Diary Page - 9/8/2019 (Strolls)

It was just a normal morning stroll. It is the month of August as I write this, right in the center of the months of monsoon. The winds were certainly, particularly volatile that day as all the trees near my house were violently swaying. Dark clouds, all ready to pour down on my little village were curling from the winds. It had rained heavily moments ago, so the ground was wet and the road to the beach, slick. I had unwillingly woken up quite early in the morning, even before the break of dawn, with vain efforts of going back to sleep. After being couped up in the house, behind closed windows, it felt really nice to witness the rain and the subsequent wet atmosphere. My father had also got up, but unlike me he had woken up out of habit. I told him I was going to the beach for a walk. He was busy with whatever he was doing so he just smiled at me.

I knew it would rain soon enough. Secretly hoping to get wet, I kept my phone at home. I wore my slippers and ventured into the strong misty winds. Instantly, my glasses were pelted with fine raindrops, making it impossible to see anything with them on. I understood the message of the rain and quietly kept them at the collar of my shirt. My clothes flapped like flags in the winds coming from the beach. The front of my shirt got a little wet from a mild drizzle and got stuck to my body, only its edges were flying. The wind pushed me back a step or two, whenever I let the guard against it down. It was feeling pretty adventurous walking into a rainy storm. I learned that every few feet or so I would experience pockets of still air. I, wondered what was going on, suddenly realized that the already quite strong winds were felt after they came brushing with the buildings between me and the beach. On the beach however, there would be no obstacles to the wind to lower its velocity and it would be even tougher to walk. As if on cue, as I was passing through one of these pockets, a tree above me got hit by the wind, as I was just under it. All the leaves let their collected water fall entirely on me and the nearby muddy ground. Not only was I wet from above entirely at this point, my tracks were also soiled by the beautiful brown mud. I got a feeling that it was turning into a misadventure.

I walked for a few minutes to reach the beach. As soon as I reached the sands, I was greeted by extremely fast winds. I say greeted the same way I would call getting hit in the face with a bat as greeting. My clothes were flapping so hard they made me think they would tear right off. The fast winds also made listening anything impossible. All I could hear was the loud whooooo of the wind, even drowning out the crashing of the waves and the rustling of the trees. I walked over to the beach, where a protection wall is set up. It is a concrete wall fourteen feet wide and ten feet high and about three kilometers long, set up to stop the washing away of the sands from the beach. The beach and the waters near my village are not particularly violent or even known for such storms. It is actually a gap in the coastline, pushing it inwards when seen on a map. But that day was different. It felt as if all the winds on Earth were being funneled on my beach. Small rain drops began to fall on my face. I could not decide whether the drops were coming from the clouds or the sea, liberated when they hit the shore. I climbed the wall and stood on it. The horizon was blurred into the distant clouds and the water was forcing itself on the wall, as if trying to escape on the land. The wall is quite thick. One can drive a car on it. And yet in the face of the winds and the angry waves the concrete and stone wall felt ever so slightly fragile.

I decided to go right, and started walking. I instantly regretted the decision, as cold drops, boosted by the winds, shot into my left ear. My clothes got filled with air from behind and blew up. They acted as sails and pulled me in a direction I didn't want to go to.

I resisted and walked on, when suddenly the winds started smelling with an extremely pungent odour. You would know the smell, if you have ever visited the fish market. The winds which hit my beach do not come directly from the west, they come from a southern direction. So given the position of the beach, the winds don't hit the shore head on, but rather slantly from the southwestern direction. The cross breeze I picked up was being directed from below the wall. I inferred the direction and looked down below the wall. I saw a grey sack below. It was a bit shiny and gleaming with its knots open. I removed my glasses and cleaned them with the edge of my shirt and put them on. It was a baby dolphin. It hit me hard. The knots were actually its mouth, with the lower jaw broken and absent. The eyes were gone and it was peppered with barnacles. Its blue skin was potched with circular gray marks. The ends of its flippers were cut along the lines of its bones, indicating nibbling by smaller fish. Its tongue was swollen and blue, and it plopped out of its mouth onto the sand. My thoughts were on the fact that it was just a baby. A plastic string was around its body and stuck between two rocks below. I wished to think that it was mere accident and not a deliberate action, but nevertheless it was cruel to see it dead. What if it was stuck there the night before? It would have been stuck to a rock, unable to move, scared in the dark, in the sea, calling for its mother. The image stuck to my mind. All my heroics came to an end. I sat down with the dolphin, silently praying. I didn't even know to whom I was praying and what the praying was for anyway. It just didn't feel right to leave it alone. I adjusted my self in such a way that the winds would carry the smell away from me, so I could be near the mammal without being disgusted. A few people came there on bikes. They were from a marine conservative office, set up for dealing with this very thing. They saw me sitting on the wall. They asked me what I saw, and when I saw it. I answered everything and then they left me alone. They got down from the wall near the body and started prodding it with sticks. Then they removed the string. I could not bear to see all that so I decided to end my excursion and started to head home. The weather was just as cruel on the return journey, but all my thoughts were focused on the baby dolphin.

How it must have bleated in the night, all alone and scared? How can something so innocent, die like this? Maybe it was painless, but what if it wasn't? I was finally able to calm myself and think that maybe it was for the best. Maybe it wouldn't have suffered as much as I imagined. It was little comfort, but it almost stopped me from breaking into tears. I reached home with a solemn face. My father asked me what had happened and I recited the story.

Then I took the cup of hot tea, father gave me and sat in my room, with closed windows. It started pouring as soon as I took the first sip. My windows started rattling because of the rains and winds. That image of the small baby, dead winding up ashore right near my home was etched in my brain. Wouldn't it be far better if it was free, prancing around in the open ocean with its family? I emptied my cup and felt the warmth it filled me with. Then I got back to my work as I opened the book on the table.