Of monsoon, love and freedom (Chapter 4)

 4^th June : Beypore beach

Back in Calicut, on an unusually bright sunny Saturday, Thakur and I set out to Beypore 32 kms south dressed up in beachwear. The Beypore port is one of the oldest ports of Kerala and only the second biggest after Cochin. The beach is sidelined by huts of local fishermen and their families and scattered with stalls of snacks and eatables bustling with visitors by the evening.

As the beaming noon started mutating into a balmy evening, we trooped through around a kilometer and half of the pulimuttu, a walkway stretching to the sea. After a couple of minutes, while Thakur was turning impatient and wanted to turn back around and return, I stressed on holding back up until the sunset. Throughout the complete journey, I had this silent undertaking of not leaving anything I desired for later to regret. Well, the vista of the sun disappearing into the horizon is a seascape you cannot miss for anything whatsoever. Afterwards, Babloo on my request added a hue of her eloquent poetry to the visual shot by me which further made it really exceptional to my memory.

The sea and the shore named in unison,

Destined to part always

As are the stories told, the sun and the moon ending as one

Eye in eye longing to meet, witnessing disappearing days...

Observing the phenomena, I drew up upon an analogy between the susurration of waves on rocks thumping my eardrums and how life ought to be lived. After all, nature proves to be a great teacher if you keep your senses open to the surroundings.

When a wave hits the shore, it dies transferring its massive energy to the surroundings; only to return back subsequently as yet another wave, reborn. Much in the same manner, we ought to transmit our internal energy to the encompassing external every single moment and feel alive to the fullest as if this was the final we’d ever take a breath; at the same time, possessing the ability to detach from whatever happened in the past. I’ll quote H. G. Wells here, “Man must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind him to the fact that each moment of his life is a miracle and a mystery.”

We had five-day working weeks of what didn’t seem much like work; of which I did almost all. On Fridays, our dear professor would suggest us places we ought to look forward to going to. And when we would show up after a two-day break to her office, Lyla mam would eagerly enquire us the places we visited. Moreover, if we went far out of the city to be able to return only on Monday mornings, as it happened on two or three such occasions, she would considerably grant us an extra day off for rest. I still wonder if I did anything else though!

 

17^th June : Boisterous Bangalore

Having spent a fair share of weekends in the valleys of mother nature, Thakur craved a rather boisterous one 350 kms away in the valley of silicon. I too plumped for this option of Bengaluru later, although fancied travelling to Munnar initially. Once there, we were hosted by Tushar, our common friend who was undergoing an internship at HAL then. He was kind enough to offer us a stay in his studio apartment. After freshening up, napping for a while and lunch, we left for the ISKCON Sri Radha Krishna Temple, our only possibility for the day pertaining to the city’s Saturday traffic.

The commute via foot, bus, metro and auto took unbearably long and equally frustrating. Being in Bangalore for a day made us sure of not wanting to come back to the city ever. I mean wouldn’t you find it unimaginable standing in a jammed bus frozen in a traffic jam with the wheels not rolling by an inch for half an hour!? And isn’t it inconceivable that such a well-developed city lacks a basic drainage system so much so that its roads start flooding after a substantial torrent of rain!? To be honest, Bangalore posed to be a little suffocating making me wish to never get posted in Bangalore. Its year-round pleasant weather is perhaps the only good feature of the city. Party enthusiasts might also add its vigorous nightlife to the list.

Nonetheless, we had a good time at the temple and rushed to receive the prasada – to a club! After sharing a pitcher full of beer, we smashed the disc for three hours straight. I noticed a guy dressed up in a shirt that read, “Bad choices make good stories”. True when they say that “Hangovers are temporary but drunk stories are forever”. Nights like these are never gonna die when we allowed our boyhood some occasions to get spoilt.

18^th June : Harmonious Hogenakkal

We dashed back to the apartment and I took a quick shower for we were scheduled to leave for Hogenakkal in Tamilnadu almost 130 kms in two hours! We joined Tushar’s sister and her colleagues for the Sunday adventure. The Hogenakkal falls is a waterfall on the Kaveri and we were actually there to relish the exclusive experience of boating in bamboo-built coracles locally called parisals.

The river descending towards the fall surrounded by hills in the backdrop painted a remarkable picture of the waterscape. Edging safely near the fall gave us a very aggressive appearance of nature and the rumbling noise left us euphoric. At the same time, the cruel heat there was brutally touching temperatures that my phone’s camera started refusing to function. How contrasting is the meteorology on the opposite sides of the western ghats!

There’s this another escapade I’m not necessarily proud of. It was Wednesday and our last week in Calicut and we were out scouting the main city when we turned to a bar. We were utterly disappointed with the barman’s service and when a bumper of beer didn’t quite hit us both. It didn’t meet our principle of the service deserving its pay and we decided to flee from the room individually at an interval. Thakur was the first to go out and I dashed next after a while when the barman wasn’t around. One can argue us to be out of our minds for committing a crime but we found it fanatically fun then.