Sea, within and beyond

a love letter to kadal

Dear you,

How’s your heart been?

In my first memory of the sea, I am scared. I am small, maybe four, and the sea roars from a coarse brown stretch of sand away. I peek at Jolly aunty from behind amma’s olive green dupatta. She laughed in loud ripples as amma pause midway through her story to laugh along with her.  

I am hiding from my father’s ask to join him, his friend – Jolly aunty’s husband who laughed in short bellows -, and my Kannanchetan. They go ahead towards the shore leaving the three of us close to where the sand depletes to concrete. Sun pours light down at us from amidst a swirl of clouds. Salty wind drapes the dupatta around me and from beyond my cocoon, I listen to amma continue her story.

I don’t remember when I stopped being afraid of the sea. I remember only what came after I fell in love with it. I got most attached to kadal when I was almost about to leave the city I grew up in, and when kadal and love had become synonyms of Shanghumugham beach.

I am from Thironthoram; Thiruvananthapuram if you must and Trivandrum if you wish to.  Among the many beaches that lined its coast, I love Shanghumugham the most. An everyday beach. Not fancy, not The Cool Touristy Beaches from reels. It belongs to you, and you belong to it. Shanghumugham is that little stretch of sand where sea meets everyone who run to it for bite-sized sachets of peace, pleasure, fun, kites, kappalandi and romance.

The beach you’d want to take your people to without any pressures, just like you cook dal chawal for the ones who you open your heart and house to. A meal you cook when you feel at home and want to make someone feel at home.

Well, at least it was before Adani drilled into the heart of the ocean and looted the beaches, lives and livelihoods that thrived along the coast. Shanghumugham yet waits patiently for everyone who comes seeking a little respite.

It is where I meet with people whom I love. Or want to love. Or would like to be loved by. It is my somewhere I return to every time I want to feel at home. It used to be fourth on my list of reasons to travel to Trivandrum, until the loss of someone who held the second place on the list. Shanghumugham is how I came to love kadal everywhere.

instructions on praying; a screenshot from an old lover

It is been ten years since I moved away- ten years of living in beach-less cities drowning in smog. Ten years of crying-saying various versions of “I want kadal” in various tones to various people. Ten years of balking at the khissa-pita joke “why don’t you fill water in a bucket and dip your feet in it to fill the sea-shaped void in your heart?”

I didn’t, of course, but I did learn to tune in to a little sea I carry in my heart – every time I quietened my head, I heard waves whispering – you belong.

It is been 6 years since I laid out my heart over text to an almost lover-almost friend, too scared to say it out loud, too scared to let the dust of the words settle in my being - “I don’t hear the waves anymore”.

The grief bent me – untethered, carrying the weight of unbelonging, I hobbled through days and cried through nights. Admission of this intangible loss meant that I couldn’t pretend anymore; I couldn’t go on betraying myself; I needed to find a way back home to myself. Back then, all I wanted was to retrace my path through daysweeksmonthsyears, find that exact beat of moment where the sea within me went quiet. That would lead me to the person I was before, I told myself.

It is funny that grief and healing is often likened to waves – constantly moving, rising and falling. I should’ve taken that hint and let go of the hope for a fullstop-seeming solution. But we learn as we will to learn, and I tried and failed and broke my heart failing and when I couldn’t break anymore, I gave up. The sea within me was added to the running-laundry list of losses that manspread across my brain. When a list is long enough it tends to lose shape, you tend to lose track. You forget the why-s of love.

One grey afternoon at Shanghumugham, I sat down on the shore, hot sand prickling my bum, and opened my notebook to make a list. Why did it mean so much to me – this beach, kadal?

• It is where I feel closest to amma – pestering her to come along to the beach (informing my father, not seeking permission), letting her lean on to me as we walk towards something I loved with all my being, sinking our fingers into each other’s palms, holding. Laughter gurgles out of us, turning us into mirrors that reflect each other.

• It is where father attempts to show that he knows and loves me.

• It is where Kannan Chetan gifts me with softest forehead kisses. He likes being at the beach. He hates it if he’s not wearing appropriate clothes for it. He demands someone (me) roll up his pants to his knees, hold him, let him take hold of you with all his might when he feels unsure of his balance, and that I do not stray too-close (in his scale of fear) to the water.

• It is where I first felt the pleasure of loitering; where I encountered everydayness of freedom, intimacy of being among women and joys of being unaccompanied/with men. Everyday countless people commute to Trivandrum from the suburbs and nearby districts for work, sarkaari/bureaucratic errands/exams and many things else. I often end up at the beach late afternoon, taking the direct bus to Shanghumugham along with women and girls who steal time for themselves before they catch the train/superfast buses back home. They walk along the shore, push and run towards and from each other in mirth, chew on groundnuts, let their sarees flutter carelessly, and not let their dupattas tie them to shame. They spread dupattas or towels or newspapers on the shore and lie on their backs, and do not keep their voices down. Sometimes we share a smile, exchange a word here, a look there.

• It is where I have felt together – loved, connected to the gentlest parts of everything and everyone that makes up this world. Where it felt easier to give myself the permission to just be.

Tears rain out of me, and in the blur of grey light and blue water I see a bottle being held out to me. I sniff, removes my glasses and squint at the woman who asks nothing, offers me water, and sits with me.

I carry seas with me now – in my tattoo of waves under a sky studded with stars and a crescent moon on my right forearm; in music, in every word I write and every story I tell, in videos people send me from beaches, in people who offer me grace and love.

Tell me, you, what is your sea-story?