THE YOUNG MAN AND THE SEA

PROLOGUE:

Here I am sitting on the sea shore and the rising wave splashes water on my face.My moist eyes are red enough to resemble the red clouds of the night sky,under whose cloak I am sitting here right now. The saline taste of the sea water has mingled with my tears ....and rolled down to my lips while I could not make out the difference between the two.... some times it makes me think that I have cried an entire ocean in front of me ..... but still the saline taste has not stopped falling onto my lips.....

PEBBLES:

The moon is about to go and the sun is about to come .. and in this twilight zone I am all alone lying against a boulder on the sea shore with a cold face, forcing my mind to stop thinking about her.
The pebbles surrounding me has a story of its own while I look upon them..... it bears the experience of its ages .Scars, cuts and wounds have taken the smooth surface of the pebbles to turn it into a rough textured stone. Geologist calls this " the stone with a missing face "....the stone that has been weathered by the forces of nature to turn it into a coarse rock mass.
My eyes fell on my hand,the surgeon's stitch on my slit wrist is about six months old .While I don't know how long this heart has suffered..... "love" they say in philosopher's language... never knew what they actually meant but if "pain" and "emotion" it was supposed to mean .....then I must say I have felt it.

SAND:

While this beautiful night is about to come to an end ..... it reminds that I am also on the verge of completing a full circle ... I don't know when the sun has set yesterday, but I am determined to see the sun rise today.... similarly I never knew since when I started loving her but I know when it is going to end.
A friendship band has been hanging around my wrist which I had kept religiously as a memento, constantly reminding me of her,incidentally that is also her only sign that is now left with me other than her photograph in my wallet
The bed of sand on which I am sitting right now has some strange properties. When it's dry you cannot grip it with your palm..... ever since child hood I have tried it a dozen times ......but as always it slips by my palm.... but on this particular occasion with the rising tide in front of me , with the gushes of water making this sand moist,invariably I could hold it in my hand , it does not slip by my Palm now......
and when I rose to my feet again I realized my skin is caked with sand. On second thoughts I realized that the sand particle's clinging to me are all moist ...never ever I have been caked with sand before... "strange it is.." i felt ....

for all my life I was never able to grip sand and it is the sand that is gripping me now

I stood up jerked the sand out of my body, took the band out of my wrist as well as the photograph too from my wallet and placed it on the sand,sprinkled it with the fuel out of my lighter and ignited it..
and there it goes the last remaining memorabilia of her in the smoke.....
you may ask me why I have done it? I don't know exactly myself why I have done it too...
subconsciously perhaps I felt this was the only decision that I was left with......
or perhaps to complete my full Circle.

SEA:

The smoke went away to be a part of the cloud while the ashes got washed away to the sea ..... the morning sun rose and red clouds turned white .... it made me think that although i felt like crying but my eyes have turned to normal colour of white too ...burying my emotion deep into myself ...just like the rising sun has hidden the moon away from my sight.
on my way back from the shore ....... I heard the fisherman shouting among themselves, that the sea water has turned more salty than it was supposed to be ..... I never knew what they actually meant, or who was to blame for this phenomenon. .....
however I carried on with my tread......leaving behind locus of my foot prints on the wet sand and slowly vanishing into the "normal" crowd.

EPILOGUE:

while I was walking, a couple smiled at me and asked "have you been lying at the sea shore ?"
"why"...? I asked
"well ...... the back part of your clothing which is away from your eye-sight is caked with moist sand " the young man answered.
while I walked away smiling ........ remembering john bunyan's words
"I carry with me the marks and scars of battles - they are the
witnesses of what I suffered and the rewards of what I conquered "

CLOUDS

"............Remember the clouds and the winds ..... never forget them .........write to me when you are far away and burn them .May the smoke be carried by the winds and reach to me through the rain droplets of the clouds ......
these clouds......... you see up there is a bank of letters written by thousands of lovers away from home ...and when i will look up the to cloud the first droplet of rain water touching my face will remind me of you ..... remember then, that your message had been delivered .............. " said Habibah to Ebo.



PROLOGUE :

Everything that has an ending must have had a starting, in between birth and death, there is a period when we live ...those moments are called life.Similarly in between sleep and awakening there is a small period of sub consciousness,
when the dream of the past night is as fresh as morning dew ....the story of Ebo doesn't deal with birth, life and death ,instead of that period of sub consciousness during which one can recall his dream ,being aware of the fact that he is going to forget it the next morning he wakes up ......


DREAM :



Ebo has been walking ever since the last time he met her......... walking through the villages and by the seashores. From the plains of the fields, to the mountains and forests and then ultimately to the desert ......
he did not knew the desert ,but he knew his search for his destiny went through this path ..... he never realized that it was not him who was in search of his destination,
but it was the other way round....it was his destiny that made him come here .... perhaps made him come so far from her..... and this destiny is destined to take him to his destination ......... the destination that lay far ahead of him passed through the longest desert path trodden by the banjaras .It lay right in front of him, the farthest sight of it was non ending..............
during his way through the plains and the mountains , he kept his promise and wrote to her every day and then burnt it religiously ,believing the wind will take it away and the clouds will deliver it.......
and then came the reply ......
he soaked himself in rain...as it carried the presence of her .... through the rain he communicated with her......

he knew what she must have written ....as the rain didn't missed a part...... and when he danced with joy in the rain murmuring to the water droplets .....his friends thought he had gone mad......but only he knew the secret....


Then came the desert ,he wrote the letters by tearing up pages from his diary that he had procured before entering this long desert, and burning them ,the desert wind took it away,but only with a promise that it's reply will never come ....... "its the desert you have been walking through...." told the desert to Ebo ,and the rain doesn't fall here .......


REMNANT :





The desert path came to be longer than what he expected it to be ....and now its one day short of one year since he started walking in the desert and the pages of diary all burnt but one left...... the 365 th day ..the last blank page of the diary ..was awaiting to be written, burnt and carried away by the wind and to be delivered by the clouds ........
all the pages that he wrote before from his diary carried his life story ....and now he is left with a single page ......
the two thick cardboard , binding the diary resembled birth and death to him .....and this last page in between it,the last day of his life...
he never wrote on that last page during his path...and no one knew why....perhaps he believed in the fact that by tearing up this last page ..... he will come to the back cover of the diary resembling death.....and he didn't wanted to die in the desert....or perhaps there were too many a thoughts,emotions and feelings to be penned down in just one single page.....or perhaps he was waiting......... telling himself "don't write today do it tomorrow ....." perhaps that feeling
of writing to her tomorrow made him contend....... and that tomorrow never came..
he had been walking the desert ever since then, breaking her promise .....
all his experiences of the desert he bore in his mind hoping to share them with her one day ...one day when he will meet her again.
when the 3rd year arrived , he was close to his destination .....


AWAKENING :




The desert path had lead him to his destination.. and then he tore the last page of his diary and wrote " wish you were here." and burnt it ....the smoke curled up against the sky and went away ...... at this point of time he didn't saw death on the back cover cardboard,instead he saw "awakening" .... he now realized what the front cover cardboard and the pages in between them originally resembled ......
he felt the true essence of love, "how his belief in love has made him come so far.."- he thought .....
coming at conjunction with his destination would never have been possible without love ...... strange is love .......he wondered .........only a matter of interpretation......


DESTINATION :


He was sitting at his destination awaiting the rain to arrive ,but the weather had been erratic ,and then one day the rain did came, the rain droplets touched his face,but strangely it didn't carry any emotion along with it....
" did she write to me ?.." he asked to himself
"6 years you have been away from her,for three years you never wrote to her,who knows where is she?
has she written to you? no one knows,
has she forgotten you ? that can never be..
why are you forgetting the desert lies in between you and her ?
no rain bearing winds has ever passed from that side of the desert to this.......and perhaps the clouds for which you are waiting for ,has already fallen on the other part of the desert......
.to know what has she written to you or has she stopped writing to you, you need to go to the other the part of the desert.....
do you really want to go there again ? " his soul answered


EPILOGUE :


The sun was about to set and the old banjara sitting on the sand, by his camel has just finished telling the folklore of the desert to his young fellow men......
" it's about time to carry on with our journey ......
.. a long journey to the other part of the desert awaits....we must start early " ............. the banjara said ..


while the young men who were listening to the story looked puzzled by the question put forward to Ebo by himself........