Towards my left the sea was calm. The waves slowly, softly rolled up from far off and approached the land. And on approaching the shore they turned into white foam, diffusing the sand with tiny bubbles. And then receded for returning again and again, perpetually.
The sea was endless and heavy as ever, within it the unimaginable quantities of the water of life. And continuously the waves died down as white foam on the shore.
The waves with this perpetuity and continuity looked like a shroud draped over a corpse. The white foam bubbled as if it is one end of the shroud wavering slightly in the soft wind that crept through the silence of a house in mourning and the body of the deceased has been kept in the main hall before it is carried to the cremation ground.
The evening sun, having still more time to set, shone over the sea and the waves and the foam; like an electric bulb on the wall adjacent to the corpse, illuminating the corpse and the shroud and in a way making clamorous even the stifled voices of those who had come for sharing the grief with the family of the dear departed.
The color of sun’s rays have not yet turned gold. But the heat had subsided. What remained of the rays expressed itself as some sort of a solemn cosmic sigh, perhaps for the sake of the departing day. It was like an inaudible, collective sigh that pervades the atmosphere of the house in mourning.
My friend walked a few paces ahead of me. It was like that. Always. In the childhood he used to get irritated because I don’t walk along with him, but a few paces behind him, as if I am walking in his shade. But as decades went by he got used to that, maybe from the incidents in his and my life he has learned that he is fated to walk ahead and I a few paces behind him, in his shade. Still the irritation, or the memory of the irritation, or the unwillingness to acknowledge the intangible knowledge he gathered from both of our lives, expressed itself in the form of raised voices and looks of displeasure.
We had been walking for more than half an hour now, as if we had not come for an evening walk in the beach, but as if we are here to cover the whole beach, through to its end, if beaches can ever end. We had left past the people who had come to spent their evenings leisurely in the beach, we had reached the parts of the beach which the sea itself has forgotten. Still we were walking, maybe because both of us haven’t seen each other for at least two years and we thought that our walking together can make up for that.
And we walked with nothing to disturb our silences, for the sea do not seek our attention. He in front as an elder brother, though he was in fact almost a year younger to me, brave, albeit with the lack of happiness that comes with bravery. And I walked behind him, like a schoolboy, trying to see, hear and breath the things around - looking at the thin, lean stray dog that walks past covered in sand, looking longingly at the occasional seashells, which I cannot pick up in his presence, circling my head now and then watching the low flying eagles above us.
I walked behind him like that, rising to the blue skies of childish excitement when I see a boat far in the sea and then within a few minutes falling into the grey depths of depression when I cannot see that anymore.
I have always known that my friend is like the sea. And I, like the waves. Since our adolescence my friend has always chided me for the extremes in which I lived, for being in a state of rolling up and retreating incessantly. But sometimes I have asked myself – isn’t he able to have such a restrained composure only because of the turbulence in which my mind lives? Is it not due to the waves the sea itself is calm? Is it not through the waves that the sea smiles and weeps off its tragic existence, though by itself retaining its majestic aloofness to attachments of any sort?
Lost in thoughts, that never weren’t anything more than fragments of sentimentality and emotions, suddenly my eyes caught the sight of something right in front of me, something the waves has washed ashore, a brownish yellow thing. And unlike for my friend, things capture my mind more firmly than thoughts do.
I paused inquisitively. Some gold ornaments from the palaces of the depth, as in children’s tales? In the sunlight, seen from a few steps far, the substance drenched in water shone brightly giving it the look of some antique gold ornament.
When reason overpowered imagination, I understood that it was not anything golden but some sort of a parchment in which something is written in some unintelligible language. Curiously I bend down slowly as if it is a small child seeking my attention.
It was a bunch of palm leaf manuscripts bound together by a string running through the hole on each of the leaves. And the leaves were filled with writings in black ink. And whatever I thought unintelligible was not exactly so, the language in which it was written was my beloved mother tongue, not even Sanskrit. And instead of dousing my curiosity, this familiarity turned my curiosity towards another direction.
I couldn’t hold myself back anymore. I was too curious to read what is written in this bunch of palm leaves. Will it be some poetry written by any of our great poets in the centuries gone by got lost in the sea when the colonialists were trying to take it home to Europe with them (was it they who stole our poetry)?
The palm leaves were thoroughly wet; many in the bunch had irregularly broken off from the middle and the sides. And the double string that bound the leaves together too was on the verge of breaking. The waves and water had been trying relentlessly to break the string and scatter the leaves in the sea, but somehow the string had held on to bring the whole bunch to the shore.
Mechanically my hands advanced towards the palm leaves when I heard a controlled voice above me and from a few steps further from me.
“Don’t touch it… you…”
It was my friend’s angry command, given with a difficult restraint.
Having bent down and staring at the palm leaves, those words startled me. Beyond startling me, they shook me whole, as if I am a student of combat fighting receiving a loaded punch from my master on my upper chest. In that punch the master had put in all the weight of his mind and its ruthless pedagogic animosity, and I felt the flow of sheer force accumulated from every corners of his feelings and intuitions, transferring itself into me.
Like a receiver in shock and stupor after a heavy blow, still trying to regain the balance of my mind and thoughts, after receiving such a sudden burst of force into myself, still trying hard to contain the ripples of the blow, without having any idea what he means I raised my head to look up at him.
A few steps ahead of me my friend was standing still with his head half turned towards the sea and staring at the sea, as if he is abstaining from looking at me. Perhaps he didn’t want to have me see the anger in his eyes. His teeth were bitten hard and through them had come the words that censured me. His lips were pressed together and contorted with utter disgust coming from anger, obviously at my childishness.
For a few thought moments both of us stayed like that, me looking up at him from the bend position and he standing still with his head half turned towards the left. Like an attacker and the defender. In my mind I was still struggling to come out of my confusion, to understand what he meant. He stood there waiting for my mind to grasp things, like a master waiting for his disciple to understand the mistake he has done.
Silence weighs the most before and after being shattered.
And then, in one of the ensuing moments, suddenly everything became clear to me.
I understood what this bunch of palm leaf manuscripts were. I vaguely understood what put so much force behind the verbal punch of my comrade, of my master, in the tragedies of life.
Clarity satisfies our childish curiosity, but with its palling transparency it leads our imaginative mind to bottomless wells. And smiling inaudibly its sinister smile from just behind our shoulders, Clarity nudge us very gently into abysses of unknown terrors. In that moment of our fall into the well, in one of the few moments left for us to understand everything, we grasp the villainy of Clarity.
The bunch of palm leaves was the horoscope of someone cremated in the nearby crematorium. And as custom, after the cremation the relatives had floated it into the sea. Now the waves have brought it back to the shore.
Suddenly everything changed for me – this brownish yellow thing is not the antique jewellery of the Queens of the Depths, this parchment is not verses written by some great poet of the sixteenth or the seventeenth century lost in the sea while being carried to Europe by some enthusiastic German. These palm leaf manuscripts contain the inscriptions about the planetary positions during the birth time of a person whose body has already turned to ashes. In his or her lifetime these palm leaves would have at various stages predicted future and decided and defined life itself. Now after that life itself has ceased to throb, after death, these leaves do not carry anything; if it signifies anything at all it is only the reiteration of the sad understanding that the life which these leaves glorified once, now amounts to nothing. And these leaves once again reminds one of death and the terrible black-hole like void it represents.
And here I am, about to touch the true symbol of the absolute inanity of life, about to touch death itself with my hands. Here I am, in the presence of death, which like a carnivorous plant waiting for me to touch it to encircle me with its numerous creepers and digest me.
I was turning superstitious about the horoscope. I felt as if within it the horoscope was carrying the germs of death itself. An unimaginable terror of death gripped me. I felt that if I had touched these leaves, the death hidden in these leaves, the death signified by these leaves, will wrap around me in the form of events and incidents and ultimately take me into itself, making me part of itself.
Petrified by my own thought, or rather by intuitions that has not yet turned themselves to thought, I had no option but to flee, flee to life, flee to the shade life provides, regardless of how vacuous the act of taking refuge is.
I quickened my trembling steps to catch up with my friend, who was already walking. Behind me I felt a vacuum trying to pull me towards it, into it. The pull was like the pretentious cries of an evil sprite which will jump on me and plant it’s disgusting teeth mercilessly into my face if I turn back and go near it after feeling sympathetic towards its sad plight.
While I ran fast to be under my friend’s shade beside me the sea was still silent, and the waves continued to die on the shore.
