“Stand up for God’s sake and run as hard as you can!” These were the words that came to my mind while rolling under the salty water of the Bay of Bengal. The shoreline was hardly ten feet away, but the sands were getting washed quickly by the under-current, and it was hard to get a grip to stand up.
A minute before we were all laughing and jumping in the waist-deep water, every time a wave was breaking down, until a bigger one, probably a foot higher, made one of us lose their foothold. All of sudden three of us fell into the water, as we were holding to each other. And back then, none of us knew how to swim.
But somehow, after getting swept to and fro with a few subsequent waves experiencing the longest choking time in my life, finally, I managed to get up and plunge myself into the golden-yellow sand of Puri seabeach.
Everyone was looking perplexed, and my mother was shouting, “I told you not to go that far into the water”.
Then I saw my wife and brother, they were already out of the water and were breathing fast, bending down with hands over the knees and looking towards me, pale and vacant. My parents and in-laws all surrounded us with two more nulias (lifeguards from the local community) standing back of that cordon.
That was the second near-drowning experience I had in my life.
A day before, when we reached Puri after a 14-hour journey sitting on a chair car of a superfast express six hours late from its scheduled arrival time, our bad luck continued when we found that the small beach town of Puri was full of devotees crowding every little corner.
We had to walk to the main road pulling our heavy trolleys over the platform and the empty parking. The first auto-rickshaw we found after walking for nearly a kilometre, the driver asked for a fare that was three times than the usual amount. The second auto driver did not even bother to look back. Finally, we managed to hire the third auto-rickshaw when the driver agreed to a double fare, and we asked him to take us to any decent hotel near the beach. He told us that we would not get any hotel near the beach as it was Karka Sankranti Day and he would take us to a good hotel near Chakratirtha Road.
Puri is a popular beach holiday destination in the state of Odisha in the eastern part of India. And for many Bengali, it is like a second home. Unlike me who travelled to Puri two times until now, many Bengalis like to travel to Puri at least once a year. And often there are days like this when finding accommodation can be a herculean task.
This was my second trip to Puri. The first time I went there 17 years back when I was a six grade student. Our team was comparatively larger, consisting of nine members from two families.
We stayed in a budget guesthouse with self-cooking facilities. It was on the backside of a top-rated 3-star hotel in Puri in those days. Only a narrow strip of the sea was visible from the four feet by three feet balcony of our guesthouse. Every morning, we went to the sea before sunrise and spent an hour or two collecting clamshells and crowding around a fishing boat every time one anchored to the shore.
After that, we had our breakfast back in the guesthouse and returned to the beach 3-4 hours later for bathing. My brother and I sat near the shoreline between our mother and grandmother, tightly grasping their sarees, while my father used to swim a little far ahead. We sat turning our back to the waves, facing the beach, keeping an eye over the slippers covered with two bath towels.
“Pass it in between your index and middle fingers and hold it tight”, said my grandmother, after giving two knots at the corner of her saree while my mother held my brother’s hand tight. And by one hand, I used to hold the fringe of my grandma’s saree tight while with the other hand I used to feel the ripples of the dragged back sand by the receding water.
When I stood up, the first thing that I used to check immediately was the two pockets of my half-pant that became full of sand. And I used to reverse them to get all the sand out. Yet there was enough sand remaining inside to empty it along with the whole distance while we returned to our guesthouse from the seabeach walking barefoot, carrying the slippers in one hand. It was the same routine for all four days we stayed in Puri.
Even after returning home, the dry sand used to come out of those pockets for a few days and used to remind me of the wonderful time we had back there.
So, after 17 years, when Jayeeta and I decided to take our parents to Puri, I shared my childhood memories with her. Jayeeta never went to Puri before, so she was very excited about this trip. We decided to stay in that same 3-star hotel which was right in front of our guesthouse during my last trip but thought of booking it on-spot. But the first-day journey already took a toll on us, and on the second day, we were striving for our lives.
Life can be ruthless at times. It always drags you forward; nevertheless, how hard you try to hold back to your childhood memories. There is no stepping back; there never was. And while you are living in your deepest emotion, the harsh reality of life hits hard, so hard that it can make a permanent dent over your best memories as well.
Sitting on a wooden bench in front of a beach shack near Swargadwar, in the evening, I was thinking about the incidence, surrounded by a busy world but living in one of the loneliest moments of my life. The buzzing crowd, the shouting hawkers, the smell of fried fish nothing distracted me. The dreamy looking sea under the full moonlight, the hazy outline of the fishing boat at the horizon and the last bit of the bubbling white foam sticking to the wet sand after the water receded, were not for me.
Seventeen years back, when I was sitting between my mother and grandma, I never felt any danger for a fraction of a second. Rather I enjoyed every single moment of my small sea world inside the safety triangle created by my parents and grandma. My world was small, amenities were limited, but the fun was endless, joy was supreme. And nearly two decades later, I could easily afford that top-rated hotel which had obstructed the view of the ocean from the balcony of our guesthouse; I had more flexibility to enjoy a vacation without a routine and easier access to a larger world. Yet I was struggling with my life a few hours break. What did I miss after these 17 years? Is it the safety triangle or the two knots at the fringe of a cotton saree?
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