Darkness liberating me ....

There and back again

Hi all. Well the breach has been surmounted. I am finally about to use my web log as it was originally intended to be used - as a medium for socially dysfunctional people to articulate their sentiments. The following may thus be construed as technically speaking being my first 'blog' post, the preceding matter entirely comprising of literary compositions of dubious merit.

But hold it.... The muse of literature strikes again, “This can be no personal narrative”, she thunders, “It is the curvature of the huge sand-glass of Time that directs the flow of your thoughts.”

Yes, ma’am.

This post is set temporally, in the direct, sleep-deprived, stunningly sober aftermath of the annual Godavari Hostel Night - the one pure frat night in all of IIT culture.
Spatially, for adherents of genius loci, this post is set a furlong away from the motherland, as the author lay peaceably on the waters of the Bay of Bengal off Besant Nagar Beach, below a profusely star-studded sky, at one in the morning.

It all started with a requirement for cigarettes to fuel the festivities at the aforementioned orgy. When Haddi, my companion in this adventure, was appointed the fag-Saki and presented with a bike key and injunctions to get the required commodity as soon as possible, he naturally sought me out as a companion on his perilous quest - to drive 3 kms to the main gate and get a couple of packs of cigarettes.

Of course, with us thrown together, the poor nicotine addicts were not getting their cigarettes anytime soon, were they? No sir, our first task was to get the mechanical beast some chemical nourishment. Next, fortuitously, we found Shiva and Chaitanya returning to the hostel and passed the cigarette buck to them gratefully.

Free of our chore, and any guilt at having commandeered a hapless comrade's bike, we hied for the great open spaces, with as much alacrity as a poor 100 cc engine had to offer. Where does acceleration derive its amazing fascination from? Since time immemorial, we have always commemorated speed, an essential component of natural selection in the days of tooth and claw; not that irrelevant in the world of broadband internet either. But it is a recognized physiological fact that the human sensory perception is incapable of gauging speed. The individual excitement to motion, as opposed to objective archetypal responses to measures of speed, depends entirely on the magnitude of acceleration.

Why does the body instinctively perceive and appreciate acceleration while remaining oblivious to its better known offspring - speed? The answer, one presumes, lies in an extrapolation of the Freudian Pleasure Principle, which may be credited to the good doctor himself. Away from his analysis of the conscious and its urges, Freud, in his study of dreams, unequivocally assigned connotations of sexual desire and gratification to the act of flying.

In 1996, designers at a Singapore amusement park researched roller-coaster rides around the world and concluded that the enjoyment that visitors derived therefrom was, in a very large part, due to the autonomous physiological response. This was found to correspond with the physiological response to sex. 80 years after his time, another Freudian hypothesis had found independent validation.

Which, of course, sheds a lot of light on why exactly Schumacher makes $50 million a year, why NBA basketball players are the highest paid professionals in the world, why the Hindu deity of virility, Hanuman possesses the power of flight and why one rather drunk and one rather long-bearded post-adolescent find a zip through empty Chennai streets at midnight so much fun.

So, basically, we fooled around for a bit, getting our money's worth out of the contraption and enlivening the night with, if memory serves me right, a chorused rendition of 'Break on through', a cover of 'Roadhouse Blues' by Haddi and a guitar solos included rendition of Hendrix's 'All Along the Watchtower' by yours truly. Heaven praise the sluggard constabulary of this great metropolis.

Finally, having run out of wild ideas, we made for the beach, Haddi a reluctant companion, for I explained to him that I had suddenly had this urge to bathe in the sea in my birthday suit. I think he saw jail bars and parole papers dancing before his eyes. Be that as it may, we arrived at Besant Nagar Beach at one and slunk to the shoreline undetected. Haddi then firmly declined my invitation to join in the aquatics and sat down beside my bag and slippers as I made for the primal element.

It was scary to begin with, post-midnight is high tide time at Besant Nagar and high tide is never a good time to go swimming, even if you've gone to the Delhi State Juniors. My modus operandi normally is to dive in head first as soon as I am reasonably sure I there is enough water for me to not get it stuck in the sand. Whoever heard of a sea ostrich? Ridiculous!

Partly because of the somber might of the rising tide, partly because of my anticipation of a new experience (Ah! How scarce they keep getting!), this time I chose to walk in gradually, letting the waves cover my feet, then walking in farther so the next time they lap the edge of my shorts; walk in farther ad libidum. Walking in to waist depth, in order not to aggravate the homophobic Haddi’s feelings, I stripped, tied my T-shirt and shorts together and bunched them into one hand. Onward!

It was when I first took one on the chest that the experience may actually be considered to have started. The farther in I went, the stronger the waves came, knocking me back, and fiercer still would I yell in delight and plough back farther into the sea. Thus was the status quo, until the seventh wave finally put in an appearance.

You can see it from far off, a seventh wave. In the daytime, it looks magnificent, its crests glittering green and white tongues of froth licking its crystal liquid lips. Many have given me piggy-back rides and many have engulfed me instantaneously in a murky world of aquamarine green.

But at night-time, it’s different.

Before your eyes, the horizon rises, a very murky blackness on a very murky blackness, the world tilts before your eyes as your head bobs on the water’s surface. Higher it rises, still higher, the angle rises very slowly; you feel you’re falling forward into an irrational eternity. Then it bursts over you, and it takes you deep into its womb, and it accords you the visceral warmth and softness, the primal force - throbbing with immense power, yet broodingly nurturing. Then it coughs you back out as it expends itself on the beach.

Engrossed in playing with the waves, I suddenly realized I had forgotten which way the beach lay. Of course, it was child’s play to find out, it was currently out of sight in the dark, but all waves naturally seek the shore. But I refrained from bringing my reason into play, preferring to allow my soul to absorb the immensity of this contrived beautiful situation as sincerely as possible – lost on the ocean.

So I did what sailors did when they were lost on the ocean, in the days before Marconi took the fun out of the business. I lay supine on the ocean’s swell, hands behind my head, and gazed up at the stars, which, to my extreme delight, were out in large numbers. I could not, of course, emulate the seamen in actually sleeping on the water for, it may be remembered, they do that far away from shorelines that cause waves that would wake even Rip van Winkle in a hurry.

Imagine the scene, gentle reader, a vast bowl of darkness studded with jewels of light above, cold, ethereal, immutable. Below, the warm rocking swells of the ocean, the cradle of all life, if Darwin is to be believed. And darkness withal, darkness everywhere - reason lies somnolent in the silent watches of the night.

It is a strange loneliness this, that descends on one under such unworldly conditions. I, for one, in all seriousness, seldom trust myself to venture into the ocean unattended. My friends here will tell you that that I pester them incessantly to go to the beach with me. And yet, when I go alone, I do not venture into the water.

It is not drowning that I fear; I fear that I do not fear drowning. The sea calls me on, farther, deeper – it calls irresistibly in a voice so ancient I can discern no vestige of it, and yet it tugs at every fiber of my being. I would love to follow, as long as I could, I would love to rock in my giant little cradle when I lay my head down on it for the last time. I swear it, I would love to. Hence, my little voice of reason decrees that I not go swimming in the ocean unattended.

Be it climbing up a Grade IV rock face without rappel, clips and rope, be it racing an 8 year old Maruti with a suspect suspension at 150 kmph, be it swimming across the Ganges at Rishikesh to the entertainment of the local populace, be it lying on a pebbled river bed, with just my nose sticking out, and basking drowsily in a hot summer sun, the call of life, its urgent, impatient, hot-blooded urge, is much louder in my ears than the wise, plaintive cry for its sustenance.

But faint though it is, it still impinges on my ears half an hour later, when my inchoate sea sense tells me to get out of the water which is getting rather inclement. I swim back therefore, to where I am in my depth and stand facing the waves, let them batter me and drive me back to the shore, I do not depart ungraciously, it is they who usher me out for having out-stayed my welcome. Eventually, I arrive to within knee depth and remember that I had better pull my clothes back on lest Haddi go into conniptions. On with the rags and I stumble out with the waves administering some parting shots in ill-humor.

Haddi knows better than to go into the “Look at you, you’re crazy” mode. He’s known me long enough. He merely states firmly that he will drive hereon lest some diligent police officer get some untimely business. Seeing that his breath still reeks of whisky a mile away, it is the quintessential case of the pot calling the kettle black.

But my maritime experience had rendered me introspective and so I did not contest the point and acceded to my hazardous role as pillion rider. One if the most glaring examples of lack of empathy in our world is the sad case of pillion riders. The driver, oblivious of the hair-raising travails of his passenger, guns his engine to ever-greater speeds. A case may be made out for the superior diplomatic skills of women as being a mental manifestation of having to adjust to the various demands of being pillion riders to uncouth speed-junkie oafs. Unless, of course, one happens to enjoy the thrill, the uncertainty and the looming threat of physical harm.

And this is where the adventure story per se ends. Accounts of how we returned to the hostel to find Bacchanalia reigning supreme would then eventually brush upon how I spent two hours listening to our hostel rock band play and drunken seniors telling me how to run the hostel next year on, how I spent the hours between 4 to 6 playing the blues in a dark room with the only light being the seven segment display on the guitar processor and the only sounds being my amateurish compositions, interspersed with pieces by Jimi. SRV and Clapton, and the rhythmic snoring of the room’s worthy occupant, Condom.

All of those are worthy subjects for commentary just as well, of course. Right now, however, the author has shot his bolt. It was his intention to intensively chronicle a situation-induced thought process, something he had rather stopped doing recently, insofar as the written word is concerned. It remains to you, gentle reader, to judge how satisfactory and aesthetically pleasing the endeavor has been. With this, I take your leave, for the nonce.