by Vasundhara Vedula
She remembered the second-last day of her trip to San Jose. He had been telling her about The Beach since a long time and She was very excited to see it. They had trekked up a mild elevation in Pfeiffer State Park that morning and She had recited her favourite Hindi poem to him on a lone bench atop a hill. Later, as they walked towards the waters, she had shivered slightly in the breeze. They found a place to sit, and She had stared at the sea in awe, his arm in hers, almost secure. There was something about the sea that She felt made life easier. It was as though the sea was watching and waiting, like a silent guardian, for the day She would be ready to embrace its vast lessons. Its waves were a testament to her life, and its sounds were a cure for her aches.
She was teary-eyed with joy again, as She had been quite often over the last few days. She’d found the love of her life, and the sea seemed to be smiling with her that day. The sun was sinking slowly, and She could see a black rock in the distance – the only one along an otherwise naked stretch. A few minutes later, the rock moved slightly.
What is that?
It could be a seal, they get washed up along the shore all the time. I thought this beach was my find. But there’s an old couple there. Look.
That’s us at 80.
And there are two more people there. Damn. Just when I thought we had some privacy.
(Laughing)Then those are our children!
Oh, wow. Another guy.
He’s the surprise one. The seal could be our puppy! We can have two boys and a girl, right? And a puppy?
Whatever you want, babbu. Why do you like the sea so much?
I don’t know. It’s so full of violent possibilities and seamless peace all at once.
She wanted to take a closer look at the seal. They walked up to it and He stopped a short distance away. She went closer and began talking to the seal in that cooing voice girls often reserve for tiny, soft, furry creatures. He asked her not to go too close to it lest it bite her. She knew little of these sea-dwellers but couldn’t believe the seal could so much as snarl. The seal stared at her with warm, vacant eyes, as She wondered why He was so afraid.
She thought of the seal ten days later, when He told her He wanted to call off their marriage plans. He said She was too strong-willed for him, and He was afraid She would eventually lose respect for him. He was afraid She spent too much time with his parents back in India. He was afraid that the way they had fallen in love was too wrong and too quick.
She had always believed the answer to her life lay in the shores of marriage and children and the security of an arm in hers. All those dreamy years of waiting and searching had culminated in that trip to The Beach. Perfect happiness had seemed like a knot away. And yet this sudden storm had tossed her back into murky, uncertain waters. For a moment She was afraid just as He had been. She was afraid She would never love again, and die alone. Worse still, childless.
Above his bitter words though, She heard the sea in her ears that day, uninvited. She wondered irrationally if He had called her up from The Beach. The sea was asking her to drown His voice in its roars. It was embracing her salty tears as its very waters. It reminded her that day that it was still her guardian. Through all those years of believing she was headed to the shores, the mysterious horizon had ever so often looked more tantalising. The sea had always teased her to come and experience these storms it kept hidden – like handkerchiefs in a magician’s cloak. It would playfully rock her adventurous ship but also kiss her wounds with healing salts. The sea was her companion in her loneliness, and its greatest lesson to her was to be unafraid. She needed to remember always that just like the sea, life was full of violent possibilities and seamless peace. Just like the sea, she needed to wait and watch.
In that crashing instant, the sea promised to show her more shores, newer beaches, not to forget delightful seals that needed petting.
