Shore Traveler

I go to watch the sun set. I go to the seashore. The sun sets in the water and for no particular reason at all, I'm cheered up. I don't become happy, ecstatic, mind you; I'm just cheered up from a dark gloom.


They say angels collect on the beach to watch the sun set and listen to the music that accompanies the setting.

I reach just in time. I race to the shore. I taste the salt in the air. I smell the salt all around. I feel the wind in my hair. I look around for a quiet spot in the dry sand. All I can see are mere mortals being inconsiderate like always, being nosy and noisy. I tear away from the lot of them and drift to a corner of the beach. I sit there and stare at the sinking star.


I close my ears to all the mechanic humdrum and open them to the sound of the birds, trees (palms), wind and waves. I try to catch the music that the angels must be listening to, but I don't. And I don't see any of them either. I stare at the disappearing sun, nothing else is in focus. My eyes start hurting but I don't shut them. There's no other mortal doing this; the sun let's me know this.

The sun has long gone down. The sky is still beautiful. And half an hour later, dark bands form on the horizon. People begin to leave. I persist. I remain. I have no better place to be. A cool wind sets his fingers in my hair, ruffling it. The waves turn dark, only the foam is visible, a haunting frothy white.

I lay down in the sand. I feel the sand cling all over my hands and neck and hair. The stars are faint but they are slowly coming closer. I'm not acquainted with the constellations but I can spot Orion, thanks to his belt. So I lie there looking up at Orion becoming more and more visible. And somewhere else there's a brighter star and there there's a tiny red one and over there there's a small blue one. All of 'em in their places, shining, twinkling, winking at me from so far away. Just the thought that they had to shine and twinkle and wink so many yester nights or yester years ago, so that I would see them tonight, fills me with appreciation. I'm still lying down in the sand. I shut my eyes and I have a beautiful movie playing in my head. I'm listening to a beautiful soundtrack at the moment. I taste the salt in the air and can smell it on my body now. I'm all by myself and I suddenly want to talk or listen to you. I want so much to do this. But all I hear are the waves and all I see is the night sky.

I get up, dust whatever sand I can, off me, and walk away, meaning to get off the beach. But, before I've gone twenty steps, I come across this poor young woman. She looks so sad, so tired, so pretty. She's dressed in an old green sari with a short purple choli and her eyes are gray, her skin appears pale orangish. In her swollen belly lies her unborn child. She's walking slowly on her bare feet. And she's selling cigarettes.

I tread back through the fields of sand. And I sit down again. It's not cold and I'm not even feeling cold, and by the way, it is very rare for me to feel cold, but I sense that I'm shivering. The cigarette in my left hand, between my thumb and forefinger, is lit. But I'm not smoking, not yet, at least.

The smoke bites my throat. The nicotine plunges deep. A bitterness pinches my tongue. And a sigh leaves my shivering body. I exhale by blowing out too quickly. I begin to hate myself. I hold the cigarette in my lips and play with the sand, picking up the sand in fistfuls and letting it drain away. I don't want to use my hands to hold the cigarette. I sip at the cigarette, I keep it between my lips and hold it by biting the filter, as I let the smoke leak away. I watch the air carry away the smoke and I watch the sand, falling from my hands, try to imitate the fumes. I light another cigarette with the first one and continue to play with the sand. I repeat this yet again. And I'm thinking about nothing and no one in particular. And I want to smoke some more but I had bought only three cheap cigarettes.

I get up to look for that woman and I run along trying to find her. I follow her path but I can't see her. I'm finding it hard to move in the sand, because it's dark and my pants are falling, my sandals are loose and I'm not feeling like doing anything anymore. I just want to get off this beach. I want to get home and bathe. The sand is all over me and its sticky and irritating. And all my running about in the sand has left me sweating.

I'm on my way back home. I'm sitting in a rickshaw. The idiot of a driver has installed this blue bulb in his guddee (vehicle) and so I'm bathed in this blue luminescence. And if that's not enough, to make things worse, he's playing some inane Bollywood music remixes at loud volume. Never before have I been in such a shady rick, I tell you. I feel so depressed; I don't even tell the driver to shut his crappy music system. I just sit there blue as ever, trying to shut everything about me. I cannot smell the salt anymore. Instead I smell the nicotine and tar. I can still taste it on my tongue and feel it in my throat. The odor of the fags clings to my teeth and to my fingertips. I just want to go home, come home and wrap myself up in you.


I'm at my doorstep. I turn the key and push open my door. I look around. But you're not back yet. Tomorrow, I'll go to church, maybe. Maybe this time, I'll find the right angels there. The angels who will help you get home.

Run

I was at the beach the other day, when I felt like breaking into a run, ... yes breaking, ... yes into a run, ... yes , yes, dear reader, you're reading quite correctly. Such a thing is indeed possible. And it is quite the normal with me, for often times, I'm overcome by the feeling, nay the necessity, of making a dash of it, or rather a dash for it, and expelling the demons that cling to the pores of my hideous hide, of freeing myself from their clutches and raking loose from suffering their tiring ordeal.

I could run like the wind. Run far and long and strong. A local Forrest Gump, may be.

Running is a lot like a tryst with the wind!

Flashback to mornings in 1988, just before the school-bell tolled the start of another academic-infested day. A young lad in the chapel, before burning candles and saints, praying.

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Amongst aiding poor people, and my parents and my grandparents and hungry children, I'd slip in a humble, "Help me run fast" amongst other 'vainities'.











Sometimes, for a few fleeting moments, as I go trotting along, I find that this is (really) my planet, in much the same way, the little prince has a planet and a flower. I had a flower once too, but alas ...

There is such a thing as walking on air, if only for a few seconds at a time. But then, an eternity resides, quite comfortably, in every second.

All photos; photo credit: Jo

the beach house

We'd sit for hours on the patio facing the sunset, until dusk disappeared silently and night came hobbling-on, as if on a bent stick, the sky turning from blue to darker shades of blue to purple and then finally to black with starry holes to break the continuity. Sometimes we'd sip at our rum and these times our silence was less incisive, less unholy, less sticky and more easy.

It might seem nonsensical, but you can tell about the relationship between a couple by the manner in which they share silence.

There were always more sunsets than there were sunrises. "Each sunset is unique", I said to her merrily, in between sips of warm strong rum, as that star Raa, about 8 light-minutes away dipped steadily below into a watery grave, even as coconut palms dueled with the wind (trying in vain to protect their nuts), even as a toddler tried hopelessly to kick a football into the receding tide, even as the waves splashed about dreamily tirelessly in boredom, even as the saline air salted the pores of our skins and settled in our hair, in our noses and in our eyes. She did not reply, she did not even give hint that she heard me. So, I repeated myself "Every sunset is unique!" She replied simply by sighing exasperatedly, then shifted forward in her bamboo chair and looked even more pointedly, at Raa, then a scruffy wet dog, the waves, the football, and again at Raa, in precisely that order[, yes precisely & deliberately].

Our conversations were never like this, they were beautiful, fresh, lush, blossoming, words sprouted and grew, ideas thrived as we discussed them, and there was all this: daily gossip and events and happenings and debates and arguments and jokes (oh how she loved my stupid jokes) and word games and bits and bites of foreign languages (Francaise and Deutsch) and Indian languages (Bengalee and Gujerati), all flitted about from mouths to ears' like noisy chattering twittering agile birds. The beach house was our planet our home our haven our retreat our corner our world, ours, and an extension of our 'us'.

But somewhere along the way, we got broken. And things, names, places were ne'er the same again. Silence loudly fell upon the house, and we were, as if, consumed by it, cocooned in it's moth-like powdery white invisible wings. Ugly retarded tentacles of words grew from our oral orifices and just suddenly fell to decay en route. Our audible universe was under the BIG shrink, under collapse. Outside, the world turned and thrashed about oblivious to our falling-a p a r t.

Egos and Pride, even the Old Monk could not drown. We grew sour, bitter and the beach salted us - preserved us in that dreadful unappetizing pickle. Sometimes the yellow of the sunset would trickle into me, and I would feel the stirrings of mirth in a small locked chamber of my heart. And I would feel compelled to try and break the ice - thick as glaciers - between us, and if not break it at least to chip away at it. So, I repeated, again, for the third time, "Every sunset is unique, no?" and then I laughed, stupidly and chokingly, even shocking myself in the bargain, and continued, "unique like you only"

To which, she cracked up too, o wonderful, beautiful world. Laughter bursting forth from her like bubbles, getting all mixed up with the waves, making them wave back merrily, soaring into the salty skies making 'em stars shine brighter some of them fall into her eyes in return, making the beach house - natkati mansion by name, echo with the radiance of its once forgotten name.