An Evening in Indian Ocean
When we were kids in school, in the geography class we marvelled when our teacher told about the vastness of an ocean. Most of the surface of the earth is water. Things like Indian ocean sounded like a story from a faraway land to a kid from the north eastern village of India. But by the end of my graduation, I was in Kerala on a long trip.
On 21st December 2011 I was floating on a boat-house/ferry in the Indian Ocean. It was evening, the sun was setting to the west, the endless waters across the horizon sparkled in golden hues. When our boat started we passed across another boat with men, women, children and youngsters who had finished their rounds and who were dancing to a desi item song on the lower deck of the boat. 'Chinese, chinese!' they exclaimed at me and few of my friends and profusely waved their hands and called us out.
That seemed funny and ridiculous.
After few minutes we were leaving the harbour and heading towards the vast ocean, the harbour appeared more diminishing, with hawkers selling sweet candies, bright and shiny torches, sun hats and people walking around and clicking photos. We moved past a large ship dock, a cruise ship called AMET cruise near the other end of the harbour, really-really large structures unloading and loading huge boxes from the ships. After a while we reached near an island which is the Honeymoon Island, where honeymooners come to eat honey and watch the moon together. The island was a small, lined with large banyan trees, coconut trees and palm trees with quaint cottages with well pruned hedges and flowering gardens. At the edges of the island, large fishing net, Chinese fishnets, were fitted with long posts reaching upto dozen of metres skywards with were collectively pulled by couple of dark fishermen in white cotton vests and cotton lungi. The nets going upwards to the sky with few fishes trapped in it as the fishermen pulled up the nets. The sun appeared at the hem of the sea, just like the water colour paintings we made during the drawing classes when we were young and aspiring artists. The music is on, the ferry man's music. Loud and blasting hindi item songs, songs like Sheila ki jawaani, Mauja hi mauja. But things around was so beautiful, so magical and ethereal that you don't need music, your heart sings for itself. The Arabian Sea towards the west and Bay of Bengal towards the east. My friends passes me some popcorns and south Indian sweets between the musics.
"Come, lets go down tothe lower deck!" a friend enthusiastically pulls me.
I join her. We walk down the narrow steps and we join the other friends who are posing to their cameras by the edge of the boat, leaning their body as far as towards the sea so that the sea comes in the photo. The lower deck is spacious and doesn't have chairs like the upper deck, mostly for small parties and dances.
A small boy, a Keralite, with Sachin Tendulkar like hair began to dance to an item number. Soon my friends join him and sooner we all burst into our dance mode. Dancing to the song Mauja hi mauja over and over again.
"Bhaiya, please repeat that song!" we shouted to the ferry man, who would oblige with a smile and a bored realisation that noone is listening to his guide talks he was giving over the microphone.
That was really fun. Dancing on the boat and shouting broken lyrics to the top of your lungs in between the large Indian ocean on a moving boat. Till this date, I wait for a moment, a feeling and an experience as special as that evening that would elude my heart to such heights of joy and ecstasy. It was turning dusk, the sun had gone below the edge of the sea and gone to the other side of the globe when we were on our back journey towards the harbour. A boat passed by u
s and we waved, shouted and exclaimed our excitement to the passengers. Haha, I understood that the people who waved and shouted at us profusely earlier when we started our journey were not funny and ridiculous. They were just too happy to be there at the ocean and by the time we were coming back, we also waved and exclaimed back in excitement to the passengers on the other boat. Honestly, that was a feeling I had never experienced in my entire life living in the hills. And till this day when I think about oceans and remember that evening in Indian Ocean, then my heart just lights up with many thousand sparks!
