weekends by the beach

the sea is a beast that can yawn and swallow you whole at 2 am if you happen to look the other way. i realised it could at 2 am on sunday morning, on a french balcony, at a resort on a hill, overlooking the wide expanse of the arabian sea at kashid. behind me, in the quiet, ash-grey interiors of the room, lay an executive producer from a youth channel, his girlfriend, and the ceo of a bpo-outfit. i, the boy who works with journalists, comfortably alone on the outside, sipped vodka, letting the ash from my cigarettes fall softly, noiselessly in the dark.

around, like a blue-black bowl, lay the horizon. the sea moaned like a woman does, when you find the spot that moves her most. it was so quiet you could hear the people behind me breathe, which made the sea's moaning seem all the more riotous. down by the beach, the trees whistled to themselves, much as they had all that day, undisturbed by the truckloads of obese women that bring their obese children to the beaches of bombay, forcing fruit into their many gaping mouths and talking about crises that beset the denizens of tv soap-land.

maybe in a fit of pleasure, i thought, the sea would swallow them whole, turning them to silt, only glistening knives and slowly rotting pieces of fruit betraying the fact that they ever lived. the thought made me smile slowly, as thoughts are sometimes wont to do when you think them for yourself alone and assume no one’s listening in.

behind me, my friends slept. insects hummed. i stood tall, quiet, cigarette glowing bright orange, staring out into the blue-black, dead sober with half a bottle of vodka inside me. grinding the remains into the ashtray, i headed for the room. sleep came quickly. outside, the sea went back to moaning. moaning until morning.