Something very mundane catches my attention, and then I build worlds around it.
Happens to me often.
There was a warning by the weather department for heavy rains. The schools had been given off in anticipation of flooding. For the last few days, various parts of Mumbai were underwater.
But this particular day, the warnings notwithstanding, while the sky stayed dark and threatened to crack up anytime, the clouds had not broken yet.
There was no meeting scheduled. I was tired of sitting at home and writing. On a whim, I googled the tide timings and saw that the high tide would be around 3.30 pm.
For a long time, I have been wanting to go to the Gateway of India and shoot pictures of the breeze-swept sea lashing out onto the street. I have grown up looking at such pictures all monsoons, and I always wanted to click one myself.
After a nice cosy lunch on such dark afternoons, usually, people do not venture out unless it is vital. But this was my necessity. So I packed my camera. Some rain cover, some spare batteries and left on a drive that took me more than an hour to reach. Even with minimal traffic on the road.
I was lucky to find parking along the usually packed driveway near the Gateway. The first thing I looked for was the spray of the sea along the seawall. There was none!
Slightly dejected, I walked towards the main touristy place where these days cops have created an enclosure around and check everyone getting in.
I befriended two commercial photographers taking a break. You have scores of these people trying to make some money taking pictures of tourists with the Gateway and Taj Mahal hotel structures in the background. They also carry portable printers in their backpacks to give out the prints immediately.
On a lean day like this, the ratio of photographers to tourists was perhaps at its all-time highs. They told me the previous day, the sea was rough, and it splashed around a lot on the adjacent road. My bad luck.
I took some random pictures. Nothing that I had gone there for.
The sky rumbled. So I decided to walk back to my car before it would start raining.
And that’s when the Universe rewarded me.
Something that I would never catch on a typical day.
Two guys were looking out at sea and talking. One of them had a bright red bag hung on his shoulder. Nothing really notable there. But the way the light fell on them and the way the vast sea with the tiny toy-like ships simmered at the horizon, I sensed it could be an exciting shot.
The bag made the frame unique.
One guy had it, and the other didn’t. It was small enough for stuff for just one person. Did that mean the one without, was from the city and the one with, was not? It perhaps was the case because the one without, had the more city look. Did the other guy just land in the city and his buddy got him here straight to see the sea? Or was this the last thing left to be seen before the man with the bag took a train back to some place? The central station to Mumbai is close from here. No one wanting to fly out would stand here with a tote bag and hope to travel to the airport later.
Usually, people come to the sea and are soon done with it. Then they turn around and ogle at the Taj Mahal hotel. I even saw someone on a video call with a lady in the village. He was showing her the heritage wing of the hotel and calling it the Taj Mahal hotel and the taller modern side right next to it, the Oberoi hotel! I didn’t want to get in and correct him. They ogle at it and discuss how expensive a cup of tea is, in there. Some discuss certain films which were shot in there. Some stare at it and match images they have seen of the recent terrorist attack.
But these two men stayed turned towards the sea and kept chatting. They had to be discussing something else than what they saw. Other than some hazy cargo ships, there was nothing in the sea to stare at and talk for so long. It looked like an enormous calm mass of something that swelled and ebbed as if it was alive and breathing. Very unlike a wavy sea. I could not see their eyes, but their body language had the thing of being here and talking about a distant time and place. Either in the past or the future. It was not the kind where either one of them was even saying something new or intriguing. Because they did not look at each other. But kept talking. People passed them. Hawkers intruded. Vehicles honked.
Even I clicked a few pictures. Nothing distracted them.
Could be of difficult dreams... Old times... Regrets... Plans of a pleasant future usually have different postures.
I could associate some sadness in their beings. Or was that me, always trying to sponge sadness out of people’s lives…
I wanted to know more. I stepped closer to them, to eavesdrop. Though I should not have. It is not the right thing to do. Something I will always advise my children against.
That’s when Nature intervened. Something that I was there for, happened. Just when I was completely unprepared and did not even see it coming. A huge wave suddenly broke out of the calm gel-like mass and hit the wall below splashing a colossal column and spray of water. It hit me from behind with full force. My camera was completely drenched and dripping of seawater.
I ran to my car. Conjured whatever was there inside, in terms of tissues and mops to wipe the water off my camera. I prayed. I noticed, I was wholly drenched too! After some time I put the camera on. As I feared, some of the functions had stopped working and were throwing error messages.
I had to reach home fast. It was again more than an hour’s drive with the evening rush hour now thrown in. But I drove back in less than an hour and once home, went straight for the hairdryer. The rest of the evening, I baked my camera under the dryer, and the next morning, it started working again.
It was only the next morning, I could think of the pictures I had taken. As I checked on the computer, the two men were there. Talking. Captured and frozen in time. I thought about them.
Did the errant wave break their discussion too? Must’ve.
I’ll never know.
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