The Red Coastline

So there we were sitting on a grassy cliff staring down at little puddles on the grey black sand.They could be large quick sands but from a height they looked like puddles made of rain.But there was no rain, only a strong breeze, the kind the Arabian sea is proud of.The sun was setting, or the earth was turning away.Only our jagged nerves remained. We had fashioned ourselves as two runaways who wanted to sit on a new, cheap straw mat.A luxury city sidewalk denied us.And so we two were on a bus to a beach hundreds of miles to the west.Now this place held no promises.It had seen a serpentine queue of people, things, songs, trash and pigs come ashore for half a century, all seeking some imaginary promise. Apart from the music the sea waves made, I could attribute nothing else to the magnetic field of this red coastline.

There is a tsunami coming.

My dilated pupils and jagged nerves proclaimed. The coconut trees were being pushed away from the beach by a strong breeze and the fear of the large puddles being quick sands kept us rooted to the grassy cliff. With every penny donated to our man Jackson’s pockets, sitting on a purple mat, while our brown one stood against a green wall, we only had the sunset.

Tsunamis don’t come here.

We walked for sometime and sat at a juice bar.The juice bar man put down two cold beers in front of our dilated pupils.There was so much disdain in our pupils and so much fear of the tsunami in our nerves that one opened one beer. Then decided there was no money. So two just sat there doing nothing. Only laughing.The straw mat was gone.The sun and the rain, both were gone.

I saw you girls at the beach carrying a mat over your heads.Do you sell them?

One said something about students and poverty and films and the sun.And the juice bar man announced with ancient authority.

Money, no problem. Party, no problem.

We were walking down thin winding roads with two warm beers, trying to follow zipping two wheelers’ in the direction of a huge shaft of light zipping across the black sky. He must have watched that serpentine queue come from across seas, canals, continents and cities carrying their big lights and dilated pupils.Earlier in the day, the two had sat on a beach infested with bodies and beers, with the straw mat under their backsides.After ten minutes the two had once again started the trek down this red coastline searching for another hit, another excuse, another wave, another sky, another tsunami which never came that night.