Tellicherry is my hometown…and a place I hold
closest to my heart. As a child, I would spend my vacations in this quaint
little town- a peculiar mix of tropical wilderness, agrarian life and remnants
of an era of British occupancy.
Tellicherry represented to me a place where man and
nature cherished a close association. To me, the place was a kaleidoscope of
raw, unadulterated images of nature at its richest. Farms and fields, groves and
pastures, ponds and rivers, water-lilies and storks, ducks and geese, cows and
poultry, birds and butterflies- it was a place where nature enveloped you in
its caress…. a place where you could see the sights and hear the sounds of
nature. One saw the sky and the trees; one heard the rustling of leaves, the
gurgling of streams and the crashing of waves.
As a
child, I would hold monologues with nature. Nature was my silent companion. The
emotions within me were often cascades that were hard to contain, but I would
never express it to my parents. I was aware that there was something
extraordinary about my emotions that my parents wouldn’t understand. And so, I
would talk to the elements of nature- the sun, trees, streams and the sea. They
would come alive in my mind. I liked to imagine that they listened and they
understood. And so, we shared this delicious secret between us- this ability to
understand each other. It was a secret I loved and treasured.
Of them
all, the sea was most alive to me- perhaps because it was infinite and deep. It
seemed capable of containing my secrets.
The sea was the hallmark of this little town. It is a wonderful feeling to live in
a coastal town, where you get to drive past the sea every
single day.
This was exciting to me as a child…and it still is. It was the sea I loved.
I loved Tellicherry so deeply that I always feared losing it to time. Being
someone who never welcomed change when it came to the beautiful things in life,
I was miserable at the subtle changes that seemed to erode the beauty of my
hometown every year. In that regard, the sea was a reassurance. Its permanence
was reassuring. I liked to think that despite the passage of time, despite
transformations in my own self and in the town I loved, the sea was eternal. It
would always stretch out infinitely, taking me back to those emotions from my
childhood that I never wished to let go off.
As a child,
I have spent many evenings at ‘Sea View Park’. In those days, the park was dull,
with rusted swings and seesaws. I would never tire of watching the
waves crash on the rocks….of watching fishing boats in deep waters of the sea, bobbing
dangerously with the tide…of waiting for the arrival of dusk, when the sun
would bid goodbye to the world in a most spectacular sunset. To me, no two
sunsets were the same. It was
an unforgettable slideshow of canvases from nature’s palette, splashing vividly
onto the sky the
richest of colors-from the red
hue of sunset to the deep black of the
night.
I liked to wonder about what lands lay at the other
end of this Arabian sea. I once scribbled a note- ‘I love Tellicherry’, put it
into a bottle and flung it into the sea when nobody was watching. I liked to
think that even when I was dead, I would leave behind my love for Tellicherry
on this planet.
Sea View Park has now been renovated. It is a
beautiful park now, but it is the view of the sea which continues to fascinate
me. I once went to the park with my father. The swings were all new. I played
on the swing- the only adult amidst all the kids who were playing. But my father did not stop me. I could only
see the sky above and the sea below…it was like swinging between them. The sea
was in a dark mood that evening- a dark serpent against an overcast sky. The
sunset was obscured. I had known this was my father’s last time. Today, he is
also one of the numerous elements of nature that I communicate to…all the time.
Today, these monologues are no longer a secret. My
mother knows. But then, she herself has learnt to talk to nature. It fills the
void in her life in ways that no human being could. Today, I am not embarrassed
about these monologues…this extraordinariness of my emotions. The ability to
talk to nature…to listen to it…to feel one with it- I know it is a gift that
God gave me. And it is the greatest source of happiness and inspiration in my
life.
