October 01, 2005

The Beach - Part 3

I used to always find the beach soothing. I had always felt that it was good for the psyche, it bought peace inside me, it was inspiring, it was liberation from the daily life, it was the best time I used to have. But this time, from the moment I reached there, I felt a void. The feeling was missing. As I sat there sipping beer, it occured to me that probably I hadn't spent too much time thinking about things, life had just been happening to me, and I was just watching it fly past. Maybe that was why the ocean could not do what it intended to, probably there was too much confusion, too much even for the huge ocean to satisfy. The answers weren't quite forthcoming, neither from the ocean nor form me, besides even the beer wasn't good.

I walked back to my bike, charmed and helpless. I had been cheated. And now that I started moving back, I felt an insatiable need for a home. I don't have a home, and I don't quite like going back to the place I am staying in. Two months back, it was this same need that had me looking to buy a new place. Time took it course and it finally occured to me that I wasn't really looking for a structure of bricks, or rooms full of people. It didn't really matter where I stayed. I have spent nights on the road, in my own city, when I didn't feel like going to anybody's place, not Sumit's, not Praveen's, not Ankur's, not anybody's, I just didn't know what I wanted.

Where there is a way in, there is always a way out. I looked at the beach, it looked like a giant screen, with just a few ships, standing still, which were insignificant in the water that surrounded them, but without it they did not have any significance, they were nothing without the sea, without the constant buzzing of the waves, without the clouds in the sky, and the birds above them and the fishes below them. The meaning of thier life was to exist in that place, forever. If I didn't have a home, them everyplace was my home. I had the freedom, the independence to call anything, anyplace, my home. For by definition, home is a place where you feel like home, and I did feel like that right here, and every where along the way, amongst the beautiful mountains, sitting in the rain, next to the river that followed. A warm wave of water hit my feet, and it suddenly came to me, that I had never left home. This is how I was born to be, I wasn't made for the walls or for the miling crowds, I was born to sit in peace, alone.