I had been walking for an hour; my feet had turned sore, almost numbed, as they landed with dull practice on the undulating sand beneath them. I hadn’t really turned around to look for a while. There wasn’t much point. There would be little sense in doing that and then end up wincing at the thought of having to walk back again meaninglessly. There wasn’t much point in fact in looking in any direction, any direction except down with your chin sticking into your throat, eyes aimlessly following indiscernible grey dunes as they whizzed by under our giant, aimless feet. The wind followed us with impiety, conjuring sharp gusts from no certain direction, slicing the neck with unseen shrapnel, over and over again. I didn’t dare risk looking up now because the sun hadn’t come up. And till the sun tore through some part of this grey sheath around me I didn’t want to look at the unending nothingness around me. It wasn’t meaningless though, as a sluggish friend to my right, I think, said. Just that it lacked direction, ascertainable and exhaustive. They grey sky above seemed to be pressing down upon the bleak flatness upon which we mooched. Unashamed, the hardened sterility beneath us slithered everywhere and no matter where we went, how many steps we took, the unending grey scales seemed to coil further under our feet, the whole expanse throbbing silently. No direction.
I took photos to pass my time. The beach was a good occasion to wield about with a camera I had thought. But I hadn’t used it since I had packed it in back at the hostel. I realised on the bus, where I had the desire to click away at the blur hurtling past my window, that it would be a while since someone would eventually muster up the desire to use such ungainly equipment. So doubly bent I must’ve been to take that instrument, that I had packed it in the first thing. Over that, two small piles of clothing, a towel, few fresh underwear, a brown hop bag, some weed, a glass bong and a badly wrapped soap. As usual, it wasn’t neatly done so when I had once opened the bag I figured that the soap bar was on the loose somewhere. Thoroughly unimpressed by the circumstances, we had decided to let the matter rest in the cubbyhole till we landed ourselves a bunk. The blur hurtling past soon turned to a parade of concrete enterprise boards as we made our way through districts and I forgot about the beautiful colours sinking softly into each other; there impervious canvases rendered faceless and vague. I forgot about the need I had had to keep that image with me. It would probably come back in a while and even otherwise, it was probably best in its fleeting conjecture. One way or another, my mind forgot about it and moved on, trapped within the inertia of the travelling body. But later at the hotel by the strange beach, I had taken a late night shower and while arranging my bath found the camera cuddled with the soap. What were the chances of that; I had been flustered and even wronged then. Slightly ashamed though that kind of shame is difficult to describe, a sort of futile shame that one knows, by practice, will come and leave, never disturbing the conscious balance of my immediate needs and desires. An animalistic shame, devoid of further moral consequence, I liked it. And sure enough, the shame dissolved with the soap. Later, I imagined it was quite obvious really and rather dull headed, I usually accepted such things at the first instance. In this case, it was an intuitive thought when I was packing the soap which I had naturally paid no heed to. So why bother now? At least not now; I would probably use it tomorrow then, if it works, I reasoned. I ate at the balcony of the hotel room. The beach was just across a line of coconut trees and as it were, I felt that night that the beach slowly pulling away. Sucking a little of this and that from that night that we had. We sat for while, in groups, in the little balcony, smoking, drinking and clicking away at the slow night as it pulled away from us, ready to crash behind the horizon somewhere, just like the receding sea. Later, when our minds surrendered to the vacuum and the alcohol, we passed out for the day.
Taking pictures of a grey beach on the Bengal Coast under the dull prenatal sky was not a great idea. But it did help pass a lot of time. There was no variance in what the viewfinder displayed. The grey tone fell with equal monotony on the lens, the only active distinction in the tone arriving midway where the horizon must’ve been, between the silhouette of the absent sea’s neat bed and the stubbed sky. In some ways it looked like the picture could’ve been taken anywhere. Many days later when I had reviewed the pictures, not remembering where exactly I had taken them, most had seemed like those accidental pictures which could’ve been shot as easily under the sheets on a rainy day in the bedroom. Everything was out of focus, the camera too had lost its sense of direction and with it, that of familiarity. The presumption of familiarity, or rather lack of it, made the both of us rather disinterested in trying to chisel things out clearly here. We were in the company of weary skies, the camera and me. It was too early in the morning and too late into the hangover to be thinking clearly. I amused myself with the digital display once in a while though. But every time my mind came around to settle on something mildly amusing my feet would start regretting ever being there and my stomach would force itself upon my mind- telling me that it wanted nothing and would refuse even the air. What a presuming device! This stomach of mine; when in fact I wanted nothing as much as to forget the tizzy I had left it in, it bothered me continuously, persisting till I finally prodded around my throat.
Finally, after another unreasonable half hour or so, we were exhausted as a collective and finally decided that we should stop and wait right there for the sea to come to us, which would take approximately a few hours. The truth was that the dawn was breaking then and we hadn’t yet found the supposedly inward bound waters, they seemed to appear and disappear at the edge of our vision, waves bouncing off transparent embankments, but we never did get close enough. Finally it was reckoned that maybe the sea had begun to recede earlier than we had expected and that we should all just settle down right there and wait rather expectantly. We sat through dawn and saw the sun finally emerged from somewhere, which we instantly marked as east to our short-lived elation. It was stunning. I admitted. It seemed to tear and burn its way out through the sea, wherever it was between us and the sun, vaporising the red waves as they rose up. The grey tint that engulfed us had been flooded with fiery spirits. As I sat there, the wraithlike reflections drew further up and revolved around me frantically everywhere I looked. The sun climbed out eventually and settled for a sluggish ascent from thereon. Finally we took pictures that were discernible and some of them came out rather well. These couldn’t be taken under sheets. Mostly, when we were completely unaware of how exactly to make the camera do what we wanted it to do; the nuances of photography came out quite brilliantly.
But soon it became very hot as the sky continued to press down upon us in the company of the impressive sun. I thought I would doze off waiting for the sea to claw back to us. I thought the sea wouldn’t make it; there was that possibility in this kind of heat. Everything could naturally give up here, it would be of Darwinian consequence- further pushing the wheel of survival and churning out the remains. I thought of the empty bottles of water lying around us, left behind by strayed tourists, perhaps just like us, only with the sense to carry water; and then of all the water around us; innocent, inviting my parched throat and even a grumpy stomach, guising the invisible salt. I thought of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner and I might’ve thought then that I would pass out instead of dozing away, which would be worse. I don’t remember the next five hours. Neither do the others. Some of them don’t remember the entire day. We must’ve all crashed right there, in that spot in the middle of nowhere- that we had chosen rather reasonably but without any apparent reason to build upon the entire day; it made perfect sense even though none of us remember it now and feel confounded in retrospect, as always. A string of completely real choices under very real circumstances had led us to a place which we couldn’t place ever if we had walked five minutes away from it. I had thought so when I woke up and it made my head feel dizzy with completely unnecessary wondering. After staring briefly into the painfully bright turquoise screen that hung over our flaying forehead I looked away and shut my eyes. I remember the Albatross and the wooden ship moving effortlessly, for some wicked reason I’m sure, toward me, ploughing efficiently through the grey sand. I remember the pirates who gave us rum instead of the water which we gulped rather easily. I remember the misplaced euphoria of lies and intoxication. I remember this and an hour later, when I finally woke up, breathing in water through my parched mouth and nostrils, I remember drowning rather foolishly in my own sleep, in four inches of water.
The salty taste on my tongue came to mind and I rushed to my waking rescue. As I found my feet I realised I had turned over sometime and slept on my face and that the slithering water must’ve rushed up my nose. The sea was coming, finally and how unexpectedly? I had a stupid feeling of being unceasingly undermined by nature that day, for quite a while at least. I woke the others up and we smoked a few cigarettes until someone rolled a joint. We smoked, following the water as it slithered past the tiny dunes. The water ran past our toes, crashing between them. Felt oddly placated; but not quite as ticklish as a few years back on another beach; the feeling perhaps compounded by the first pleasures of childhood back then. The sea felt cool nonetheless, Way cooler than the stiff morning breeze and the solar conclave that engaged us incessantly ever since dawn. Slowly greater volumes, from the sea, cascaded across the landscape effortlessly, pushed on by an invisible force that grew steadily in strength. It was slightly frightening but mostly I was awed. The fact that with such casual detail the earth was able to wash over our plans, avert them and at least render them miserable humbled me. With such grace the water displayed its conquests every day here, in the middle of nowhere where nobody really noticed; conquests over every enterprise and thought that one could conjure up. What a shame, I thought, how was one expected to take note of such display and the days ahead? In law school, or in the streets or in offices or schools or apartments or supermarkets or cars or roads or street lights or parishes, how? Someday, I thought, we would all wake up to the taste of salty water, as surprised as I had been, even in expectation. And maybe then, with nothing around us except a large, flat and seemingly monotonous canvas, we would perceive the falsity of our unequal hopes and forgotten needs, whatever they would be.
Later that day, as the evening set in and our wallowing throats gave way to dry silence as we slowly ran out of things to talk about, we decided to head back. It was a strange combination, the inner desiccation and the salty moisture on our skin, wrapped around us. My teeth were chattering dry. We had watched the water rise up and noticed that it did so rather rapidly. About fifteen minutes into a light, cannabis propelled, trip we decided to make a hasty retreat. Most of us lost our footwear to the waves and the bag that we were carrying was dripping wet. We had waded about for a bit, slightly euphoric, urging each other on and wrestling waves and all that came along with them. The moon seemed to be waiting to surprise us as we turned to head back. It bounced off the still waters in the distance, nearer to the coast and lit up tiny shards of water sleeping between the dunes, undisturbed until our gaze fell upon them. I had managed to salvage the camera and tried to capture the sight, but to no avail. I wondered if I would remember seeing this. I lamented that the human eye had incorrectly been of greater potential than my camera, which at that moment, I did not need. I’d imagined forgetting in a few weeks. It reflected more than anything else, on my poor memory I reasoned. My mind seemed to take these moments rather impressively upon itself but it had somehow inculcated an attitude towards my memory that was similar to my attitude towards laundry. In a way, I was thankful. Otherwise I could’ve badgered myself with vivid nostalgia, something I have regretted mostly, especially since I can remember myself as an emotional adolescent in the days when my splendid memory played truant. This state was ideal as long as it didn’t take away from what I felt right then, the anticipation of being inebriated by a sight that I might find myself surprisingly interested in. It had the makings of a perfectly real yet unmistakeably uncertain and therefore not mind-numbing possibility, each time.
As we walked past the many quiet moons beneath us we realised that the sun had disappeared without notice. We had missed the sunset, even after being warned that it happens quite regularly to tourists here, who lose themselves in the rapture of timelessness. Such had been intimated to us by the resort manager, or representative, as he liked to present himself, in dark green overalls. And when I remembered this, along with my own dismissive thoughts back then, yet another wave of shame washed over me, even as many crashed relentlessly- eager to wet me, wet us, pull us back perhaps. The shore came to us rather quickly. I don’t remember feeling tired or even expectant as we arrived rather soon compared to the morning ordeal which might’ve gone on for days if time had mattered. Dim bulbs lit up the shore here and there, the light offering nothing under them, except yellow sand around which it wrapped itself. The resort was unnaturally empty; we were the only ones staying, perhaps in the entire region. This extended a helping hand to the silently roaring surrealism that we had our backs to, for now, as it receded only to pull whatever remained of reality along with it. And as our caretaker handed us another bottle of ‘whisky-scotch’ with a tired smile, the cold vacuum was already building up, readying itself for another night of smashed perception.
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