Towards 22 on 22! - Tick :) - Mission 1 - Task 8
It has been ages since I made the
resolution of waking up early every morning, though I can at times, once in 2
or 3 days... today morning was an exception. The original plan was to stay awake
all night, but well, as sleep invited me I had to succumb to its call...
“Wake up, wake up” rang Lydia’s
voice in my ears, (‘Lydia’ means some ‘Flower’ in some language, and hence is
translated to ‘Poo’ in Tamil). As Poo kept singing into my ears “Wake up its
4.30”, I just wished that the dream would come to a happy ending; I was trying
to pull the blanket over my head and hugging my pillow tight. “Let’s go to ‘Dha
Beach’ (‘the beach’), there! I lost my sleep, and I forgot what I was dreaming
about. That happens quite often right? when you are so engrossed in the dream,
and when actually living it, something happens in real life and the dream is
completely forgotten. But the impact of the dream remains. When I wake up
panicking I interpret it ought to be a ghost dream, when sober it would have
been an emotional dream, and today I woke up all smiles..
In less than a minute I was up
and brushing my teeth, trying to protect my legs from the mosquitos I performed
an on the spot march in front of the basin. Poo next to me brushing understood
that to be a break dance, and we performed the dance/ the march with perfect synchronization
and hurried to dress up. My body being overly pampered needed a lot of
clothing! Sweaters, a pair of sock and jeans! No sooner we left, Jagriti
(Jaggy), Parisha (Roomie), Poo and myself..
Pleasing our spirits with a hot
cup of tea at the regular tea shop we started. Stopping the moving bus at the
middle of the road, and getting down at the signal we were ready for the day’s
adventure. After taking an auto to besant nagar, and seating ourselves comfortably for the 90Rs
journey, is when I realized I had forgotten my mufflers! For the next 20mins I travelled like the Kikazaru
of the three wise monkeys!
Reaching the destination, we
walked down to the beach. The sky and ocean dark, morning star Venus clearly
visible, few others stars that I obviously don’t recognize and the moon in the
western sky.
There I was, standing, waiting to
see the sunrise for the first time in my life.
The brisk boat men set their boats into the vast
Bay of Bengal like they owned the seas.. Or rather they believe they do. I felt
envy , for they would race me to catch the glimpse of the sun at least a few
seconds before I could. I laughed at my sense of Geography, and the spherical
structure of the Earth.
Nostalgia dragged me back to
class 5 to a question a friend had asked. “Ma’am, why do we spend so much on
air tickets? Wouldn’t it be just simple to blow a helium or hydrogen balloon,
(Thanks to the Chemistry teacher for making us understand that these gases
weigh light) tie ourselves to it, reach high up, and when the earth rotates ,we’d
see the US down, burst the balloon so we land right down on US. There was an
extended debate between the teacher and us, where all we 10 year olds were
trying to prove our teacher and the whole world wrong. I smiled at the distance
memory.
To an exquisite colour of blue changed the eastern sky. At the horizon, it was a shade of white, and then blue and up above pitch dark… the stars still visible..
Poo and myself sat on the beach, listening to the sounds of the waves lapping on the shore, while Jaggy and Roomie went on to play.
Minutes passed, about 30
minutes..
To me, the changing colors were like a mimic of a melodrama. Sophisticated is the creation of God.
From a darker blue, to a light blue then to a whitish blue, the dawn broke. First changing the horizon to a dull yellow… and a patch of orange later on..
When intrigued what’s beyond the horizon, I concentrated on the line that divided the ocean and the sky , the vision captivated me. At that moment it felt like the ocean and the sky was frozen into one frame, What I saw , in simple words, was a moving picture. Try it, words won’t do to explain it..,
Waiting there at that stage for
ten minutes did make me lose my patience. I saw clouds at the horizon. The
clouds were brighter now, Venus duller, the setting moon had traveled farther
west.
“Maybe a cloudy day” I thought. I
tried convincing myself that this isn’t the last day that the sun would rise, I
could come anytime, on a non-cloudy day, after checking the weather report, and
that I could still see the sunrise.
What I saw then had absolutely
dumbfounded me.
Just words wouldn’t suffice to
express my emotions at that point. Seconds before the sun was out, the clouds
on the east sky was a perfect silhouette of dark orange, anytime in the past I could
have merely envisioned it as a painting by an expert artist. There, in front of
me was God’s own painting. Never have I seen such an orange sky..
What I first saw was an orange
dot on the far horizon, slowly the dot grew bigger. It rose as a red ball of
fire, fresh, out of the deep oceans. Pure, unabridged, perfect circle, with an
unique distribution of the colors, red at the periphery, to orange and to
yellow at the core. As I stood there awestruck the sun slowly rose, to lighten
up the Earth. The stars disappeared, the moons brightness became immaterial, the
sky brightened with life, and a cock-a-doodle-do of a cock somewhere far away..
The boats vanished beyond the
horizon. The boatmen were Voyagers indeed..
The sun’s rays shimmered through
the Bay of Bengal, I never knew the colour orange would fascinate me, it has
always been one of my least favorite colors. Enchanted I felt looking at the
reflection of the lights on the vast ocean. The orange beam that directed at
me, stuck me in my eye, revealing the brownish tinge of my eyelashes. Allured I
felt. “That’s life” Dad would say..
Frozen in memory,
this would stand, for days to come, as the first sun rise I ever saw..
