Mumbai! A city where dreams cost you, but space still costs you more. There's no one denying the fact that the cost isn't justified. It never is justified, anywhere you go. Things always are out of reach, and the flame lives hence, thriving on an urge to achieve the unachievable and afford the unaffordable.
The sea watched over me, when I was alone. The sea taught me to push my problems under the sand carpet, and sit near the shore, watching the worries get washed away by the tidal waves, quivering with the crabs and unsettled by the sun. The sand touched me like a lover in hints of love and possessiveness, holding me, pulling me with every tide, inside, deep inside. The sun dried my wetted feet and left beautifully glistening sand on my bare skin, teaching me that time makes beautiful everything wetted by tears. The sky had birds hovering overhead, gliding like planes, at altitudes close enough to jump and reach to. It left me with the biggest lesson; that you may climb up high, hovering above everyone, but you can still be within reach, a phone call away, a touch away when you meet, a voice away when you whisper.
Photo Credit: Arundhati Chatterjee
At the sea after long, I walked its length, letting the rain wet me with stories. I was disturbed by a couple who requested me to capture a photograph of theirs, while they decided how to hug. I captured them through the camera looking at me, as expectant as a child receiving a prize from the principal, and I coiled up on my favourite tetrapod. It was my spot. I gulped down hot tea, while water from the last wave trickled down my legs.
Tetrapods. They never arrest what flows against their mind. When was the last time we completely followed our mind? There's always a moment when we give up, we adjust, we compromise, just for the sake of compromise. I wished to write into a book, of pages and hardbound. But the phone sufficed, or so I convinced myself. We, the unrelentingly relenting, dysfunctional tetrapods.
