Resonance

“It’ll take around an hour”, said my driver kicking on the tire of his minivan, cursing his luck. If this were the beginning of a movie, I would've named it ‘omen of the ghost town’.
We’d covered more than half the distance from Rameswaram to Dhanushkodi. So I decided to take a walk instead of waiting for my driver to finish his task. But my smart co-traveler Christy decided to stay back. Five minutes into the road and yes, she did make the right choice. To walk through the deserted roads of Rameswaram in the scorching temperature of April wasn’t the wisest of decisions. After a few more minutes of trudging I started to see the remnants of the forgotten city. I gazed onto a huge, heavily rusted metal part which resembled the wheel of a locomotive. Another kilometer or so, the road ended with a small check post. One of the guards came over and asked me to return before 5pm, in a voice very loud so as to announce his presence half a mile away. But he did make a point, though. When I looked around I couldn’t find anything even remotely related to Faraday or Edison.
My onward journey was through the seashore. I took a small diversion and reached a half collapsed building with some refreshment stalls in front of it. I couldn’t resist myself from having a glass of refreshing Sharbath from one of the stalls. The lady who was preparing it, didn’t hesitate to tell me about the building which used to be a railway station. I interacted more with the lady who lives in a small hut nearby with his 9 year old son. Her husband was a fisherman who is currently imprisoned by the Srilankan Govt. After a short but interesting chat, I asked her the way to the church and moved on. The mere first sight of the church gave an orgasm to the photographer in me. But I couldn’t let the red old fortress carve much of my time.
Finally, I reached the end point of Dhanushkodi, which was a serene blue beach. Apart from me there were a couple of families and a group of SUV enthusiasts roaming around. After a while all of them left, leaving me all alone in the shores of a ghost town. I walked into the sea about 200 meters from the shore and the water level never crossed my hip. I came back and sat down at the shore totally hypnotized in the aura of some unknown force. Where history meets mythology. That was the best one liner I could come up with for this place.
I saw a red SUV approaching the shore. Christy stepped out of it and waved at me. I smiled back as if I just woke up from a dream.