On an October morning, I woke up at dawn in a very long time…
with no concrete structures in front of me – just water & with a green outline!
And then he rowed into my vision, a speck with a life – a Fisherman on his boat.
He rowed across the lake, my eyes followed him.
The speck grew bigger, while my mind wandered into Hemingway’s ‘Old Man and the Sea’.
Santiago! Yes he was Santiago, the Old Man after the Big Fish.
He paused. I think he heard me call him by his name, or was it the Big Fish or that boat in the distance?
He resumed doing what he is good at, he rowed steadily across the lake!
He was very near to me, but he never looked at me.
His mind & eyes focused on the Big Fish that he is yet to see.
He was strong, he leaned forward.
The boat moving ahead, every time he swayed.
Swiftly but steady, cutting through the clear waters,
Like that bird, in the blue sky beyond.
There was determination in his posture, strength in his arms,
Swift was his skiff, but a peck on the lake!
He leaned again, and the skiff moved again…but this time, it was moving away from me.
I stared at him, as he moved towards the edge… till where my eyes could follow him.
Was it the moist breeze or my mind, i closed my moist eyes for a moment.
As he rowed away from my eyes, my mind wished him luck…
“Santiago, may you get the big one today”
My encounter:
I wrote this on my personal blog in 2014, friends & me where out in a houseboat in Vembanad Lake.
These pictures are the most powerful ones i might have ever clicked. When i was clicking him, my mind was racing through the pages of Ernest Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea.
I cannot explain how i felt that day. I could hear his oar hitting the water and it made music. There was nothing in my field of vision but him. A certain silence prevailed & and it brought a certain peace in me. How we try hard to race with time, when time actually stops for us!
Doulos