A Waiting Wave

It was nine in the morning at Port Blair and the sun shined naively above the coconut trees. In a flash I knew all I wanted that morning was a boat – a boat to take me away from the familiarity of the world that was driving me crazy. I wanted escape, and I was desperate. So I quietly slipped out of my house and walked down the hillock right on top of which it stood like a tiny red aberration.
By the time I reached the fishing jetty there were beads of sweat on my face and it was red with exhaustion, heat and the nervous excitement of my little adventure. I felt my head levitate, almost drunk, like after a cocktail party.
Eager people, mostly men, walked around sizing the just caught fishes lying in heaps right next to the fishing boats. There were about ten boats, all tied to the jetty, the edges of which crumbled. The head ropes of the boats tied to the bollards made them look like domesticated animals, slightly bent forward due to the strain on the ropes, while their raised behinds swayed gently into submission. I saw the morning buyers negotiate with the dark skinned fishermen who wore bright Bermuda shorts – flashy red, blue or green – donned right under their naked torsos that appeared exaggeratedly chiselled, muscles jumping to attention with the slightest of their movements. No one seemed in a hurry and after having discussed the price and eyed the fishes suspiciously long enough, I saw them saunter to the next heap.
Contrary to the state of my mind, the sun seemed contended, smiling intoxicatingly over the slow, small world that was around me. It looked miraculous: the jetty emerging gingerly from the turquoise blue waters and losing its way into a grass-bordered, pot-holed road on the other side. Beyond it a hillock endeavoured to tower against an azure sky. Like the grass, the hillock was lush green, almost like a water colour painting done bright, its green in a perpetual competition with the blue of the sea for brilliance.
‘Hello!’
I smiled at one of the younger looking fisherman for whose wares there didn’t seem to be any customers. He seemed, like me, harbouring some invisible pain, and I saw him struggle to smile before the effort failed.
‘I need to hire a boat.’ I waited for the effect, unsure if it was the right way. Whatever was bothering him took a deeper dive and it was now clear that he was indeed in some kind of mourning. I couldn’t help notice a shadow of pain that ran across his face, and with that his dark skin suddenly appeared darker. What was bothering him, I wondered? Was he too, like me, a man who had lost his lover?
I repeated my question.
‘No boat hire for strangers. Go home.’
His English was broken but there was authority in the voice – the kind of authority that comes with age and experience, or maybe when someone is sure you are going to fail. But he seemed not too old; maybe about thirty, or somewhere there. I nodded and had to step aside to allow an old man negotiate and buy five kilograms of fish. It disappeared in a white plastic bag that had, printed in black, the name of a local sea food restaurant called ‘The Island House’. I knew the place.
The fisherman seemed a shade younger after he shoved the money into the pocket of his bright blue Bermuda that the old man gave him, or it was a smile that suddenly appeared which made him look so, I wasn’t sure. I shot my request once again, adding this time that money wasn’t a problem. That tilted his inclination towards my ambition but he wanted to know some more details.
I lied. I told him we were four friends who wanted to float about in the protected bay for adventure and entertainment and would return to the jetty by evening. He asked a few more questions which I tried to answer without too much lying. But my heart sank when I came to know that the deal meant the fisherman would also accompany the boat. And with that my confidence rolled downhill. I took a long breath and declared, ‘Of course! But now I don’t want to hire your boat.’
As I walked along the road, the gloom within me multiplied and at one point I thought of jumping into the water and throwing my arms and legs to wade away from the world that was chasing me, its thorny fingers nibbling at my feet and hands, its poison polluting whatever little optimism that remained in my heart. I walked, ran, walked again when breathless and wheezing, the past chasing my present like a monstrous wave which I just didn’t have the energy to evade. It caught me at last and I passed out on the side of the road, watching the blue of the sea collide with the blue of the sky at the horizon not too far away. There was someone familiar there, sitting, smiling, waving. Those were my last thoughts, before darkness engulfed me in and I gave in heartily.

I had always loved Kareena. In fact even before I saw her for the first time in my office at Delhi, I had a fair idea how she looked. I smiled and introduced myself, polite as I had always been, shy as I always was. The stammer and the inability to meet her gaze for those forty odd seconds weren’t exactly the best of the starts but I knew I would be able to overcome it pretty soon. People liked me and I knew it. She said hello and told me her name, a name about which too, like other things as I said, I had a fair idea.
Office work was always hectic when she seemed approachable and when I was freer it was she who was surrounded with work, or people, or worst, both. Time flew by, as my efforts of making a friendship, or an impression, failed routinely. She was warm in her hellos as we crossed each other in the corridors sometimes. Her smile was affectionate when our eyes met through the glass partition if both of us coincidently rose together from our claustrophobic cubicles, to stretch or just to let ourselves rise above the smell of our own breaths.
I jumped to my feet. The sweat crawled on my face, my hands, on the back of my shirt, in fact everywhere. It woke me up and for a moment I thought I was in a ditch full of crawling earthworms. But the panic dissolved at the sight of the blue and green on my either side. Within seconds it gave way to the gloom at first and a sudden surge of anger immediately after. ‘How could you?’ I shouted. The ocean ate my words, the hills swallowed it and the road stayed like a blackened caterpillar, without a reaction, staying deathly calm.
Near the next bend as I walked I noticed an abandoned boat. It was a hodi, used by the tribal people, a small multi-man canoe with a dummy canoe for stability, though much smaller, attached to its side, something like a scooter with a sidecar.
I looked up and down the road. There wasn’t anyone. I had to skid down along the slope some twenty feet below before
I reached the boat. I touched the wood. Beaten by the sun the gunwale felt warm but rugged, strong. There was a rope that ran from the fore part of the boat and it was secured to the root of a giant peepal tree. There was another rope which ran at an angle of about thirty degrees. I saw the flukes of a boat anchor as it lay half embedded in the mud.
I suddenly knew what to do. It was easy. First, I got rid of the rope and the anchor, and then I pushed it into the water until I was knee deep. When I climbed into the tiny place, it rolled and yawed dangerously close to tuning turtle but I was lucky. Within seconds, I was taking myself away from the world I now hated so much, pulling the oars with all the energy I had. The farther I went, the more relieved it felt.
Sadly, the relief was only temporary. I rowed furiously, but the more effort I put the stickier became Kareena’s memory to get rid of. As sweat got into my eyes every time I missed mopping it by the back of my hand, the blurred vision set her image into motion. Though I hated her now, my mind chasing her feelings away, but part by body part, she evaded it dexterously. Lamely, I saw her everywhere around me, felt her everywhere within me. The adventure seemed to be failing. Frustrated, I blinked my eyes, lost her for a microsecond, blinked again, and there she was – the smile that I loved so much and which never ever changed in its spontaneity or unashamed brilliance mocking at me. It chased me as I twisted and turned in the boat.
The sun, the water, the green islands in the hazy distance, suddenly everything seemed meaningless, as I found, without any choice, my mind taking me back to where it had all started.

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