The world within

Nov 18th, 5 pm:

I parked my car in a small patch near the winding road near Earekadave. We put two beers in Aju's backpack and stashed an opener in my jeans pocket and walked the rest of the way so as to remain inconspicuous. When we got nearer to the kadave, there were some kids playing hide and seek there, prompting us to start cursing them for not sitting home and studying. I thought about telling them to go and study instead of having to have beers to unwind after a supplementary exam like me. Anything to have our spot to ourselves. But luckily they didn't venture further. So we walked up the road- (more like a path wide enough for a car really) and found to our delight that it was completely deserted. The road is like a radial line from the circumference to the centre of a huge circle of water. It just ends there. There's a stream in front and flooded paddy fields all around to the sides, and beautiful plains beyond all those. Our destination was a spot under the shade of a groove of coconut trees about 30 feet to the left of the road. There's a narrow path, a varambe dissecting the water on both sides to get there. We got there and settled down under the shade on the few steps leading into the water. It was flooded just up to the top step where we sat. We opened the beers and lounged there, enjoying the stunning panoramic view. A few kilometres away we could see the neon board on top of hotel Arcadia. Then there was a railway track about half a km away crossing the street. Nothing else, no roads, no buildings nothing. I never tire of coming here. There aren't any resorts here. Nobody takes u there as part of a packaged tour. Its a place thats common knowledge but still neglected. Its a place u have to jump over slightly flooded water to get to, a place that's no secret but still remains deserted except for us. We sipped our beer's and watched strange floating islands with grass growing all over drift downstream. We wondered aloud what exactly those things were, then concluded that it was big bunches of moss and algae that accumulated mud on top of it and had grass growing on top of that. I watched one after the other float away to be replaced by another one till about 3 or 4 went by. We didn't know our geography well enough to know where the water of the stream or river or whatever was going. "Where the hell are these going" I asked, pointing with my beer bottle."Well where the hell are we going?" Aju wisely asked. I didn't know so we both drank thoughtfully. After the floating grassy island, we watched a bunch of ducks frolicking in the water until a guy came rowing along in a small vallam (canoe) which was big enough for only 1 or 2 people. Then he started shepherding the ducks in the water on his canoe. That was an interesting sight too, so we watched that next. "Everybody lives, some way" said Aju and i asked "huh"."I mean that guy lives, raising ducks. That's his life" Aju clarified."True" said I. Apparently we were just spectators in life at this point. But great spot to spectate from, I thought.

I wanted to take an award winning photo of the canoe guy and his ducks but all attempts at photography resulted in a pale shadow of the real thing. Either our mobile camera's suck, or our photography sucks or maybe both. But even if we had both of those covered, a photo still wouldn't compare. It cant convey that feeling of vastness of nature in the span of a square of pixels. We did get one okay pic in which the canoe seemed to be racing a train that just passed by head on. But even that was a very pathetic reproduction. "The people in the train know where they are heading" said Aju."ya think about it.hundreds of people with a hundred different thought and dreams and ideas, just passing through in 5 seconds. Just a flash in our lives" I said and waved.

This is life at its best. I mean, we are clueless about where to go from this point in life. I dont know where or what i would or should be doing an year from now, and neither does my buddy.But sometimes, when you're too thoughtful about where you're going, you forget to enjoy the ride. I suppose the past should be remembered too, well in the case of my supplies its kind of hard to forget. Remember what was, fight for what should be or will be, but live...in the moment. And right now, this is where life is...sipping a frothy beer watching the sun setting over the distant clouds. Every day, everybody goes to town, to work, to a movie. Everyday we commute by the main roads, so much that we forget what the world is like in the side roads, where there are canoes and ducks and the cool evening breeze by the side of a river. Hardly a kilometre or two from town but a world away.

Funny, we often wonder why they call this place gods own country. All the politicians are progress-phobes who never let any development happen. We see so many things going to hell that we dont see the good stuff. You just have to forget where you're going for an hour, pack a couple of beers and walk and jump over flooded waters with a friend to find it, to find that it was here all along, hiding in the shadows of our far sightedness...Gods own country. Cheers.