Requiem To The Sea
It's been so many moons away that I have come to sit with you,
sea - my friend. Still many moons have passed, since the
destruction was unleashed upon you. It is yet a night so similar
and yet different in so many ways. Tonight I have come to pay my
homage to the imperious sea, or what remains of it. Can't help
it if my homage sounds like a requiem. As I am here, by your
side to shed my tears on your fate, and my own which is entwined
with yours.
Today, I have come to say a silent prayer for my own future and
that of yours.
I hear the damp saline ocean waves cry on and whisper to me. In
that I hear the echo of my own fear, a wail for my own
abandonment and those of my dreams. I recall the last time I was
here, a partly cold December last year, when I walked the
stretch of the Clifton beach. I took long strolls, turning back
and forth retracing my own foot marks. The waves were carrying
own their ballet, as the children on their winter break were
playing and laughing. The breeze was pleasing to my face. I
dipped my fingers in them and felt a silent and simple
exhilaration grow inside me. But as dreams are lost upon water,
the reverie is gone. It was then, and its gone now. Right now a
dark stretch of water lays in front of my eyes, as if I am
staring at an abyss, and it is looking back to me.
Too spent to take a stroll, I choose to sit on the dusty brick
wall breathing in the sadness and silence around me. I look
around, at the vast stretch of the deserted beach, this
wasteland. Not far from where I sit, the lights of two popular
eateries shine on. But over here, an impregnable gloom hangs on
the atmosphere, which overwhelms the heart and senses. As the
yellowed foam slide back, it reveals bared and scraped beach
stretch, raked clean by tractors in their bravado salvation
efforts. There is no seaweed, no broken sea shells and
ironically no trash. Though a solitary white polethene bag
puffed up with air, is dodging the waves and rolling onwards, as
if it has a life of its own. But soon enough, the waves catch up
it and it disappears in the unfathomable depths.
I look onwards, the dark and almost ghostly figure of the oil
tanker is visible, whose dark shape I could only fathom from
where I sit. I am a scavenger always on the drift, a tramp
trying to outrun the bounds of civilization, stealing my way out
of city that echoes the emptiness of monotony and routine. I am
forever a melancholic creature, who finds excuse and objects for
nostalgia all too often. For me, life is a perpetual yesterday.
I remember you in your former glory. And so I remember you as
you were before and can't help comparing it with your desolate
state today. You were the venue for celebrations with friends
and for the solitary walks. You were my recluse from the city
life, and today you toss and turn all alone. The crowd is gone,
so has the snake charmer, the camel wala or the photographer
with his camera. Necessity has forced these people, who used to
depend upon you for their livelihood to go elsewhere. The
picnickers that used to throng at your side every evening and
night are all gone now. They have abandoned you for some other
dazzling joint, where city lights outlast the night and the
party ever carries on. Did they ever care about you at all, I
wonder. Yet there are a few faithful ones who still choose to
come here: sparse joggers, some couples deeply engrossed in
private conversations and in each others. And there are a few
scavengers like me. The blanched moon beckons and the angry
waves ebb and flow in their ancient rhythm. This ancient rhythm
that has been here, since the beginning of creation, even before
man was here. To every pattern and to every beginning, there is
an end. And mankind, is always trying to orchestrate the end of
his own beginning, trying to haste on the nemesis. Almost a
century back, Matthew Arnold looked at the dark sea and
contemplated upon the man's faith and his fate. How far have man
progressed since then? So much intelligence and so much of
advancement and yet there remains disdain, pompousness and a
criminal neglect towards the environment that sustains him. So
many months have passed since the oil spill tragedy has taken
place, the effects on which still linger on. The toxic wastage
lies in the bottom of the sea, hidden from our discerning eyes.
It is still seeping in the unfathomable depths, poisoning the
very core, the roots and essence. Water being our integral
constituent, this toxic wastage is poisoning our souls as well.
The Karachi beach, as we have known it never had the crystalline
clearness of the Bahamas, of Florida, Miami or Hawaii, The
polluted and trash strewn coastline stretch used to speak
volumes about our civic sense, but it still was something better
than having nothing. It used to offer us the luxury of watching
infinity. The Sea is what defines our status as a coastal city.
It is and would always be a prominent element of our landscape
and geography. As for karachittees social life and cultural
milieu, the cooperate food chains, restaurants and food outlets
would keep on opening, but the damage done to the sea would
linger on. These cramped spaces are meant for a blessed few and
speak volumes about our empty souls and excess desires, over
brimming indulgences and depraved values. In spite of the
hoodwinking claims made about the amount of damage being
minimal, in the heart of our heart, we ought to know better that
an irreparable damage has been done and the sea has been
blemished. We ought to know now that the price is to be paid, by
us and by our future generations. Scared I am to bring my
children into this world, and to think about the kind of future
they will have.