The suitcase had been sitting open on his bed for two days.
It was his mother’s suitcase, an old brown thing with brass clasps and a handle that had been repaired twice.
She had pulled it out of the storage cupboard on Wednesday morning and wiped it down with a damp cloth and declared it perfectly suitable for international travel.
Bishal had not argued.
The suitcase was not the battle he wanted to fight.
The battle he wanted to fight was over what went inside it.
His mother had compiled three lists.
The first list was practical: clothes, shoes, toiletries, documents.
The second list was medical: painkillers, bandages, antiseptic cream, a small bottle of eucalyptus oil that she insisted would cure everything from headaches to homesickness.
The third list was food.
This list was longer than the other two combined.
“Amma.”
“What?”
“There are baggage limits.”
She did not look up from her folding.
“Then take fewer trousers.”
“That’s not how baggage limits work.”
“You can buy trousers in Portugal.
You cannot buy proper pickle.”
This was difficult to argue with.
Not because it was true, but because his mother had decided it was true, and his mother’s decisions about food were final.
He watched her fold a steel container of lemon pickle into a corner of the suitcase with the care of someone handling archaeological artifacts.
“The spices,” she said.
“Did you pack the spices?”
“You packed them.”
“Where?”
“In the side pocket.”
“The red packet or the blue packet?”
“Both.”
She nodded, satisfied.
The spices were important.
She had spent an entire afternoon measuring out small quantities of chilli powder and turmeric and garam masala into plastic bags, labelling each one in her careful handwriting.
The labels were in Kannada, which would be of limited use in Portugal, but that was not the point.
The labels were not for Portuguese customs officials.
The labels were a message from his mother to him, a small piece of home wrapped in plastic.
His father appeared in the doorway.
He had been at work all morning and was still wearing his office shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
He looked at the suitcase and then at Bishal and then back at the suitcase.
“You will need warmer clothes.”
“I know.”
“Portugal is colder than here.”
“I know.”
“Not cold like Delhi in winter.
Different cold.
Atlantic cold.”
His mother stopped folding.
“How do you know what Atlantic cold feels like?”
His father did not answer this question.
Instead he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small bundle of notes, folded once, held together with a rubber band.
He placed it on the desk beside the passport.
“Emergency money.
Keep it separate from your wallet.”
Bishal looked at the bundle.
“How much?”
“Enough.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“If you need it, you will be glad it is there.
If you do not need it, the amount does not matter.”
This was his father’s logic, which was not like other people’s logic but had its own internal consistency.
Bishal picked up the bundle and felt the weight of it.
The notes were used, soft at the edges, the kind of money that had been saved slowly over time rather than withdrawn from a bank in a single transaction.
He slipped it into the inside pocket of his backpack and did not count it.
He left for training after lunch, because the routine had to continue even when nothing was routine anymore.
The bus was half empty.
He sat near a window and watched the familiar streets pass and tried to memorise them.
The tea stall near the junction.
The paan shop with its row of glass jars.
The temple with the peeling white paint.
He had seen these things a thousand times without seeing them at all.
Now he was seeing them because he was leaving.
The dressing room was already filling when he arrived.
The usual noise, the usual chaos, boots and shirts and arguments about nothing in particular.
But there was something different underneath it.
The same difference that came before every departure, before every player who moved on or retired or simply stopped coming.
A slight shift in the way people looked at you.
As though they were already beginning to remember you rather than see you.
“Europe,” said one of the senior players, shaking his head.
“This boy is going to Europe.”
“Portugal,” someone else corrected.
“Same thing.”
“It is a different country.”
“It is in Europe.
Europe is Europe.”
The argument that followed was entirely pointless and deeply enjoyable, the kind of argument footballers had been having since footballers existed.
Bishal sat in his usual spot and laced his boots and listened.
The older player who had bet him fifty rupees that he would be back within a month came over and sat beside him.
His name was Ramesh.
He had been at the club for eight years and had seen a dozen players come and go, most of them to nothing in particular.
“So,” Ramesh said.
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.”
“You scared?”
“Terrified.”
Ramesh laughed.
“Good.
If you weren’t scared, I’d be worried.
Means you’re not stupid.” He slapped Bishal’s knee and stood up.
“Come back the same, alright?
Don’t become fancy.
Don’t start speaking with an accent.”
“I promise nothing.”
“At least promise the accent thing.”
“I promise the accent thing.”
Training passed quickly.
The drills were the same drills they had always done, the pitch was the same pitch, the sun was the same sun coming through the same haze.
But Bishal found himself paying attention differently.
Noting the way the grass felt under his boots, the sound of the coach’s whistle, the particular rhythm of his teammates’ movements.
Collecting details the way his mother collected spices.
Preserving them for later.
The coach pulled him aside afterward.
They stood near the touchline while the other players drifted toward the changing rooms.
The coach was not a man given to speeches, but he had something to say now and he took his time saying it.
“You are one of the few,” he said. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
Bishal waited.
“Indian players who go to Europe.
There are not many.
Some go and come back quickly.
Some go and stay.” He paused.
“You have a chance to stay.
Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“You will need to do things differently there.
Train differently.
Think differently.
But you have something most young players do not have.” He tapped the side of his head.
“You think before you run.
Keep doing that.
Do not let them make you forget it.”
The coach held out his hand.
Bishal took it.
The handshake lasted a moment longer than usual.
“Don’t waste it,” the coach said.
That evening he went to Sohini’s house.
The streets were darkening by the time he reached her neighbourhood.
The lamps had come on, orange pools of light at intervals along the road.
A few children were still playing cricket near the corner, their voices carrying through the warm evening air.
The same children who played there every evening.
The same game.
Coach Bhatt opened the door.
“Bishu.” His face broke into the particular smile of a man who was always pleased to see you and slightly suspicious of your intentions at the same time.
“Come in, come in.
Sohini is upstairs.
She has been reorganising her bookshelf for an hour, which means she is nervous about something.”
“I heard that,” Sohini’s voice called from somewhere above.
“You were meant to.”
Sohini’s room was exactly as Bishal remembered it.
Books everywhere.
Stacks on the desk, stacks on the floor, a small avalanche near the window that looked as though it had been in progress for several weeks and might continue for several more.
A whiteboard covered in equations.
A laptop with a CERN sticker on the lid.
The window open to let in the evening air.
She was sitting at her desk with a book in her hands, but she closed it when he came in and turned to face him.
She was wearing a simple kurta, blue, the one she always wore when she was working late and wanted to be comfortable.
Her glasses were pushed up into her hair.
“So,” she said.
“So.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.”
She nodded once and stood up.
“Come outside.
It’s too hot in here.”
The balcony was small, barely large enough for two people to stand side by side.
Below them, the street was quiet.
The cricket game had ended.
The children had gone home.
Somewhere in the distance, a pressure cooker whistled and went silent.
Sohini leaned her arms on the railing.
“Are you going to give me the speech about how you’ll call every week and write emails and never forget about the people back home?”
“I was planning to, yes.”
“Good.
I wanted to make sure you had one prepared.”
“I’ve been practising.”
“It needs work.”
They stood in silence for a moment.
A neighbour’s television flickered through a window across the street.
Someone was watching the news.
The same news that was always on, the same headlines that would continue appearing after he was gone.
“You’re actually going,” Sohini said quietly.
“I’m actually going.”
“I knew you would.
From the beginning, when you told me about the scout.
I knew you would find a way.” She turned to look at him.
“That doesn’t make it easier.”
“No.”
“But it makes it right.”
She went back inside and returned a moment later carrying something.
A book, thick and slightly worn at the corners.
She handed it to him.
Bishal looked at the cover.
A Portuguese phrasebook.
The kind meant for tourists, with pronunciation guides and useful phrases and small illustrations of everyday situations.
“I marked a few pages,” she said.
He opened it.
The first page had a bookmark tucked inside it, a thin strip of card with something written in her handwriting.
Four words.
*Go find out.*
He looked up at her.
“It’s not a motivational quote,” she said quickly.
“It’s an instruction.”
“I know.”
“Good.
As long as we’re clear.”
Bishal closed the book and held it against his chest.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.
You haven’t tried to learn Portuguese.
It’s apparently very difficult.
The verbs are unreasonable.”
“I’ll manage.”
“You’ll try.”
“I’ll try.”
She smiled.
It was a small smile, the genuine kind, the one she didn’t use very often.
“That’s all anyone can ask, Bishu.”
He stayed for another hour.
They talked about nothing important.
Her research.
His training.
The weather in Portugal, which neither of them knew anything about but both had opinions on.
Her father appeared once with tea and a plate of biscuits and a knowing look that he directed at both of them equally before retreating downstairs.
When Bishal finally stood to leave, Sohini walked him to the door.
“Call me,” she said.
“Not just when you arrive.
After training.
After matches.
When you’re lonely.
“I will.”
“Promise.”
“I promise.”
She nodded, satisfied.
Then she reached out and touched his arm briefly, the way she did when she wanted to say something and didn’t have the words for it.
“Go find out,” she said.
He walked home through the dark streets with the phrasebook in his hand and the bookmark inside it and the weight of the day settling around his shoulders.
The flat was quiet when he got back.
His father was reading the newspaper in his chair.
His mother was in the kitchen, wiping down counters that were already clean.
The suitcase stood by the door, packed and ready, the brass clasps gleaming under the hallway light.
He sat with them for a while.
The television was on but nobody was watching it.
His father turned the pages of the newspaper without reading them.
His mother kept finding small things to do in the kitchen, small unnecessary tasks that kept her hands busy and her face turned away from the room.
Nobody said anything important.
There was nothing important left to say.
Everything that needed saying had already been said, in the prayers and the numbers and the emergency money and the phrasebook and the hundred small gestures that added up to love.
The morning arrived faster than it should have.
His mother was already in the kitchen when he woke, the smell of fresh dosa drifting through the flat.
She had made his favourite breakfast, the one she only made on special occasions.
He ate as much as he could and pretended not to notice that she was watching every bite.
His father checked the documents one final time.
Passport.
Visa.
Flight confirmation.
Emergency money.
He went through each item with the thoroughness of a military inspection and then nodded once and handed them back.
“Good,” he said.
The drive to the airport took forty minutes.
His father drove.
His mother sat in the front seat with her hands folded in her lap.
Bishal sat in the back with his backpack on the seat beside him.
Bengaluru passed outside the windows.
The same streets.
The same shops.
The same temples and tea stalls and children waiting for buses.
A city that was already beginning to feel like a memory.
At the airport, the chaos was exactly as it always was.
Families clustered around trolleys piled with luggage.
Taxi drivers argued with passengers about fares.
A security guard shouted at someone for parking in the wrong place.
The noise and the heat and the sheer overwhelming press of people.
Bishal had been through this airport a dozen times for away matches, but this time was different.
This time he was not coming back in a few days.
The check in queue moved slowly.
His mother stood beside him the entire time, her hand resting lightly on his arm as though she was afraid he might disappear if she let go.
His father stood slightly apart, watching the departure board with the expression of a man who was memorising information he did not actually need.
When the check in was complete and the boarding pass was in his hand, there was nothing left to do but say goodbye.
His mother hugged him first.
She held on for a long time, her face pressed against his shoulder, and when she finally stepped back her eyes were wet and her voice was steady.
“Call when you land.”
“I will.”
“Every day.”
“Every day.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
She nodded and stepped away and let his father take her place.
His father extended his hand.
Bishal took it, then pulled his father into a brief embrace.
The older man stiffened slightly, then relaxed, then patted Bishal’s back twice and stepped away.
“Remember why you went,” his father said.
“I will.”
“Good.”
That was all.
His father turned and walked toward the exit, his mother beside him, her hand now resting on his arm.
They did not look back.
Bishal watched them until they disappeared through the doors and then he picked up his backpack and walked toward security.
The queue moved slowly.
He had time to stand and think and look around at the other travellers.
Students with oversized suitcases.
Businessmen with laptop bags.
Families with children who were either crying or running in circles.
Everyone going somewhere.
Everyone leaving something behind.
When he reached the front of the queue and handed over his boarding pass, the security officer glanced at it and then at him.
“Portugal,” the officer said.
“Yes.”
“Long way.”
“Yes.”
The officer stamped the boarding pass and handed it back.
“Good luck.”
Bishal walked through the metal detector and into the departure lounge.
The shops and cafés stretched out before him, bright and busy and completely ordinary.
He found his gate and sat down near a window overlooking the tarmac.
The plane was already there.
A large white aircraft with blue lettering along the side.
Ground crew moved around it with purpose, loading luggage, checking equipment, doing the thousand small tasks required to send a plane across the world.
Bishal reached into his backpack and pulled out the phrasebook.
The cover was slightly bent from being carried around.
He opened it to the first page, where the bookmark rested against the paper.
*Go find out.*
He closed the book and held it in his hands.
The boarding announcement came a few minutes later.
He stood and joined the queue and waited his turn.
When he reached the gate agent, she scanned his boarding pass and smiled and waved him through.
He walked down the jet bridge and into the plane and found his seat.
Window seat, just as the travel agent had promised.
He put his backpack under the seat in front of him and fastened his seatbelt and looked out the window at the tarmac and the terminal beyond it.
Bengaluru.
Home.
His parents.
His teammates.
His coach.
Sohini.
Everything he had ever known was on the other side of that glass.
The engines started.
The cabin crew began their safety demonstration.
The plane pushed back from the gate and began its slow taxi toward the runway.
Bishal looked out the window one last time.
Then he sat back in his seat and closed his eyes.
The first life had been defined by the road he didn’t take.
This life would be defined by the one he was on.
The plane lifted off and turned west.