As we stepped out of Bagdogra airport, the cold breeze reminded me that the mountains were close by. This would usually excite me, but this time there was a strange knot lurking in my chest. I had decided to be here, but suddenly I was unsure about this decision.

This was my first visit to Darjeeling, but this was not how I wanted it to be.

We met our taxi driver, loaded our luggage and tried to get comfortable inside the car as we knew it was a 3-hour long drive ahead of us. As soon as the winding roads began, I instinctively glued my eyes to the road. The views kept changing, from first glimpse of tea estates to tall mountain trees, but the same questions were revolving in my head – Why was he taken away so soon? Wasn’t he too young for it?

We were an unexpected bunch of friends travelling together, as this wasn’t a trip we had planned.

“When was the last time you were here?”, I asked my friend who was sitting next to me. He thought for a moment before saying it had been almost a decade. He’d come with the boys back then. P was with them. After that, they kept talking about coming back. It never quite worked out. And then he smiled and said that now somehow, P had managed to do it in his own way. I returned to looking at the road.

The car climbed steadily, and inside it our breathing was careful and measured. But we still spoke a lot about life and its randomness, maybe that was our way to keep our mind engaged. Only when we reached our breakfast spot did I realise that my nausea that usually troubles me as soon as I hit the mountain roads, had quietly taken a back seat in this journey.

The temperatures had dropped, so we added more to our existing layers of clothes before ordering a pot of Darjeeling tea. The restaurant had glass walls, revealing a vast valley below us, breathtaking in a way that we momentarily forgot why we were there.

The freshness of the tea leaves, grown locally, seeped deeply in hot water, made me notice its taste. Few sips of it felt refreshing against my warm coastal skin unaccustomed to the cold. Since we all had barely slept the previous night, the tea brought in a brief, familiar comfort.

One friend got a call, and we were told to join the cavalry of cars going up the mountain. So, we paid the bill and left some cups of tea behind.

The narrow mountain roads made us unwillingly slow down. I peeked out of the window, in between the line of cars was one decorated funeral van. That’s where our friend P was, inside the van, in a casket, sandwiched between all the cars that had the people he loved.

Suddenly, I remembered the phone call from the day before, my friend in between sobs told me P had passed. The car ahead of us made it real in a way the call never could.

People had lined up the road to pay their last respects, they were talking in grim, hushed tones. As we passed those people, I thought he must have meant something to all of them, the lives he had unknowingly touched with his presence.

The drive continued for a while, we got glimpses of Mt. Kanchenjunga at a distance. I was happy to see her, standing tall, calm and pristine. She stood with a stillness I wished I could reach out and take a handful of it for myself. Mountains always make me happy, I wanted to stop for a while, but we kept moving.

Then we entered the city area. The famous toy train moved right next to us on a narrow track, seeing it for the first time, felt oddly exciting. It looked right out of a storybook with happy faces looking out of the windows. My hand instinctively reached for the phone, but I stopped midway.  

We reached our destination. There were family, friends, acquaintances and strangers. There were hugs, comforting shoulders, and holding hands. There were prayers, chants, loud cries, sniffles, and hushed voices. Everything was merging into one another. Voices rose, broke down, and steadied again. I stood there, listening, letting it all wash over me.

The memory of the last time we met kept coming back strongly. It was an impromptu plan as P was in town. Bunch of us who could manage our schedules met and laughed our way into the night. The room was brimming with love and stories. As I was leaving, I told P that I wanted a photo with him, I don’t know what prompted me to do that. The photo turned out beautiful, but now I can’t get myself to look at it. Our hearts were full as we said goodbye to each other that night. But now we were heartbroken that we had to say goodbye to him as he lay there peacefully in a casket.

The night chill was on us when we started walking back to the hotel. The street was filled with lights, noise and tourists. The shopkeepers were busy making money, the tourists looked happy, maybe they had come for a short break. A few hundred metres away people were mourning and here Darjeeling moved through the evening as it always does.  

We stopped to have coffee. Our exhausted bodies needed it. We huddled around a table, shared some fond memories of how we all met almost two decades ago, where we are today, and some in-betweens. Sweetness and sadness quietly lingered around the table. My friend suggested that we should click a group picture. I said this wasn’t a picture we wanted to have. She reminded me that P had brought us all together here in Darjeeling, and we should click a picture just to remember that.

So, we stood together near the coffee table, posed for a photo, smiled in a way when you force yourself to, but it doesn’t quiet reach the eyes.