There was this unusual glow about everything around him. He could see the large children’s park overlooking his flat, the flower beds, the trees, the topiary bushes shaped elephants again. He saw his son running about with a broken tooth and the soiled football in the park. He could see his wife telling something to their son. Perhaps she was asking him not to play near the flower beds, lest they should get damaged. She would sometimes turn to him and smile. It felt like watching an old movie, where there was no sound, but the actors portrayed their emotions so well that it did reach right to your heart.
He was awakened from his slumber by
a commotion outside his cabin. The Captain had been on the seas on his ‘Santa
Maria 339’ for the last six months. He had left his home at Mumbai and sailed
to Portugal, where he had picked up cargo to be transferred to Shanghai, and
was on his way back to Mumbai with cargo from there. On the dock, he always had
to be on his feet with the cargo loading and unloading, business, the official
works, the formal handshakes and small talks. But life at sea was different. All you could see were
different shades of blue spread miles in all directions. After a few days at
the sea, one cannot even properly distinguish between the different shades of
blue. It is just one, monotonous blue wherever they see. The occasional white
birds flying above his head, the daily sunset and the occasional jolly
conversations with his crew members kept him going. He had a picture of his
family on the table at his cabin. Family felt like a distant dream now. He
would dream of them almost every day. Reuniting with them soon was all that he
was looking forward to. In his leisure times, sometimes he would reminisce how
he envisioned seas as a child; the yellow sands, the blue sea and the round sun
that he used to draw at his school made him laugh. So much of monotony made him
sick to the pit of his stomach. But life would be different soon. The very
thought of it excited and made him nervous at the same time.
The captain groggily pulled himself out of his bed, put on
his cap and unbolted the cabin door. The uproar outside his cabin quickly
alerted his senses and warned him of something menacing ahead of him. He
suddenly saw the crew running to the deck of the ship and there was a huge
crowd gathered around the deck. An unprecedented storm was shaking the ship to
its core. The wind was howling and keeping one’s foot was getting extremely
difficult. It seemed as though some ominous force was showering its wrath on
the ship and the wind was the sound of its fury. However, what lay front of his
eyes was something more heart wrenching than anything else he had seen in his
life. The storm was wrecking a ship right in front of theirs. He quickly
ordered to let down the life guards for the victims on the sea. The crew was
prompt to take action. They threw multiple life guards into the sea hoping that
people would hold onto it and they could rescue them. People were crying
everywhere, praying, trying to save as many people as they could. Yet, people,
as they tried to catch hold of a lifeguard, took one large gulp of air and
succumbed to the sea. This kept on happening countless times in front of them.
Slowly, more than half of the ship was under water. For once, the Captain
wished it was all blue and not this gory combination of black and grey and
chills. The ship capsized in front of them and perhaps theirs would too.
Ironically, it is the time when life
is the most uncertain that one wishes to cling to it the most. The very thought
of having their lungs filled with water made the people want to breathe in more
air, witness more mornings, work harder and pray more. Nobody slept that night.
All night, people stayed huddled together, praying to their God. Time and again
a strong wind would sway the ship a bit too much to the right or to the left
and they would think the end was near. Around dawn, the storm had lost its
power. The captain went to the deck and looked back. The sea was calm again.
Nobody could even imagine the ill-fated
incident thy had been witnessed the night before. The crew members were
offering soup and bread to the victims. They had lost their ship, their friends
and their sanity. Life had given them a chance to live, but at the cost of a
blow that they might never recover from. Horns from nearby ships were audible
now. The port was not very far! They were homebound.
Relief came as soon as the ship had
reached the harbor. It was a chilly morning. There was no happiness, no
excitement among the people for meeting their loved ones. It seemed as if they
were reliving the incident of the last night on loop. They deboarded the ship
mechanically, reported to the officer in charge, collected their money without
a gleam in their eyes and set off on their own paths. The Captain gave an
account of the incident of the last night to the Officer In Charge. The cargo
had been unloaded by the time all these took place. He signed off the papers
and was released from his duty. Slowly, he boarded the car that was arranged
for him for his way back home. It ached
that he could not save more people. He wished he could just save just one more
person. Maybe he would feel better! But what if he rescued less people? It is
never possible to win against nature. The few lives he could save had a chance
to live and maybe that was the only thing that mattered. Maybe it would be
better to stop thinking about the people he was unable to rescue. But was it
that easy? Could he really sleep without dreaming of the howls of the drowning people? What if his ship drowned instead of theirs?
This thought quickly turned his attention back to his son’s toothless smile and
his wife.
He checked his bag to see if the gifts he had bought for them
were intact. Most of the decorative ceramics that he had bought from Portugal
were shattered to pieces. He had bought a Laughing Buddha for his home, which
was also damaged. The only thing that somehow did not break was the model of a
ship on a sea in a bottle. He put in back in his bag carefully and latched it.
Outside the window, he saw the sidewalk lined with trees. Family was no more a
distant dream.
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