Late last evening....

Stupid net connections…. This was written last night itself. Couldn’t put it up till now…

Sometimes one wakes up in the morning and doesn’t give the day a second thought. Its just that it seems like another day, the usual routine of classes, the daily dose of frustration, the constant endeavour to do something useful but ending up spending hours at beloved frustu sipping iced tea and talking…. Talking…. Today, or rather yesterday(since I see its past twelve) was one of those days which showed no inclination to be different from the rest.
But sometimes stuff just happens. We decided to go down to kaup…. The five of us- Swapnil, Neelav, Anamol, Fernon and i. it just popped out of the blue and we decided that the first Saturday afternoon after the sessionals was the best day to put our plan to good action…. So down we went. Till now nothing really seems extraordinary. We flit about in the water, dodging the waves and splashing each other. It was high tide and the waves were pretty forceful. We were having a wonderful time.
Then it started getting dark. It went on that way until we realized that we were in a secluded part of the beach and the reason why there wasn’t any light was because there apparently was a power failure. We were out of the water by then, each one convincing another of the demerits of reaching the hostel late( these dratted perm restrictions!!).
It hasn’t rained out here in a very long time, just once since the beginning of this sem and that too not like tonight. The white sands, the wind howling in my ears, the feel of clothes soaking on my back, lighting in the horizon, the beacon of the lighthouse and the faint rumble of thunder in the distance. I didn’t feel, hear or think of anyone or anything else.
The sights and sounds of the moment were engulfing me in their magnanimity. A feeling of strange emptiness washes over me when I realize that I am powerless… in the face of everything that was here tonight. It doesn’t stop there. My heart spews out questions that my mind refuses to answer. It just wishes to remain numb, like the soul of the sea. Even though the sea roars and grumbles with all its might, the bottom line is that its just a defence mechanism. Inside , its just as scared, as confused, as unsure as I am. Or maybe I am just rambling on…..
I’ve always heard that kaup is beautiful, that it is an amazing place to be. But when I was actually there tonight, the rain pelting down on my back, my hair whipping about in the wind….. that’s when the beauty hit me square, full and large. This is one of those few occasions when I feel that words are inadequate to convey what I was feeling. That no matter what I write here tonight, one has to be there on an evening like this to realize what it feels like.
So we run on the sands in pitch darkness all the way back to the road only to find that there are no auto-rickshaws around. So we do what strikes us best. We walk. In the flashlights of a couple of 1100 phones(I always bless them at such times) we make our way back…. Fortunately we get ricks after a ten minute trek. The rest can again be termed as the dregs of an ordinary day. There are few things in life which have made me stop dead in my tracks…. These images that run through my head are a few of those…

High tide
Clouds
Spray on waves
Swapnil
Salty breeze
Lighthouse
Anamol
Wind howling
Frozen fingers
Fernon
Being cold
Rain
Neelav
Thunder
Sea
Beacon

There are days which just seem ordinary… they aren’t.