Laying in grief and struggling to get past her regrets, she opened her eyes after an un-calculated amount of time. Her eyes shrieked, failing to fight through the only thing that watched over her – the sun. But a meagre echo floating in the flaky winds provoked her to try again. Like tiny printer ink spots on a crisp white paper, she noticed a covey sprayed on a tract of the sky. Disturbingly falling and delicately rising in parabola curves, intimately playing catch-catch in ellipses, the flight of those birds arrested her attention and aroused a thought in her mind, ‘Would they come to help if I called them or would I have to fight this alone?’
The crust of her wheatish skin—now salmon-ish—had toasted, her reedy body had swollen, and her facial demeanour…well, that hadn’t changed so much. She was still her. A marketing executive employed by yet another multi-national corporation, ambitious about working her way upto sky-scrappers with glass panels and leaving the rented basement office where she currently sat in a typical caved cubicle—a pinboard trashed with post-its, a white company branded cup with coffee stains, mixed stationery, an ID and credit card deck and loose tampons stuffed in the drawer and an artificial plant adorning her desk—This was only a reflection of her identity. Her true identity though, one that captured her entire life, was reduced to a one page resume. An important document, however cramped with details, of degrees and diplomas, achievements and labels, the unsurprising stretch between birth and death. If only she had one with her now. Another one of her musings, ‘If they find my dead and decayed body, will they know who I am and all that I did?’
She’s alone and for now, a survivor. A survivor of an almost pleasant act of surfing gone wrong. She had taken to the waves on the wrong day, and had drifted away from the shore which was nowhere to be seen now. Just a branded orange coloured surfboard bang in the middle of an indifferent salty blue sea that was aimlessly oscillating with the wind as if going about its usual business without any regard for the unfortunate outsider. No wonder she couldn’t have escaped thinking, ‘Why me? What did I do to get stuck in this?’
It took most of her remaining energy to raise her hand and take a glance at her digital watch. It said, 1 PM. Low tide. She glanced again. It said, logging off. Low battery. She had been swinging in the sea since 7:27 AM when the high tide had kicked in and had hoped to return home by 9 AM, follow it up with a brunch at her favourite – Papa Joe’s, get a much-needed Thai spa and shop for some essentials at the Macy’s later. The day was supposed to end with an obligatory catch-up with a colleague from her previous organisation. This, she wasn’t so thrilled about for she dreaded listening about developments in other people’s lives—engagements, destination weddings, babies, job offers, soaring packages and what not—and she was ever in the same place, treading slowly ahead, building her resume piece by piece, line by line, detail by detail. ‘If only I could have made better decisions…’
By now, the persistent shiver of the sea had taken the form of the chatter of an unfixed radio frequency in her mind. Unfailingly wanting to turn it down and failing every time she wished it, she pressed hard to hum the lyrics of Bohemian Rhapsody and tried distracting herself. Her lips felt like concrete and were smeared with ashy salt yet she tried to curve them and hear her voice. What came out was certainly not hers. Hers was a plain–Jane, heavy after hangovers and clearer after coffee, just the usual. But hers was not arid, devoid of moisture in her vowels and crispy like deep fried spring rolls. No wonder she couldn’t process this situation. ‘Am I really stranded in the middle of the sea.’
In the back of her mind, the sudden disruption that changed—or rather almost ended—her life kept replaying on loop. She tethered to her surfboard, anticipating a wave like a hidden predator, approaching it with acceleration, meeting the wave and abruptly taking her stance…her heel slipping, her weight dislodged, the wave crushing her body, the sea engulfing her in a fraction of a second…It was like an unexpected mail dropping in at 4:45 PM on a Friday forcing her to cancel weekend plans and fight the urge to resign. Every weekend she’d escape from her job and all that held her back to spend some time in the sea. It was her idea of resurrecting a bond with nature. A bond that was only remembered on ‘Sundays.’ When she rode the waves on her surfboard, she felt like she owned it. She’d swim ferociously to show the other surfers her skills in fighting coastal currents, and when she’d hit the right crest, she’d jump on her surfboard cutting across the wave as it demolished behind her. Her favourite thing to do was to poke her hand in the wave’s body as if she was clapping hands and signing autographs with hordes of her fans. But today, as she insignificantly floated on the waves that rocked her almost dead body, she knew the ocean had told her about who owned who in a sincere, polite yet tragic manner. ‘How far is home?’
Drained of energy, drenched in salty water, and patiently rocking somewhere on the undeciphered map of blue waters, she thought about longitudes and latitudes. How much of those had she once crammed up for tests and yet it never came in handy. In fact all the constructs had now abandoned her. The sun was now reaching for the horizon. The sun sets in the west, so in her current stance, her head was pointing to the north. Cardinal directions that didn’t matter anymore. She raised herself and observed the distance left between the sun and horizon. A few hours till sunset, perhaps the last sunset of her life. She didn’t know if she’d be alive till morning. ‘What time is it?’
Her mother must have called her cell around 7 PM as she did everyday right after she came home from work. But the fact that there was no answer might have not raised any suspicion in her mother’s mind because she missed her mother’s call most times as she was running late. The time on her clock always ran faster than she could finish her targets, catch the 06:15 PM express bus to her home, prepare dinner, sleep off, wake up, eat breakfast, catch the 09:15 AM express bus to her office and finish her targets on time. Her life ran around the circumference of a clock and in a rhythm of tick-tocks. It was severely awkward and gravely ironic that now she had lost all sense of time. ‘What time is it?’
She was obsessed with time, probably because it helped her imagine life back at home. If she were back at home, what would she have been doing right now? It would have been time for the presentation she had been preparing all week long, it would have been time for her lunch date with the new guy in Human Resources, it would have been time for her to change her job, it would have been time to marry and have kids, it would have been time to redeem her fixed deposits, it would have been time to take retirement and travel through Europe. It would have been time. ‘What time is it?’
Gazing intently at the night sky, she tried to remember what she had learnt in geography class. ‘The big dipper and Polaris are circumpolar. That means they’re always above the horizon. If you lose your watch when you’re camping, use the stars as pinpricks of light of an astronomical clock with the Polaris in the center.’ Her ninth grade geography teacher’s voice swayed through her mind. But she had been more interested in the new boy who sat at approximately seven o’clock from her position. She faintly smiled, the first time since she got stranded. ‘That time is gone.’
It was fortunate, or unfortunate or nothing at all that she hadn’t died when the sun started peeking from the horizon. ‘How much time has passed since I was stranded here? How much more time before I peacefully die on my surfboard?’ She thought. She never woke up before 8:00 AM in the morning, at least since she graduated from college which was seven years ago. Now that she wasn’t awake or asleep, her life ruthlessly hanging on to her, her heart refusing to stop beating; she had to acknowledge that she was on Earth and that the mesmerising yet depressing shades of sunrise in the sky reminded her of the people she loved the most. The people who had no idea that she was dying. She hadn’t shown up at work and neither had she called in sick, perhaps someone might have tried checking up on her. But Monday and Wednesdays were scheduled for field visits, where she’d go out alone to survey consumer preferences and get insights on their upcoming marketing plans. By the time anyone notices that no one has heard from her and she’s really missing, she would have drifted further from the coast, or even died. ‘I wish I could have lived longer.’
She wasn’t ready for death. Her to-do list was long enough and her bucket list had not even started. Her electricity bills and rent, dreams and ambitions were written on the pending list stuck on the refrigerator. There was a wedding she wanted to attend and clothes that she had to buy, there was a course on philosophy she had wanted to do and her nephew’s christening she had to attend. She had a ton of problems but was facing them head-on, solving one thing at a time. The fact that her friends and foes had it better than her only inspired her to do better, achieve more, and aim for something big. When they made happy announcements on social media while she scrolled through them in transit, she consoled herself in many ways. ‘I’ll focus on my career and when it’s the right time, I’ll find love too…she’s just had it earlier than me, and I’ll have the same or better sooner or later…’ She had wanted time, but time had disowned her. She had respected time, but time had played her. She had understood the construct of time and how to read it, remember it, value it, preserve it, use it, waste it, spend it…but time had escaped her. She wanted to finish the anticipation now. She had wanted nothing to do with more time. She was ready to die.‘What is time?’
She raised herself again and stared through the sea. Flat yet deep, rippled yet still, contained yet formless, endless yet edge to edge, known yet misunderstood…all she could think of was time. ‘Is time a chronological, horizontal, linear line that your life is measured by? Or is it a cyclical process of life and death, birth and rebirth as the scriptures say? Is time just memories? Is it just another construct of human beings? Is it nothing at all or is it well beyond our imagination?’
No answers. The waves stay silent; the winds are calm.
‘Perhaps there is no past, no present, no future. Perhaps you’re passing through time. Perhaps time is passing through you. Perhaps it is as eternal and endless as this sea. Widest, deepest, beyond human reach, beyond human understanding. Perhaps we don’t know time but time knows us.’
No answers. The wisdom stays concealed.
She laid still, the waves motioned her back and forth.
Her vision had started blurring. The light of the sun that blared in her eyes started flickering. She had swallowed a lot of salt water that made her hallucinate till the sun vanished from the sky. Her thoughts slowly started to fade away, but life persisted in her in a mumbled-jumbled manner. She kept drifting with the waves.
By nightfall, she was thinking of anything and everything. The time she had adopted her father, and the time that she attended her dog’s retirement party. The time she received her first cheesecake and the time she ate her first pay-check. 9131 was the code to the locker where her milk teeth were kept, her silverware was hidden under the bed, and that some emergency money and her insurance papers were in the kitchen cabinet. She tried hard to press enter and send an email that was a minute away from the deadline but the email didn’t go through. She tried closing the tap of her shower but it kept wetting her. She constantly tried to blow out the candle on the cake at her fifth birthday but it kept rekindling. All the people in the party kept waiting for her to blow it off but the flame kept burning. The sky was dark, the people were tired now, they were ready to go home. But she wasn’t ready to let them go. She kept blowing the candle but cutting through the darkness the candle kept switching on and off. She now felt her mind switching on and off. Her memories were dying; her time was up. The candle switched on and off. On and off. On and off. Her mind switched on and off. Off. Off. Off.
“Mormugao south-east lighthouse post reporting stranded person. Position two o’clock from the lighthouse” said the watchman.
When they found her, her heart was still beating.