The Four and the Sea

Muzhappilangad beach is one of the best driving beaches in India. But driving at the beach causes a lot of environmental problems. The mollusks and crabs that washed ashore along with the waves are crushed under the wheels of the vehicles. Speed is just another thing that fascinates people apart from the waves and the healthy sea breeze. And speed is the only such thing that even being part of their unalterable fascinations, they can create and experiment with. So every one reaching the beach with a vehicle, be it an auto rickshaw, tests their speedometers at least once.

But the four were that day to explore the natural destination. We—Ajay Sangeeth, Adarsh, Chiyan, and I—were the four. We had been invited. Our invitee was a very special entity—nature. It is the rejuvenating natural beauty of the beach that lured us, pulled us, or in more ‘civilized’ terms invited us to that spot. But the fact was that none of us had any idea about what we were going to experience at the beach, except Sangeeth. Being the leader of the group, it was Sangeeth who arranged the trip. And he had a smirk when the other three in the group were baffled by the beauty of the place.

Sangeeth and I reached there by bus. Chiyan and Adarsh agreed to precede us riding Chiyan’s bike. From the highway there was a half kilometer walk to the beach. There was a pocket road connecting the beach and the highway. Sangeeth and I walked the road. The road was not in a good condition, as any one can expect in Kerala. We saw electric posts painted with the face of Cheguvera, the revolutionary. We also saw a cremation house—a place where dead bodies are cremated, as the Hindu religion suggests—something that verges every one of the beaches I visited in Kerala. What significance do beaches have for dead bodies?—I asked Sangeeeth. He smiled and said—The dead too must need a place to live. And we had a hearty laugh on that.

But slowly something was wrapping both of us tightly into its spell. We both realized it. And we knew Chiyan and Adarsh too might be under the same situation, because we had seen them a little further away standing beside the bike entirely drowned into that influence—the coconut palms, the grassy green ground lined by the gleaming white sand, the breeze, the hills at the distance, the distant small island, the dark rocks surfing eternally on the water, the waves that die over the rocks and disappear at the horizontal sand stretch—it was magic; it was nature in its magical charm that bewitched us. And it was then I manipulated the hypothesis of “invitation”: we were invited by nature. Yes we are—I said.

Chiyan had one thing to add to it—something that every one of us would love to cherish throughout. The sea reaches to our soul and opens its inner windows, right?—he asked. I said yes. The nature seemed blushing with the evening slant of the sun. It was beauty. It was rejuvenation. It was nature, all over, every where.