Living by the sea

Living by the sea 

 I have been living a mere short walk away from the sea for the past 25 years. Living by the sea sets my soul free. I move with the sea, dance with it, and set the rhythm of my life with it. 

For someone so much in love with it, I remained remarkably unaffected by the magnetism of the sea while growing in a town by the seaside. My early memory of the rough and roaring sea near our hometown was that of scary awe. I kept gazing at it intently but refused to wet my feet. 

Then a trip to Goa in my youth changed this. I recall boarding an old ship, a fishing boat really at midnight in wintry December. We left Panaji harbor and sailed for a few hours deep into the Arabian Sea. It was a moonlit night. I sat silently on a hull bench, staring at the calm, and placid sea. The spray of water made me delightfully wet as the boat cut through the ocean. Seagulls followed us for a while knowing we were a fishing boat. I sat in a companionable but contemplative mood sipping Golden Eagle beer. It dawned me at that moment that I am no longer scared of the sea. As if to touch my heart, waves became bigger as the ocean became deeper. 

I remembered the words of Richard Jefferies: "Sweet is the bitter sea and the clear green in which the gaze seeks the soul, looking through the glass into itself. The sea thinks for me as I listen and ponder; the sea thinks, and every boom of the wave repeat my prayer." 

Life moved on. We were disconnected from the sea for a while as we lived in landlocked places. Our stay in Eastern India once again brought the sea into our lives. We began our enthralling tryst with; majestic and un-spoilt beaches on the estuary of the Ganges, the island of Sundarbans, and acres of silver sand and blue sky of Gangasagar. 

By now, like a river flowing with gay abundance into the sea, I had learned to go with the flow of benign providence. We moved one place to another gamely watching the changing scenery of deserts, oceans, and mountains around us. 

A gentle stroke of fate brought us to graceful, and gentle-on-soul Bombay. The sea was a handful of steps away from our home in Juhu. We made Juhu beach as an extension of our home. We began to plan our lives around the sea; morning walks, breakfast picnics, reading Sunday papers under a palm tree, a snooze below the cozy sea wall of a building. The sea was the beginning of our day and the sea was an end, the sea was our joy and sea our sadness. We knew every mood of Juhu beach; it's sounds and fury, shades, its shapes of waves. 

Midway into our stay in Mumbai, in a fortuitous twist of fate, we shifted home from Juhu to Bandra. The home came with a stunning view of the sea across Carter road from the 6th floor. We endlessly watched sunset and clouds playing catch, Mumbai monsoon unleashing the first fury over our windows, and gazed at the distant flicker of lights of parked ships on the horizon. The Insomniac in me watched milky moonlight washing the vast sea at 2 am. Everything in our home faces the sea. The sea is us and we are the sea. 

 My life by the sea has taught me this; cure for anything is salt water; sweat, tears, or sea.

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