evening, before my bedtime, he would call on the landline. And I would file my daily incident log sheet.
“While you were away, mama dressed me as Santa Claus, and I won an award in the go-as-you-like competition in our locality”.
“I did not cry today. I was strong and I am waiting for you to come back”.
“Grandfather’s younger brother visited us. He brought my favourite sweet, but I only had one piece because I had already brushed my teeth”.
He listened to all of the details appreciatively. Every single evening.
And then there was the other report.
The one that, even now, makes me laugh and ache in equal measure.
I had a problem with bed soiling until I was about six. The doctor had suggestions. My mother had frustrations. Nighttime accidents were met with stern words even at that hour, which, if you think about it, is not the most comforting thing to wake up to.
But my father never made it a moment of shame. He simply took care of it. Quietly. Without theatrics.
So naturally, when he was away, my subconscious took matters into its own hands.
And every night, without fail, I would end my daily report with the most earnest update of all.
“Baba, I did not soil the bed last night”.
Delivered with the pride of someone announcing a personal milestone. Which, for a five-year-old, it absolutely was.
He never laughed at me.
He always said he was proud.
And perhaps that is the thing about away that I understand now, which I could not then.
Distance does not always create absence.
Sometimes, across a crackling landline, it creates the clearest kind of closeness.
The kind where a five-year-old learns, without being taught, that being loved means someone is always waiting to hear even the smallest, most embarrassing truth of your day.