A Short Autobiography – The ‘Not So’ Old Man and the Sea
A Short Autobiography – The ‘Not So’ Old Man and the Sea
Photo credit: diciu from morguefile.com
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean- roll!
Ten Thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin- his control
Stops with the shore.
Unfathomable, deep, dark, turbulent, mighty, raw, intense, awe-inspiring, stone-crushing, foam spraying, pouting, gathering forces, roaring, subsiding, pushing, pulling, gushing, stinging, wrenching you off the feet, slapping, clinging and all inundating, I think I found an instant connect with the Sea.
Water is, I think, the most potent element on Earth. It can cool down your parched throat, provide you with food, drive your rotor for electricity, push your ferry or wipe out a town in a fit of tsunami.
So it was altogether a wonderful experience to meet someone whose ego was mightier than mine- Poseidon or Varun-dev as he is known. The waters of Arabian Sea– his domain were wilder than I ever saw before. It impaled my heart and chilled my gut just being near to the mighty force that the sea exuded. And for a non-swimmer like me (and a thalassophobic, no less!!) it was indeed no wonder that I imagined myself rolling and flaying and swaying my arms in utter distress in that frothy vortex of no return, my lungs filling with water and being hit with the stone again and again and ultimately letting the all pervading blackness to engulf me in the sweet sleep of death as I drown.
Never minding such pessimistic thoughts regarding human life and limb, I assure you that a trip to Diu and Somnath can indeed work wonders on an almost loveless, non-existent and charmless relationship which any boy and girl can have!!
But for a geek striving for eternal bachelorhood against the dark waves and moods that he faces at his time of an age (a measly 20 years), it can exponentially enhance his already admired creativity!!!
Watching the stones jutting out of the ocean, the waves crashing against the stones raising huge sprays of water and surreptitiously ogling at the cuddling couples holding hands, leaving nothing to imagination, my day was made. But my brother believed in an altogether different life-principle. Vishwam believed in meeting the welcoming waters head on. Nothing less than a full day spent languorously on the beach was enough for him. Of course, I like a doting brother dutifully watched over his as* and didn’t let him go beyond a certain depth of water. That makes me a coward, but better coward than cold (in death).
So where was I heading to? Well, I was heading to the end of this sort of autobiographic, pouring my soul over gigabytes gig. I must say, I didn’t feel at all high and mighty as Ayn Rand must have felt in the face of a massive girth of the water body. I was overwhelmed and I despaired to no end how long would human fortresses survive in the face of pendulum like, tidal force of the sea. Life, created from ocean, will return to it…
As a parting thought (presented by John Masefield, co-sponsored by Vismay)…
I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face and a grey dawn breaking.
__END__
