Death, desert and dessert.
It has been some 6 years. Musings seems to have lost that melancholic
tint. Most probably time still is the best antibiotic on memories. Even my mother’s voice was less of tears this
time and mostly tinged in matter of fact recollection. And partly orchestrated and rest coincidental,
I found myself in the middle of a desert on a rather uneventful death anniversary
day of my dad. Absolutely in the middle
of nowhere. Almost like the proverbial empty quartet. Miles and miles of very plain land lay in
all 8 directions from that oil gathering station. The barren brownish land
needed a mercury level to make it self realize that it is not that flat. No
tree, leave alone a blade of grass or hill was in sight.
Though the picture
was in stark contrast with the lush green picturesque place in hinterland
Kerala, where I was born and brought up, there indeed was something
exhilarating about this place. Irritatingly the place did look familiar to
me. Then I realized the number of hours
I had spent as a kid reading the stories of “The thousand and one nights” (Arabian
nights) casting a spell now. After all Aladdin got his magic lamp from the
souks of Muscat. The deadening silence and
sense of space can alter anyone’s state
of mind and make him a time traveller.
No wonder, Thesiger
the last of the great explorers wrote in his classic travelogue “No one can live
this life and emerge unchanged”.
In another perspective
it is a paradox. While an oxford
educated blue blooded Brit named
Thesiger, loathed the modern civilization of cars and other amenities and
adored lives of Bedus and nomads
of Arabia, most of the current day - sons of soil - ‘s only aim is “coming to town” . It is the town built on reclaimed sea from the
riches of oil and banking where camels
are replaced by Prados.
As the horizon was
bathed in the color of saffron, i became aware of the sun setting not
very far off. Maybe it is going into
another oil well. The Sun gets more beautiful
hues in the desert than in the sea. It
is in those rather hazy moments with no
specific starting or end points where day meets night, you realize
that human lives does mirror
nature.
When one visualize oneself rather egotistically as the center
of this vast ocean of sand, it is
rather easy to forget as a person we are nothing more than a spec of sand in
dunes of time.
