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.