The Way the Sea Looks at Me

I curled my toes toes in the cold, monsoon fed seawater as my feet waddled gently against the rising tide. The sun was about to set through the violet water into the ominous deeps of the Andaman Sea, crashing down below drowned land bridges and coral reefs, facing whales that covered the moon and the stars, and finding its warmth dilated from the luminosity of the squids and other aquatic life.

There were grey clouds trailing the wind in the sky, crossing countries and borders, fishing villages and old uninhabited settlements in the Andaman and Nicobar island archipelago. Most of them where small and lifeless, many were perilous.

I remember the afternoon with my father, when we had been thrown off course by a rogue wave, and had witnessed men and women dressed like Neanderthals, wearing no attires and climbing trees and hooting us away while the sun beat their leathery skin. I remember looking at father’s jaw and the back of his neck as he faced them, expressionless in his body movements as I sat behind him paddling away to our home island.

I have lived on Blair Island all my life, and I know every tree and every turn of the road. I know the people, what they like, what food they loved to eat and which drink to share, I even know their problems, ranging from spousal dispute to the claiming of lucky carbs and tiger sharks.

Even before my limbs were fully formed to take on the treacherous tide of the Andaman, I had been swimming off the coast to the end of the archipelago, below the islands and across my Nation to other seafaring communities.  

But tonight, I stayed close to home and my feet look dense in the seawater, while the little seashells swirl back and forth from the deep towards the shore. I took care not to disturb or touch them, as he was taught through generations of learning. They were red and black, pink and bruisy purple. Little needle fishes scoured my legside as if it were a reef and began consulting their colonies, returning with larger ones.

Even as I was distracted by the loud wind from across the harbor, I found my hands dipped in the brisk, shallow sand and buried my face in them, unable to process the problems that I had to face in the coming weeks. The coarse grains rubbed against my skin and fell down to my lap, only to be washed away by the ocean now that the tide had reached the beach end, just as the question of my familial tradition will tomorrow.

Every year, before the water level rises in and after April, two members of my family would pack up goods and material in our timber wood boat, and leave the island to fish for three days. They would circle the entire Andaman archipelago of three hundred islands with silky caramel beaches and coconut trees hanging low above the ground. The boat would be given a bamboo and banana shelter with neem leaves on the top so that the structure doesn’t crumple with the heat.

Before setting off, the boat was repaired and painted in a celebrated festival where all the members would take part in a single vision of the vessel by the elder in the family. It used to be a blue whale cresting through the water in the afternoon sun, then a tiger leaping into the water, as if trying to attack the fish through intimidation like it does on land. During the Independence era it simply used to be the Indian flag, but with half of it submerged in the Andaman sea, onlookers were often confused of a disgruntled dark-skinned fisherman’s nationality.

My father had painted the boat light blue along the entire length of the nine feet vessel, with my mother’s eyes facing the broad inviting ocean. Her eyes were large, expressive and kind even when my father used to return home at times with no catch. She was strong in a silent way, never speaking a word out of order and never loosing her calm. Once, when her husband was sick, she went out to the sea in the morning and had two trunks full of catch in her arms, yelling from the dock to have the neighbors help her, since I was too little to help.

I remember that day well, it lived in the emotions I felt and how warm the sand was and how sweet the coconuts were from his neighbor’s farm. My throat was dry from being up beside my old man, wiping the sweat away and reading from the newspaper, discussing the discourse between Sri Lankan fishing authorities and Indian Fishermen.

He was a passionate man, passionate in everything he set his eyes on. He knew how to tie every type of knot, having learnt them from the Indian Navy sailors that he would invite to dinner at his house, feeding them the best rice and seaweed, fish and beer he had in our house. They would respectfully eat in the kitchen with all of us, with the single yellow bulb lighting the smiles and the hands full of food made for guests in utensils that were rarely brought out to the open.

When everyone had slept, they would walk out to the beach, barefoot and hands full of chilled beer and I would lay on my belly, full of warm food, my throat calm with the cold water, and open the window beside my cot to the salty sea wind and see them laughing and talking, reveling in the view quietly and dragging the tired ones out to the sea at the expense of their sleep.

They were the quietest when the moon was out, when there were no clouds and the sea was silent, as the fish would look up to the moon, and the sailors would stay awake as long as possible to write to their wives and daughters, fathers and brothers about how friendship brought them boundless peace in the youth of their lives. They were sedulous to our family, offering to pay us for our hospitality and sharing the Indian tradition of laughing when refused, having known it would happen.

My obeisance to my father will always be infinite. As is the sea to the tuna and as is the comet to the moon.  

But even before he had passed away, I had chosen to leave the island for mainland India. Seeing how the sailors spoke and interacted with their work, I was made aware of how simple my life was and how humble and uncomplicated the lives of my forefather’s were, having been separated from destiny and struggle for so long. Their minds and faces relaxed like the morning tide, having known no troubles other than a dry day without catch or the impending doom of a tsunami that never came.

I had planned on leaving for Pondicherry, another seaward town on the Eastern Coast of India, famous for her beauty and exposure to tourists, and their culture. The way my father had adapted and molded his mind with the knowledge given to him, Pondicherry had shifted its axis and leaned over to Europe, while fastidiously retaining her Indian roots. The zoos and the eateries were modelled after French institutions, with the fusion of a sea town in south India.

There were establishments there that could make use of my exposure and experience in fishing in rough seas, so that I could provide to high priced hoteliers and restaurants with a fee capped by me. It was ambitious for a Blair Island boy and I would have to learn and adapt with the cunningness and underhanded business that was prevalent there, but none of it was harder than telling my father that I would have to go and leave him alone.

Tomorrow would be the day that we would go out to the sea and spend the days bonding in the close confines of a nine-foot boat above the Indian Ocean, as our tired forearms made us speak casually as never before. We would laugh and work together, pull against determined sardines and mackerels. We would gaze out to the open ocean in the lonely hours at night, when it was just us and the aquatic kingdom below.

That stillness was ornamental to my collection of memories. It had an animalistic sensation to it, being out in the exposed, with no security but the dependence of father on son and son on his dutiful father. We had never seen a dolphin crest in those waters but if we had, I would still mean less to me then seeing my father snore as I watch over him and the moon brightens the kind wrinkles at the end of his eyes.

And now, I am facing the sea myself, as she questions my choices. Breaking the promise to my forefathers, and to the sea herself, leaving my home for another. The sea looks different now, foreboding and oppressive in a friendly manner. As if someone close to you who is trying to tell you something without having to speak the words to say it. I remember my mother mentioning how I could set another tradition for my descendants, how they would earnestly follow my path and revel the times they share with their elders and sons.

But it would also mean that my father’s traditions would get completely exterminated, forgotten as the broken floorboards of a drowned ship, floating endlessly at the whim of the tides without expression or hope of being reunited with her ship. It would travel to the ends of the earth and people would name it different names, as the saltwater disintegrates the scratches and the footmarks on it.

The waves tilted towards me and the trees to my flanks moved with the wind gave expressions of concerns and familial solidarity, but I felt guilty. I had asked myself questions like this before, when the idea took seed in my mind, but I wasn’t wise then. In the years after, I had learnt from my mother, from the sea and from the way the villagers treat each other.

When I come back, will the water change its colors to me? Will the

sea breeze get saltier and the sun find itself too harsh? Or would it welcome me as I would welcome her? Tears roll down my sand crusted cheeks as I find the sun submerged into the unknown abyss, leaving me unsure of my place in a world where I would not share the silences I treasured with my father.