IT IS A MONTH of longing and frustration. A month of braving incessant horizontal rains that arrive from as far as Polynesia in the east and, increasingly, Zanzibar in the west. Rains that tell you the sun is dead, and with it all the seasons. Rains that are a prelude to the oceans taking over.
It is a month of relentlessly mopping the floors, of opening and closing windows in delirium, of placing buckets under shifting cracks in the ceiling, of wiping moss with bare hands and drying handkerchiefs on the stove. A month of talking aloud to the heavens, lest the monsoons drown out your inner voice.
It is time to acknowledge the reflection in the mirror and join hands with one’s shadow. It is the month Girija Prasad brought Chanda Devi to the islands. It is the month of June.
Girija Prasad navigates the thicket, making his way to the beach below Mount Harriet for a swim. He has gone past the Japanese bunkers when a subterranean thunder hits him. The bunkers fly up. So do his feet, before landing beside his head. His nose is buried under his groin as a tree breaks his fall.
The earth falls back into slumber as swiftly as it had woken up. In its aftermath, a crack has emerged on his path. The land ahead has opened like an eggshell. So he folds his lungi and underwear and places his walking stick on them, before crawling into the crack on all fours. He doesn’t want to dirty his clothes, for he intends to put off washing until it’s time for Teesta, his granddaughter, to visit.
Steam, a spontaneous mix of humidity and mud, rises all around him. The centipedes and earthworms, masters of the netherworld, are as confused as he is. They crawl over one another, hanging on to the ferns and leaves that dangle from the canopy. He looks nervously at his testicles as he contemplates the monsoon leeches.
He is in search of a fossil or evidence of some kind, perhaps a new type of rock. He runs his fingers over the exposed layers. He hunts for the fantastical imprint of an undiscovered species. Though it hasn’t been documented yet, he suspects that the seafloor is opening up in the Andaman Sea to the east. It must. It is the push that completes the fall. Yet all scientists seem to know of is the subduction zone to the south.
He gives up. He crawls out. Trees have fallen around him. Trees are still falling, using one another as crutches to break the fall. He can smell the odor of low tide from a distance. He leaves the collective shriek of birds and animals behind as he approaches the beach.
He halts in shock.
The ocean has withdrawn into its shell. Seaweed and coral glisten under an afternoon sun, as stranded fish jump up and down, gasping. Unable to scream, the fish look like they are filled with an irrepressible urge to dance in the sun.
He walks toward the water. He follows its footprints—shallow puddles among the bed of rocks. The force of the receding currents has created a strange universe. It has pushed an octopus, a pipefish, a tiger prawn, and a sea urchin into an inextricable embrace. Predator and prey lie hopelessly tangled. Girija Prasad marvels at the octopus’s intelligence as she frees her tentacles one by one.
He moves on. He is distracted by his reflection peering at him from a thin sheet of algae and water. Only days away from turning fifty, he looks older than he imagined himself to be. His skin has been burned and wrinkled by all the tropical excursions. He is balding. His shoulders stoop. Flesh hangs from his bones in shame, hiding the true depth of aging inside.
He has met him on several occasions, this man. During the hardest of times, a vision would crawl out from the ocean to soothe him, stroking his forehead, holding his hand. He didn’t know who it was then, although he knew it was no god or ghost. It had been established beyond doubt that he could not commune with either.
But he is not ready.
He is yet to meet his grandchild. He is yet to embrace his daughter and son-in-law one last time. He hasn’t even watered the plants in the greenhouse for two days. If he doesn’t do it this evening, they may perish. From the spirals of time, Chanda Devi’s words return to echo in the spirals of Girija Prasad’s inner ear. “That’s cheating,” she says. For when it is time, it is time.
Based on the volume and distance of the ocean’s recession, he estimates that a tsunami should hit the beach in ten to fifteen minutes.
This presents him with two options. He could either sprint back to the beach’s edge, begin climbing Mount Harriet, and crawl up a tree—an ideal vantage point—or he could walk straight in. The land falls sharply like a cliff very close to the beach. For how often does a man get to peer into a thriving ocean floor minus the ocean, even though it will go undocumented?
Both these options imply a sprint. And he is in no mood to work up a sweat. This is a moment to be savored, down to every cell and atom. Mid-ocean, the tsunami can only be experienced as an extraordinary undulation. It is on sloping beaches such as this one that it arrives in its full glory: destructive and dramatic.
Drifting between options, he wakes up to the only possibility. He has no time to wander among the exposed mollusks and corals, lyrical distractions from the truth that is about to arrive. He has no time left to blink, least of all to turn back and steal one final glance at his home.
A line stretches from one end of the horizon to the other. For all he knows, it outstretches the horizon—tsunamis are known to circle around the entire world and return to the original crack.
The birds have intensified their cries. They have taken to the skies in panic, like muddied currents heralding a flood.
The water hits the island shelf with a pure and overwhelming silence. The universe may have come to life with a bang, but the possibilities were conceived in silence. With time, it will all vanish. The islands, their civilizations, the coral, the ocean. Only silence will remain.
He straightens himself. Girija Prasad stands upright as it approaches. Up close, the curl ceases to be a mere shape. It is roof and ground at the same time. It is the ocean’s very womb, seeking new life to nurture.
A lifetime ago, on a day unlike this one, Girija Prasad had lost Chanda Devi. It was unbearably hot, forty-two degrees Celsius to be precise. He stood all alone in some alien corridor, detached from the rest of the hospital. Yet the overbearing smell of blood prevailed. Like the warmth and tenderness of the skin of his wife, declared dead.
The window in front of him framed a different world altogether. A wind stoked the inferno, rattling the aerial roots of the banyan tree outside. A lone parrot stood guard on the windowsill. “Perhaps Mrs. Parrot has laid eggs on the nurse’s headdress,” he whispered to Devi, swaddled in his arms. For his baby’s sake, he had promised not to crumble. Since her arrival, he had never cried.
Standing face-to-face with a tsunami, he is distracted by a youthful stiffness. He’s sporting an erection—a perfect right angle to his legs, pointing straight ahead. He laughs. His eyes well up. Girija Prasad Varma sheds a tear.
And the water carries him away.