Maldives: Day Three

I was going to sunbathe after breakfast, but it rained. I went out, sat on a deck-chair, and glared at the sky as a raincloud smugly floated over the island, settled there, and began to piss it down. It's all windy now, and I'm sitting in the bar/coffee shop, wanting a drink (but it's barely 10am).
At least I am alone here.
I hope it's still summer in Bombay when I get back. I need me some blaze.
Ah, Bombay. The place, polar opposite of this blue-ness, has become a faint memory. But the people have not.

LET THERE BE SUN! No? Okay.

I am cloud-bathing and lady-gazing. Dammit. More drizzles. Walking on the shore, I saw two confused baby sharks and a stingray. Yes, a stingray! This is before I even got into the water. 

Maldives: Day Two.

(Written at breakfast)

I want to photograph all these lovely women. One who looks and walks like a supermodel, who just took her dress off outside the restaurant and sauntered off in a bustier blue bikini. She's stick-thin, and she's with a man who, honestly, resembles a potato.
Then the impossibly tall, athletic, blonde girl who just walked in. I'm sure she swims. She's one of the few non-couples here.
Too many pretty people here. Most are golden-haired. I think we're the only Indians. This particular island is no gujju family vacation spot, looks like.

Today we take a Male tour.

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(Written in evening)

Male is a small city, all narrow lanes and two-wheelers. I got myself a shark-tooth.

Dear R,
Today, I went diving. Scuba diving, with an instructor. And. It was everything you said. Visibility wasn't perfect, but still. I had to watch a video, learn how to clean the mask, equalise and regulate and then, holding an instructor very firmly by the hand, breathing deep, focusing on not panicking...down. No sound except the zombie-like (ir Darth Vader-esque) exhalation. Surrounded by the blue of a badly-made block of glass. Glide over coral. A very trippy giant clam that shut as we approached. Anemones and anemone fish. Parrotfish and angelfish. A slight dizziness. And now I am blissed out. I can hardly swim, and I went scuba diving. WOW. 

Maldives: Day One.

These posts have been long overdue, from the journal and photos of my week-long Maldives trip last month. I decided to make them letters instead of a random ramble. So.
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Dear J,
You'd absolutely LOVE it here. Blinding white sand, superlatively blue water, a beautiful hue even when it's cloudy. It's a teeny island. Mum was rather unnerved bu the fact that one of the walls of our shower stall in the bathroom was glass. One-way glass, but you can see the sun-deck and the ocean.

The people who are staying on this island, I have divided into three categories: Honeymooning couples, water-sport couples, retired couples. So basically, couples. I've seen only one child. I've been people-watching and swimsuit watching. 

Dear N,

It's so beautiful, I wouldn't mind dying here. I really wouldn't. I'm going to put the camera to good use. 

Dear A,

Here is silence. Here. 

You should come here sometime. Alone. Also, the breakfast buffet had waffles. 

It is going to be a week's worth of silence here. I hope it does not shatter completely when I get back to grey Bombay. 

Hobby

A secret? Okay, okay. If you insist.

So I was flying back to Bombay from London, a good long nine-hour flight. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows had just come out. I'd bought the book the day before and painstakingly managed to resist opening it until I got onto the plane. I gazed at the cover art for sereval minutes, running my fingers over the hard spine, and finally opened the tome as the flight took off.
Three chapters into it, the man on my right spoke.
"So, flying to Bombay, eh?"
Aha. An annoying Indian uncle trying to make new friends.
"Yes." I mutter, nose deep in my book.
"Came to visit boyfriend in London? Heh-heh."
"No." A page turns.
And so it went on, my nerves shredding finer with every word he spoke. He was even chattier after the air hostess brought him his drink. ("Oh you don't know what a patiala peg is? Arrey you've obviously never been to Delhi then. Let me pour you one?)
                                                                      *****
The plane was dark. Everyone slept. Everyone except me. My reading light was the only one on, my mind was in the Ministry of Magic...
"So, you like to read?"
...and I'm snapped out of it, back in a too-small seat with no legroom.
"Obviously." Irritated fingers tap the spine of the book.
"It's a good hobby," he said, settling back into his seat.

My head snapped right to look at him for the first time, hatred in my eyes.
                                                                   *****
The rest of the night went quite peacefully. I even managed to finish the book.
"He's asleep," I told an air-hostess while exiting the plane. I pointed at the uncle-ji, his head slumped down, shawl-covered. "Do wake him. I didn't have the heart to."
As I stepped out into the humid Bombay air, I inspected my book.
I'm just glad I didn't get any of his blood on it.
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Fiction. But I do loathe the word 'hobby'. Reading is not a 'hobby'. No.

How to get over writer's block.

Somewhere, in the multiverse that is your mind, there is a floating graveyard. stretching out towards towards the horizon. It is a dark place, but then most graveyards are. Push open the gates, listen to them creak gloomily. Walk in.

Meander among the headstones, reading inscriptions. Here lies the first realisation of sin. There, a fallen god, long forgotten. Here are notions, ideas. What could have been, but never was. Designs, stories, machines. Concepts. A child that was never conceived, but sorely wanted. A dress pattern that didn't work, a screenplay that was never written, a movie that was never made.
Touch a gravestone. Feel its cracks. Stand before it and hear the ghost of an idea whisper your name. Take out of your pocket the notebook you always carry (you know you do). Now, with the ghost in your mind, write.

I do like my black and white.

...and my beer. But not Heineken.

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I haven't written anything in almost a month. Quite frankly? I'm out of ideas. Very much so. 

Halfway.

One day, he finally snapped.

He was tired. Tired of trying so hard not to mope. (For other people’s sakes more than his own. If it was up to him, he’d settle into a seat with a drink and glare at the universe till the end of eternity.) Tired of being the one at parties with the blazing eyes and the sad smiles. Tired of having to remove himself from company so he didn’t upset the ones who loved and worried about him. But most of all, he could not anymore handle being around his girlfriend (he couldn’t bring himself to think of her as his ex, no, not even six months later) who 

would not have him back.

So he left.

He packed everything he truly needed into a small backpack. Many books to read, a notebook to write in, a pen to write with, and music to save him. A photo of her.

He walked. For hours, days, he didn’t know. He walked till he had run out of thoughts. That was when he saw the house.

The sign on the gate said ‘Here live those whom love hath taken away’. He looked at it for a long time. Observed the quaint little garden, the empty swing, the shed. Then he entered the house.

Around a table sat people young and old, sharing stories. Memories. Remnants of souls wrung dry.

“I’m here because I can’t be anywhere else. Back there, all I think of is her, after she…she died. This is the only place I can sleep. I’ve been here so long…nothing matters anymore.” Grizzled old man, hands shaking.

“She filed for divorce. I got fed up of all the sympathy, the worried looks. Fuck that,” says another.

A photo thrown onto the table. The thrower sits in a corner, a seeming poster-child for the starved and the gender confused. “She killed herself.” Throaty voice, barely female. “She slit her wrists because her family wouldn’t let us be together. She just too the easy way out, didn’t she? Didn’t wonder what I’d have to do. What I can’t do.”

There is anger in the room. There is grief. There are memories, craved for, never to come back. There is yearning. There is love.

There is acceptance that comes only when you know everyone here’s hit bottom just as hard as you have.

He swings his bag to the floor and settles into a chair.

He’s home. 

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Extra points to you if you get the 'poster-child for the starved and the gender confused' reference.

Written...a few days after the last karaoke night. Possibly for someone I'll never actually show it to.