Short Story: A Final Journey

This short story by Kokum Mukul follows a group of men stranded with a broken-down hearse on a rural highway, and explores mortality, prejudice, and the uneasy intersections of faith, masculinity, and grace.

ANTIM YATRA VAAHAN—perfectly kerned, solid, red bold letters read against the fading white tin-shaped frame of this hearse minibus. The cars on the National Highway were racing past as a matter of routine. The leftmost lane remained reserved for two-wheelers, chatty drivers on endless phone calls, and slow- moving vehicles such as this minibus. At sixty-odd kilometres per hour, on a National Highway where the average speed clocked at eighty-per-hour-and-above, this ‘Final Journey Vehicle’ was rather slow but determined. The highway road bent archlike to the right. Ashok, the driver of this minibus, spotted the road-sign: ‘Toll 500m ahead’. But Ashok was a man of the world, matured by the streets. He knew all the shortcuts across this route like the back of his hand. He knew that this nuisance of a toll could be easily avoided. A quick left turn through a slightly broken patch of road by the sugarcane farms, and the minibus would be on its way to the other side of the tollbooth in no time. Ahead in the tollbooth, Ashok could see countless cars lined up in all lanes. He took the turn promptly. The minibus hit a low puddle on the road and a steady snore abruptly stopped in a mumbling gurgle.