End of the ride

On the front page of today's Indian Express was an article that I did not want to see. P.G. Tenzing - the cousin of our dear friend Dr. Chering Tenzing has died. Chering had told us before that PG was suffering from severe medical issues - and that he had almost died several times previously - but to see the obituary of someone you know on the front of a paper first thing in the morning is a shock.

P.G. Tenzing had made it big in the Indian Administrative service - rising up in the Kerala cadre and ably holding varied portfolios in Fishing, Transportation and Information Technology. After 20 years of work, he put in his papers and took to the road on a motorbike. Driving his trusty Enfield, he starting in Kerala and followed his whims - taking notes on the journey for a book he was going to write for Penguin. Chering told us about him when we visited her at the Nav Jivan Hospital in Jharkhand in 2007 - and told us that he may very well be coming our way too.

He did. We had a very brief encounter with P.G. in November of that year. He roared into Thane on his Enfield - spent a morning with us - and then roared on towards Gujarat. We merit a small vignette (page 201-202) in his book Don't Ask Any Old Bloke for Directions which came out 2 years later and which chronicled his 25,320 kms journey.

P.G.'s parting sentence about us was: "I have never prayed so much in such a short time. They were friends of my missionary sister and she'd wanted me to visit them. I did not regret the visit by I was overwhelmed by the praying."

It is so strange to think about Chering's cousin - a person who to me seemed almost larger-than-life - in the 'past tense.'

We meet so many people on this road of life. And then it ends. How fleeting our time is. How long the shadow of eternity looms.