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 "