Thathasthu (Or, May what you say come true)

It was a heavy lunch and I and my colleague squeezed into the already over-crowded lift to go to our 7th floor office.

I hoped that the "over-loaded" alarm in the elevator will not go off.  Fortunately it did not, and to make small conversation I looked at my team mate and said loudly so that everyone in the lift could hear : "Have you ever used the stairs to climb up 7 floors?".  I basically wanted to start an interesting conversation on why young people (i.e. all the others in the lift) should use the stairs, rather than squeeze into crowded elevators.

Nobody reacted.  Everybody in the lift had a most disinterested expression.  It was clear that climbing stairs was not an interesting topic for discussion.

The lift reached the 2nd floor and then suddenly stopped.  A couple of people got off thinking it was because the lift was over-loaded.  But no luck - it refused to go up any further.  It was clear that there was something wrong with the lift, and the only option now is the stairs.

"Thathasthu - you got your wish to make us climb the stairs" said a morose looking guy to me. Poor chap, he had to get to the 10th floor.

This morose guy is unlikely to ever enter a lift if he sees me in it. 

Low Tide at Bordi Beach

We went recently to Bordi beach which is about 160 km from Mumbai, and close to the Gujarat border.  Bordi beach is a very long beach. The good thing about it is that not many people know about it - and hence ideal for people like me who love desolate beaches.

We visited this magnificent beach three times, and we had 3 different experiences.

Visit 1 : The Menacing Experience 

The first visit was at night - at about 8 pm.  There was no moon and we could only see the white sand of the beach.  However, beyond the beach there was pitch darkness - in fact a blackness that almost was frightening as there was no glistening of star light off the water, nor was there any sound of waves.  We went to the edge and tried to figure out what lay beyond but it was too dark.  We put on the torch and examined what lay beyond.  It looked like the sea bed - dark, wet and sticky.  We walked a few minutes on it hoping that we will come across the sea - but the sticky sea bed seemed to stretch on and on.  In the distance we could now hear faintly the sound of waves.  It was a menacing feeling in the darkness. We returned to the safety of the white beach as the darkness and the mystery was a bit over-whelming.

Visit 2 : The Mysterious Experience

Our second visit was early next morning to figure out the mystery.  What we found was that there was only a vast expanse of black clayish sand which stretched at least for 3-4 kilometers from the white sands of the beach.  It was as if there is no sea. About a kilometer from the beach were a couple of stranded boats let high and dry on the muddy sea bed.  How they got there we had no clue.

We walked on the sea bed towards the boats picking our way carefully through the slush.

We asked a fisherman the mystery behind the stranded boats and were told that it was currently low tide and the sea had retreated a few kilometers.

I grew up in Fort Kochi which also has a magnificent beach - but I never saw such an effect in Fort Kochi beach probably because the ocean floor is deep due to dredging by the nearby port - and hence the effect of the tide is not visible.

But in Bordi the effect of tide is highly visible because of the shallow nature of the sea bed.

Visit 3 : The Reassuring Experience

We returned to the beach after breakfast at about 11 am and found that it was high tide, and the beach looked "normal" like any other beach now.  It was hard to believe that just a couple of hours ago we could have walked on the sea bed for 3-4 kilometers away from the sea shore.

The waves glistened in the bright sunshine and the stranded boats were no longer to be seen - apparently gone out fishing.  And we relaxed in the familiar sight of a "normal" beach.