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Thursday, June 12, 2008

The Wave

I would be lying if I said that the sky was overcast. I would also be lying if I said it was not. The palm-dotted island that fitted between my palms separated by a foot when we left the shore now looked life-size and very inviting. It was windy—the scented sea breeze slapped against our faces, billowed our shirts and made me grab my poorly tied veshti in alarm. The boat wasn’t rocking though, in spite of the near-manic wind, for the sea was calm and the boatman an expert at his job. The sun was a brilliant red ball set amidst white, pale ghosts of clouds on an indigo horizon. In the opposite direction, below threatening dark-grey clouds that we mistook to be receding, was the shore we’d left, speckled with human dots bathing in the frothy waves of grey-blue water and coconut-palm beyond on the ochre sand, some standing grotesquely crooked, all desperately trying to get their share of the sun.

I laughed happily, for no apparent reason. And he laughed too: Ramanatha—Rama for short—the boatman, my best friend, as he stroked the sea gently and cajoled it to stay placid and let us make our way through. Rama was tall and though endowed with strong arms and muscular thighs, quite lanky. His face was angled and neatly chiseled, like one of those Egyptian pictorial representations of humans: his nose was long and pointed and his eyes were like fishes—flattened and extended horizontally. They exuded confidence, and had a very calming effect on people around him. And it was my eyes that were his eyes to the world.

“And there”, Rama said, pointing to a deserted corner of the shore, far to my right, that had the waves lashing against rocks, “that’s where Vikram nearly died”
And we laughed again, swept by a wave of nostalgia.

Unsurprisingly, we were laughing when it happened too. I was ten. Vikram was nine. And Rama, my best friend now, was fourteen. The beach was our home then. Under a blazing sun and clear skies, clad only in under-wears for all but the last week of the two joyous months of our summer-break, we played amidst the rocks, with the waves. The game we played most often was simple, thrilling and horribly addictive: two of us would stand on the tallest of rocks, some ten feet tall and pointed and dark brown; the other would be below, a tennis-ball in hand. And he would throw the ball, and we took turns, us kids on the rock, to be Jonty Rhodes or Superman: we would fling ourselves in the air in the direction of the ball, catch it and then plunge into the water.

On that day, it was I who threw the ball. The one distinct image from that day is of Vikram standing atop the rock against a blameless blue sky, his wild-hair dancing in the wind, eyes firmly focussed on the rising ball. He crouched, as the ball began its descent and when he thought the time was right, flew from atop the rock in the direction of the ball. It was a perfect dive: as their trajectories met—the ball and the boy—he clasped his hand around it and broke into a broad smile. With arms raised in celebration, he went down, into the five-foot deep water. He didn’t emerge.
We were laughing, trying to guess from where he would resurface, sure that this was just another one of his stupid tricks.
The ball surfaced though, shining in the sun, sullen and alone, exactly at the spot where he’d vanished.
And that’s when we panicked.

Rama was swift—he too plunged from above and disappeared into the water. After a few very painful, tense moments, they both came into view—Rama, his face inscrutable, hauling an unconscious Vikram and swimming towards the shore. In five minutes, Vikram regained his consciousness. His eyes met mine.
“Hi!” I said, relieved and embarrassed at the same time.
He stared at me for a while, and then slowly turned his head, looked at Rama and smiled. Rama smiled back. An uneasy silence prevailed as we averted each others’ eyes, afraid to acknowledge the gravity of what had happened.
And then Vikram asked, looking beyond us, at the yellow, hazy, scorching tennis ball of a sun,
“Good catch, no?”
“Yes, excellent” I said.And we laughed and laughed until we could no longer do so; and we all lay exhausted, but content on the ochre sand, facing the blemish-free sky, hearing the waves lash against the rocks …

The skies had prematurely aged: graying suddenly everywhere, they grumbled and mumbled like a frustrated old man; the fiery, young sun disappeared without a trace. That was how it is here, in my land, along the coast during the monsoons—the Rain-Gods were always fooling us with their fickle minds and stupid tricks. No matter how long you stayed here, you could never tell.
“Bad timing” said Rama, scanning the skies.
“Yes” I said.“Maybe we should go back”
“Go back?” I asked looking around. We were just about the half-way mark, perhaps a little ahead: the trees on the island looked bigger than those on the shore.
“Yes. I know we’re closer to the island. But, it’s the wind—we’d be going against it”
“As you please” I said and relaxed. I smiled. I liked all this: a little bit of harmless adventure—in a dingy boat with thunder and a furious wind and a sea that was no longer calm for company. I knew it was harmless—this was a sturdy boat and in the safest hands along the coast. It also helped that the boatman was my best friend and would do anything for me.

Rama and I were once neighbours (that’s not saying much because, where we come from, everyone is everyone’s neighbour) We went to the same school—he was a couple of classes ahead; We played the same games—cricket, football, lagori; and we fell for the same girls; but we had very different career-paths. I went to the city, to study engineering. He did his graduation in Kannada literature from the degree-college nearby. He stayed back, teaching in the high-school, pursuing his masters simultaneously. I got a job in Infosys and only came back once a month with riveting tales of life in the city—of shiny, tinted-glass buildings, flyovers and traffic; of romantic coffee-houses and dance-clubs; of five-star hotels and roof-parties; of goddesses for women who, thankfully and unlike the gods, didn’t have any morals.

He listened to these tales, wide-eyed, and I knew with every journey back, little by little, our relationship was changing. We started off as equals. But, I knew so much more now, I had done and experienced so much more. He was quite like the proverbial frog in the well and he saw me as no longer an equal, but some revered figure who had chosen to fight the real-world and come out scarred, but very much on top; And I let that impression linger simply because I was only human and I liked all the veneration I evoked in his innocent mind; more and more of our conversations began to centre around me; my tales were getting increasingly exaggerated to the point that I was certain he hero-worshipped me. I loved that feeling.

The sea was getting pretty rough now. The wind pushed harder, the boat rocked more. But, with the wind behind us, we made swift progress. Rama began to whistle an old Kannada folk-song—a fast-paced, school-day celebration favourite—and I banged on the boat to keep the rhythm. And then, I stopped suddenly, spell-bound: the skies were cracked open by a streak of white magic; the sea, for a split-second, suddenly lit up; the boat shone and Rama momentarily acquired a divine-halo. And it rained.

He rowed faster now. I still felt no fear: we’d been through far worse before; and Rama’s calm eyes were very comforting. The rain left us both fully drenched; the wind that was seemingly changing its course, caused us to shudder; there was more lightning, more roars of thunder in the skies; Rama still whistled and rowed, at a furious pace now; and I pounded the boat like a madman, laughing aloud, soaking in the rain and the moment: I was loving it all. And we were nearly ashore.

And then, he suddenly stopped rowing. His face assumed an expression that I had rarely seen: the comforting calm in his eyes had vanished. He just stared past me, at the sea, paralyzed. I turned around, following his eyes, and a shout of uncontrolled panic escaped my mouth. Driving towards us at a ferocious pace was a wild monster-wave, with salty-froth for saliva. It was at least a fifty feet tall and a thousand feet wide. I couldn’t stop shouting. And it was barely a minute away. The wind was now against us; the shore was still a few hundred metres away.
‘Row, Rama, Row!’
I screamed staring at the colossal wave, but I didn’t know if he’d heard it for the wind was howling now, the rain pouring and the wave roaring. And that’s when I noticed that something was wrong: the boat was rocking badly, and we were making little progress, in fact I thought we were going in the opposite direction. Afraid to take my eyes off the wave, but forcing myself to do so, I turned around and screamed once again. He was gone. My friend, my boatman, the man who hero-worshipped me, had abandoned the boat and had chosen to swim back ashore. I was all alone. And the sea was just too rough for me to swim back to safety like my friend.

I grabbed the abandoned paddle, and turned around to face the wave once again. And I knew it was hopeless: I had barely thirty seconds left and a fair distance to row. The wind blew furiously, pushing me towards that wave. I threw the paddle away, and spread my arms out wide, and between streams of tears (or was it rain?), I stared at the wave and worked myself into a rage. I’d rather die an angry man than a depressed one, I mused.
‘The fool! ‘ I shouted to the dull-grey sky, to the rain, to the wave, to myself.
‘The moron, the bastard, the traitor. How could he do this to me?’

And then it came: the gigantic, tremendous, hungry wave—roaring in all its glory, even out-bellowing the thunder and the wind, as white as a dove’s breast, as angry as a stirred monster. And as I looked at it for the last time, I laughed. I laughed till I felt pain like I had never before felt; I laughed until strangely, like a premonition of sorts, I smelt antiseptic in the scented sea-breeze.

It took me six months to recover. I had acquired a limp that my doctor had said might just heal with time. There was also some problem with my spine: I don’t quite know what, but my back hurt every once in a while. It was summer, the rains had gone. I was admitted in a private hospital in the city and this was my first visit to my hometown since the wave had robbed me of my job, my life and my spirit. I was walking along the road that led to my house—a narrow, rocky path set amidst tall, straight, coconut trees on either side. Thorny shrubs, all a very rich-green courtesy four whole months of inexorable rainfall, were at the barks of those trees, as though protecting them from any harm.

And I saw Rama.

He was walking towards me, beaming, as usual the first to welcome me to my home. I saw through that fresh, welcoming smile right away: his eyes, those comforting fishes, were shaky and lost and were set above deep, dark pouches of what could only be terrible grief; he had lost a lot of weight, the muscles in his arms and thighs were all gone; and I sensed this air of immense guilt about him—it wasn’t anything in particular, perhaps he walked a little differently, or his back was more upright, or his smile just a little sad. And strangely, I felt neither anger nor pain at the sight of him—I felt sympathy—sympathy for what he had put himself through. I limped towards him, both my bags in tow, and I laughed aloud for the first time in months. He laughed too—a sincere, genuine laugh (his eyes told me that)—and he offered to carry my bags for me. I refused: it just didn’t seem right to ask him to do so. We walked along the path towards our home. And not too far ahead, between the clutter of tiled-houses and coconut trees, I saw the waves relentlessly pounding against the shore; and the sun, after a long and tiring journey across the horizon, melted into the sea—they were equals again, they were one.