Goa day.

I wonder why I fight everything I end up loving. The first time I entered the sea, I hated it.. every moment I was in it, I kept comparing it to the coolness of the lakes.. calling it salty, turbulent, unkind and all that. Seriously, the first beach I visited after my childhood was last year.. February in Vizag. It was edged with rocks and so turbulent that I could never float with ease in it. The salt would just get into my eyes and I’d start beeping it. Lol.. even through all the complaints.. I was there in it.. playing in it all by myself.. musing.. beeping.. whatever.. and when it was the time for lunch and we went to the shore for a little while.. I remember opening a book.. and listening to the waves and the breeze sometimes I’d look up and see the afternoon sun shining on the sea.. and then I’d have to forcibly pull myself into the book.. a little while of that.. and I got restless.. it was irritating.. I finished reading the book and didn’t remember a single word of what it said.. all I remember of it were the waves..
Then I went to it.. slowly.. I didn’t want to get my dress wet again or my body salty.. I’d have to take a shower again.. and I was irritated.. but I kept walking to the sea.. and I kept my brows knotted and walked to the sea still grumbling.. wishing it were a cool happy lake or something.. all that heated sand in the afternoon was scorching my feet.. and the first step into the water… sigh.. I remember that moment like one frozen in a camera.. I was wearing black and black.. and leaned a little and watched the sun on the sea for a long long time.. and then finally I sat down on the edge with legs spread out.. as every wave went.. there was emptiness.. and as every wave came there was a cool happiness.. and the whole process of the waves was… mm… I don’t know.. fun? Sublime? Something in between...
And then there were more seas in the following days.. they were lovely.. they looked good.. I felt glorious standing there… but then.. some things just touch you more.
And then I went to Goa. This December for a 15 day holiday… Sighhhh… beaches and beaches and more beaches…. Days and days of walking through them.. sailing on them.. and swimming in them right in between.. just as if you were one of those dolphins. And so many so many pictures in my mind.. but I know even now, which of them will never fade.
Here is an anecdote of my best day in Goa,
I woke up early in the morning and went to brush my teeth.. by early in the morning it was around 4.30 or 5 and it was all still very dark.. brushing brushing going on… there were a few people around me talking some phony stuff.. and I was bored and turned my head to find some constellation.. to be exact, Cassiopeia as it was the only one I knew.. and then Voila! Shooting star.. It just went by.. I am an atheist, but if was not one, I would have said later that everything happens for a reason. Still being an atheist is better, all that cynism and dubeity of imaginary stuff add peach and flouroscent highlights to the awe of natural wonders. Hahha, Ces't la vie! isn't it? Life is unfair. But if you care to work for it and explore it and learn to love it.. it is more than fair.. it is beautiful. In all it’s chaos and destructive forces.. all the people it takes away.. life is just like the sea.. flowing.. in patterns too big to be understood or maybe it is patternless.. eitherway.. it is even more beautiful because of it’s complications and the huge scope for hope. It doesn’t fling a star fish to the shore because it’s bad or good.. it does so.. simply.. just the way we came.. simply.. for no purpose. Why should there be one? Well, no.. I’m not talking all this stuff about luck and life in awe of the shooting star.. rather in awe of the shooting star along with the glorious day that followed.
Big word, glory.. if you told me the same on the morning of trek.. I would’ve thought I was going to get kissed by a Xeno. Well.. a foreigner.. you see, I’m big on blue eyes and boys with guitars who travel.. lol.. no, nothing remarkably cool happened that day…
I was one of the first when we started.. I walked in the water.. and I walked, and I walked.. dozens and dozens of starfishes and everything.. shells.. water.. more water.. stylu (my brother’s friend) who came to the trek with me.. went ahead.. and then more people went ahead and then more people went ahead.. and I was walking in the water… thinking of nothing.. something about the morning Goan sun warmed my head up.. and things were just slipping one against the other too light and unimportant to be caught or cohered in my mind.. it was just buzzing lazily with nothing in it.. and after a while I stopped feeling my feet or the sand.. sometimes when I cared, I would notice the disturbance my legs created in the water and sometimes I tried hard to mentally remember some little mollusc peeping from the shell or digging itself into the sand.. the starfishes I jumped at crazy and stuck everywhere literally bored me now with their dull green blue and grayish backs and those creamy undersides with tentacles.. they were just so many and so similar.. they were slipping off my mind.. and if I looked at the sea.. the sea too was similar… there would be a wave now and then.. and it would make a little soft purring noise in between and end up like a hiss.. wherever went the roars, god knows.. after a while of walking, I realized I was nowhere.. people ahead of me were far ahead.. people behind were far behind… I knew who passed by me.. but I didn’t know who were behind me.. naturally, I assumed I was the last, and then I wanted to care about being the last, I wanted to push myself to go meet someone.. but I just didn’t.. I was walking at the normal pace with eyelids heavy.. fuck, I couldn’t stay awake.. I couldn’t remember a single song then.. and if I could recollect a word of two.. I didn’t have the motivation to try to remember the tune.. well, nothing is in tune with such an afternoon.. except for maybe labourers beating theirs huge hammers on those iron rods Tung! Space. Tung! Space. Tung! With the sun shining on their tanned backs and those muscles glittering in it. And there was no song for such a scene. Atleast, I knew none. So I went on.. sleepy but not sleeping. Appreciating the sea and the waves and the clear empty sky, just the way I’d appreciate the labourers muscles, but after a while.. things seem like a lazy sweet dream.. the monotony of It keeps shifting from monotonous to musical a moment precious and a moment lethargic.. and the worriless, even paced quality of the rhythm cools you. The heat blocks all the senses including happiness. It just gives you darkness and dreams. And I went on with an empty head.. not understanding or trying to understand or capture or enjoy anything. Just like a lazy yawn or a slow wave.. in my own criss cross even rhythm.. and there were people now… I had no idea when they caught up with me or if I went forward and caught up with them.. but then I started talking.. then there was some unimportant talk.. and then I’d slip into the sleepy rhythm.. inbetween there were some more words.. and some more walk.. and there was the sound of the sea.. now and again there was a tiny wisp of a breeze and I’d close my eyes and go on with it.. then, I’d hear the sea and go into sleep.. I walked on.. slowly things went hazy and I fell asleep.. I walked on.. with some weird corner of my consciousness trying to fall asleep and stay awake at the same time.. the rest of it was all asleep.. and then I walked more on.. it was such a weird walk coz I’d walk diagonally to my right so much that my friend would wake me up.. or give me a slow tug.. and I’d walk again in another stupid direction.. it kinda tripled the distance.. and everytime he gave me a tug on the hand.. or he’d talk to someone else.. I was hearing and feeling it not taking anything.. but now and then when he’d say my name, I’d wake up a little in my sleep, though I was still too lazy to open my eyes.. and drift again into it..
And then we met Stylu.. mm.. or I realized that we met him.. I guess we took some swims and came back.. played a little Frisbee or catches in the sea.. or maybe it was afterwards.. but there were times when we were energised and weird enough I remember the non energetic mode much better than the energetic modes during that phase.. we still walked on and we saw Vicky.. sleeping by the shade of a boat.. we all went and slept there too. And then the battery charging process ended.. We went for a swim or something a little while later.. and then CLUNG CLUNG CLUNG… full on consciousness.. and I started not noticing things.. it’s weird isn’t it.. as the consciousness develops and happiness is bursting in you.. the pretty things you notice around you seem to go smaller and the pretty things you notice in you gets bigger.. you eventually forget it.. but then it feels nice to feel happy, alive and active. When you feel so, you become a part of the picture, a happy picture. But when you’re closing your eyes, or when you’re sad, you notice every little detail around with a magnified consciousness, you become an audience of the picture an admirer of it’s beauty or you fear it. Every little mollusc movement can depress you for an unknown reason.. probably it’s a sadness that you could not belong to it. Or that you forget how to laugh for a little while and you go introvert mode for nothing that happens around you. Well, well, lucky enough.. I didn’t go introvert mode at all that day. It was just Garfield mode… a mode which goes like why stand when you can sit, why sit when you can sleep, so I didn’t bother opening my eyes.
Anyway, after a swim, I don’t remember when it happened.. but I was walking with Stylu in the sea trying to remember the lyrics of the song Fireflies by Owl City. We were both trying pretty hard.. and then I got the line.. “planet earth turns slooowly”.. it was the only line I could remember and it wasn’t enough to trigger Stylu’s memory so I kept trying.. he kept trying and we started asking people who went past us.. oh finally, we came to know that Todo had it in his phone and we played.. I remember hearing it for the first time as he played.. the music went off.. the lyrics simply dawned on me like some much awaited sunrise.. every word would come and behind it I’d be repeating it thinking.. Shucks I knew it! I knew it!! One would think after listening to it with so much attention I’d remember the song then.. Hell, I was so busy going after the words that except for the line I already knew about planet earth moving slowly, the rest of the words each struck me as individual entities.. and each of their meaning I knew without worrying about the coherence or the order of the words in the sentences… I heard the song.. and I had a picture for every word of it.. but by the end of it when I tried to sing it again… I went blank. And then Stylu told me the words.. and I wrote them in the sand.. and then I took a picture of it and I remember.. singing it with him together.. I remember he jumped from one place to another in the sand and came to the place where I was writing the lyrics… and he started singing and I joined in my inaudible little voice.. and I remember it with the picture of the sand. I looked up and saw that his face was tanned and his eyes were brown and his mass of hair all dry. I noticed how funny he looked in his shorts and the woodland shoes and his trademark walk.. which looked like he was a little lamb sprightly and ready to jump from one place to another but held to the earth by the weight of those shoes. Seriously, his walk always remind me of it.. like he’s ready to go running around if not for the shoes. Like a kite’s rope tied to a rock.
I also remember him teaching me a tougue twister.. before or after the fireflies.. and it just went into my head like a tune.. he told me it was a German movie title… not so famous a movie.. but I’d like to see it someday.. thanks to the very interesting title.. and I kept hopping and jumping in the water rhyming the tongue twister to my steps in the water.. and somehow he’d fit in too.
I remember, me him and mm.. someone else, or was it just me and him.. we were running backwards, holding our hands.. and we were all laughing… and there was the sun in our face and sea at our feet.. I had flowers in my hair, wind flowing by and I was telling thank you life, thank you inside. I was happy I wasn’t alone in this trek.. happy that I had friends who could give me that moment. And if everything went wrong in the trek.. everything except that moment, I would’ve yearned to go to Goa again next year.
Going back to the chronological order, we woke up.. and we walked.. and we sang fireflies.. joking about the camp leader and old men in our group.. well, well, a litte while later.. again went for a swim.. Vicky didn’t get in, he was with the life guard talking.. we had our fun.. we came back.. I was wistfully thinking about all the benefits guys have.. and we were blabbering some nonsense when Vicky told us that he saw dolphins nearby.. he thought we saw them too.. it seems they were quite close.. my eyes went big.. and we started looking at the sea trying to find dolphins.. a few steps, and a few steps more.. and EUREKA! VOILA! OH MY OH MY MY OH MY GOD! I saw my first dolphin fin sticking out.. and then there were more fins, more and more fins… an entire school of them.. like some 6 or 7 I guess… or maybe more… no idea.. we threw our bags and went into the water. There was a dolphin so close.. it looked like it was headed our way, it looked like it was coming to meet us. I remember, for a couple of seconds it felt like my stomach was bottomless.. I felt cold, a little afraid, what if the dolphin snout came up right at my feet.. and I remember bending my head and getting lost in the shadows in the water.. Hallelujah.. I recovered and looked at the horizon again.. and then I saw this dolphin a pale gray one.. take a leap towards us.. it was so clear.. and so slow in movement like the world stopped.. like you cannot tell after wards if it lasted a moment or a day or for seasons at a stretch.. I remember feeling tears in my eyes.. and I remember telling myself to be strong… I remember so much that now as I write it, my breath is going short like I’m going to cry again.. Breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, breathing out… now, I saw it, and if it was the ground instead of the sea I would have got onto my knees and put my head to my ground. But it was the sea, and I didn’t know what to do suddenly, something was just welling up in me and I saw the people around.. they were alright but then I saw Stylu’s face.. I’ll tell you this much, I have no idea what he thought or what he felt, but his face was just as beautiful as the dolphin then.. I didn’t know whether to see him or to see the sea and that happens very rarely. I scream and use big words for all little pretty things. But when that something beautiful really comes across you, you have nothing to say. To tell you, he had brown eyes.. his face was all happy.. and he was like looking and moving his hands and legs a little like he’s gotta do something.. like the happiness is giving him energy to pour forth and he doesn’t know what to do with it. He was happy then. Touched or not, god knows, but then he was happy. And I saw a glimpse of my happiness in him. Obviously, as it is mine, I feel like I was much happier.. but even the glimpse of my happiness in him was like.. how to say.. like finding a best friend.. or a love.. or someone who spoke your language in a foreign land you’ve been lost in for years… he was gorgeous and he didn’t have a single clue how much.
Throughout the trek I tailed him, and every time I saw his eyes, or I’d see him happy. It felt like my dolphin was in him. Like he was my dolphin. He mattered. Not as a friend, or a crush or a pet or a habit. He felt like my dolphin. I didn’t know that I felt like it till I started writing this. I just knew that I feel for him. Now I know what. Not that I’m gonna feed him fishes now that it dawned upon me or anything. But seriously, during my entire snorkelling session, I was thinking, so this is what a dolphin’s world looks like.. this is what the pale grey dolphin must be seeing everyday.. do you think that fish is edible? And so on.. and through the trek, many times I told myself, what would Stylu see this as? What does he see the sky as? What does he see in a trek? How shallow is his thought? And how deep and in what areas? In everything he made, or did or collected I was trying to see him in it. Something that is him. In the broken pieces his patience and impatience and innovation and his unnameable qualities.. I mean, you can’t name the thousands of variations and different qualities in Stylu.. and it was fun. He wouldn’t get it. Or maybe he would. Or maybe he would but he wouldn’t, because he’d say out that all this is too complicated for him. Or he’d tell himself inside.. why the unnecessary trouble or trying to understand it? I don’t know. I have never been able to predict people.. I haven’t even tried it consciously.. I just like to look at them.. the way I look at the sea.. I like listening to him.. the way I’d listen to the waves.. and there are a lot of times when I’d not get what was he thinking when he told me this.. and it would drown out being taken over by something more interesting at the moment. Either way, I followed two things during my trek, I heard two things, maybe I was a little more partial to the sea. Ohk… I loved the sea, but Stylu comes next.. huge gap in between.. but hey, to like a person enough to bring him in the same para as a naturally beautiful and interesting object.. you’d have to be interested in him like zillions and zillion loads.
The best part is, I followed the sea in complete consciousness, I followed Stylu just like that. I never asked myself why I was following him till I returned. Or if I was a disturbance to his privacy or any such questions. He was always in the corner of my eye, he was my trekking mate.. and I followed him. I didn’t ask him any questions as to what he was thinking or anything, anytime, atleast not that I can remember, but now that I’m here in my room and I look back. I wonder at how I can remember every little brown speck of his eyeball, so well that I can draw it any moment now, only thing is that I’d never find a colour sooo.. mm.. soo.. his brown.

Oh we reached the campsite, dolphin site was very close to it. We went in… I had 5 aloo bondas.. Stylu had 6.. or I had 6 and he had 7.. I remember being jealous of him having one extra.. and then I drowned some mugs of welcome drink and ran back to the beach to get another swim. Lol.. by this time the whole team was there near by and I wished just for a few seconds that no dolphin should come to the shore. I wanted to guard the moment jealously. Our doc then became a jelly boy, hah.. he got a jelly fish sting.. and for us all too there was a tiny itching which then developed into stronger itching.. and we scratched and played.. scrathed and floated.. itching reduced.. so we scratched lesser and swam.. and it was all wonderful till we got tired and went to the shore… I remember walking on the part wet golden sand trying to catch the water shadows by placing my feet a little firmly on the ground.. I believe when I do that, the water gets a little squeezed out and runs in.. forming a grayish shade replaced by a little whitish shade.. and as you lift your feet.. it rushes back making the whitish shade greyish.. and it is quite entertaining to watch it as you walk fast.. the shades run across the sand in response to your step. Hahha… and then back to camp, washed up.. and back to the beach again to see the sun sink.. I was standing there.. the guys were sitting in the sand a little behind me.. and then I was staring at it.. the sun went in stage after stage.. and I saw it go in with the little blue border just above the hoziron of the sky.. you see.. it didn’t look like the sun was drowning in the sea.. it looked more like the sun was fading into the colour.. like.. inbetween the sun and the sea, as it faded there was a bluish haze.. and then it was over. I felt I don’t know what.. but I wanted to go where no one I knew could see me.. so I ran.. not far.. not fast.. but a little away.. I found a little boat parked and it had a nice white flag and I sat there holding it. Some phony old man in our trekking group didn’t know what I was doing and alerted the guys apparently, so they came running after.. either way.. I was there.. and Todo was clicking photos of me as Stylu was picking shells. I say, the best shells of our trek… I wonder how he always gets them. But it’s good that he gets them as they end up in my collection.. but then wouldn’t it have been better if I got them all by myself. Ces’t la vie! Life is unfair… or maybe I just should put my glasses on during treks. And we were taking pictures of the shells and then we were jumping.. this way.. that way.. Todo, Vicky, me and Stylu. We met with aunty and uncle.. took some snaps with them.. and all.. and went in for dinner.. my battery was already on a flicker mode.. on and off.. on and off… and then there was this delicious fruit custard for the dessert.. so I filled my meal with the dessert.. had bowls and bowls and more bowls of it. And tummy khush. Battery went to reserve mode.. people were droning on, sitting around, my neck felt boneless.. I was falling asleep here and there.. and people’s shoulders.. and I was part conscious then.. but now I can remember nothing but somehow I remember Stylu stroking my hair inbetween and someone was telling some story.. and I was too lazy to smile out.. but I purred and smiled inside and thought something about growing my hair.. and then… I started floating. Believe me, it can be counted as one of the sweetest naps ever.. it wasn’t blank.. it had the back ground music of waves, it felt free and safe at the same time with friends around me.. it was relaxing.. and it was like sleep overlapped by the aroma of a sweet dream flowing around you called reality. I have no idea why the hell I ever woke up.. but I was pushed to some dumb camp fire.. and for some god knows why reason I tried in vain to keep my eyes apart instead of crashing.. and then I’d throw my head back and see the constellations.. as I said earlier, the only constellation I can identify, Cassiopeia. And from there I tried to see where Orion was and I remember lapsing into sleep. And in my sleep I heard some stupid camp songs that faded out into stars. And when I opened my eyes I’d put my head up and see more stars and close my eyes and see more stars and there was some noise going about me.
I have no idea how I came back from that stupid camp fire.. but I remember just falling into my sheets when I was woken by a tent mate to show her the way to the loo.. I have no idea why I couldn’t say no to her.. but through all my sleepy stupor I took her there.. and came back.. and then when I put my head onto my bag again… I didn’t want to sleep. I could sleep. It was a matter of choice, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to hear the waves all night. I wanted to make out how every next wave sounded and I’d tell myself you gotta wake up early tomorrow and just one more wave.. and just one more wave always won.. finally the arguments died out into sleep.
The previous day, the next day especially the early morning of the next day were all very beautiful. But then, it’s 3.14 in the morning. If I start another day now, my impending exam will drown like the sun in the sea. And though I care not for the exam.. if I have to put a full stop somewhere to his. I’d rather it’d be here than anywhere else. So, good night and '.'

P.s.1: Sorry for the word repetitions, grammar and so many other mistakes I usually commit. I didn't read this one to check for them again. I was afraid I wouldn't want to post it if I read it.

P.s. 2: This was originally meant to be a diary entry so I added in quite a lot of unnecessary details lest I forget the sketches of my trip. Hence the length too, sorry again. :)