the vanilla tides | Mauritius

It’s funny how, when you look back, there are some things that just feel like they never happened. A level of surrealism just clouds certain memories, hazy, the way steam rises from tarmac during sunshine after heavy rain. The time we had with Pruney is coated in that same kind of fog, was she ever with us, or just a figment of a dream? It seems unlikely we were ever lucky enough to share in her spirit, her character, her big hazel eyes… was she ever real? It’s just hard to believe that she was ours, and she was real. In many ways Pruney, her loss and her being, wove inextricably into how I remember Mauritius. Those arching beaches, in shades of flax, wheat, and bone; the calm sea, clear and glassy, burbling like a baby, somehow still guarding the secrets of pods of dolphins and coral rocks. Mauritius too, was surreal, perhaps another piece of a dream, some kind of postcard for a paradise island. The French flair, the English architecture, the passion of the people for the ocean; for fishing; for raggaeton music, which made it feel decidedly island-y, and even more unreal.

There were the luxurious jungles that stuck to the sides of steep rock like verdant tattoos, trees dangerously careening too heavily around bends that hid ghostly shrines, surreptitiously guarded from the view of passing tourists. The hills and forest echoed with the calls of a thousand birds, there were views over leafy hilltops and cane plantations surrounded colonial mansions still producing rum. The road through the hills linked back to a coast road that wove lazily through fishing villages, boats calmly bobbing at the dock, fishermen and small children with corkscrew curls mending the nets. On another side of the island and under the watchful gaze of the peaks of Le Morne we found a tiny beach with water clearer than clingfilm. The shadow of every tiny ripple was visible from the surface, the sun bathed us and everything in white light, while the vanilla tides kissed sands the color of toasted coconut. Palms swayed to delineate hotels from each other, quiet despite peak season, pools gurgled, left untouched, and we drove back to our villa barefoot and with a horizon filled with nothing but the blue of the Indian Ocean.

The sea was often tiger striped, but in blues, greens and azures. A breeze would pick up in the afternoon, there would be a pleasant scent of seaweed, dogs in the small neighborhoods of Blue Bay and Point d’Esny barked, revived by the growing shade. Inland the malls were busy, Port Louis bustled, and the botanical gardens at Pamplemousses burst into a bloom of greenery with giant leaves and tropical tree trunks. You could drive for miles over tiny copper-toned roads, the carmine red earth a reminder of the richness of Africa; the canes stretching infinitely around us, hiding orchestras of singing cicadas as a reminder of Africa’s wildness. Banana plantations snuggled in the arms of rolling hills that ran gently to the sea, the wash frothing like a latte back onto the pristine shoreline.

In the evening we would walk in the neighbourhood, where beautifully unkempt villas were slowly retaken by island flowers; bougainvillea and hibiscus; friendly semi-stray dogs lazed in the long grass, pigeons cooed from crumbling rafters. Local families walked their way up from the beach, the sun began to set, streaking dusky skies into canvasses of pale orange, peach, and lilac. The island was warm, it was slow, and the dreamlike beauty of the Indian Ocean hypnotic. There were moments when we felt like we were frozen in time, sunburnt and sea-salty. We were watching kite surfers hop the waves, colourful sails cutting through the water like jellybeans through a glass jar; we were playing with dolphins who raced our boat and brought tiny babies alongside.

Sometimes, in the tangles of my head, I still don’t know if my memories with Prune are real, or if I’m imagining. Mauritius seems far away too. But then there are moments of clarity, when I can remember what the morning sun felt like as it moved over the ocean and lingered over the jungly mansions of Point d’Esny’s coastal road. When we were at that hauntingly beautiful beach, with the perfect clouds, the glasslike ripples, the tendrils of golden sun, we wrote Prune’s name in the sand. She was with us, she had been the whole time, and she would see the message on that tiny beach, because she would always be there, watching over the ocean, entangled in the coral and the palms, chasing the dolphins, always.

“The island is ours. Here, in some way, we are young forever.” - E. Lockhart

drowning in a fragrant sea | Upper Normandy

For us it had so far been a typically humid lakeside early summer. Maybe there is supposed to be some kind of romance in the dense stagnant air; crowds magnetically drawn to the lake; the quiet of the night overridden by the whirring of fans, the countryside bursting at the seams with caravans and families on bicycles. Whatever there was, it was gone, like the birds who nest in the quiet marshes over the winter. Summer just set in too hard and too fast. It’s always the times when you don’t expect much that you find a part of you are looking for, even if you’re not exactly sure what that is, kind of like what people say about love. Nobody would have expected that you could drive four hours south and that the air would clear. In Normandy, mornings were so cool that crystalline layers of dew settled over the wheat fields, some fields still green with youth, some a warm flaxen gold and waiting for the first harvest. The sun would rise gentle and mellow, tinting the countryside with peach and bubblegum pink as dew dripped off the flowers clinging to farmhouse walls. We were close enough to the Landing Beaches that we could feel a coastal breeze wafting over pastures, tiny birds resting on the winds, towering benign cumulus clouds flitting across baby blue skies. Roads were so small that wheat seeds came through open windows and we were almost swallowed by meadows where cows grazed on shaded slopes. The delicate network of roads wound through flourishing villages drowning in a fragrant sea of flowers and timbered farmhouses. We parked at a crossroads and walked through fields basking in the gentle sun. Suzi sniffed between maturing stalks of corn and young pockets of blooming wildflowers, rambling, wandering. Baby cows met us by rusting iron fences, noses wet from dew as they nibbled our clothes, clearly curious of the early visitors. Red, blue, yellow, tractors hauled the first of the hay, sending stalks flying like confetti, a celebration of us being, for once, in the right place at the right time.

Mild rain showers cooled the evenings even more, fat drops pooling under the thatched roof. The evening air was suddenly encumbered by scents of freshly cut grass, the earth breathing through the rain, a marriage to the sweet sticky smell of molasses in the feed of the dairy cows next door. It was both floaty and lulling, lingering light in the sky tracing the clouds through the shadows. From the newly damp earth we tracked in shards of freshly cut grass, they stuck to the soles of our shoes and trailed lines of emerald into the house. Some days the afternoons were so mild you could nap in the sun, all dreams of poppies and molasses, and wake up sun-burnt. But even on the hotter days, it was the kind of southern dry heat that feels like a golden reward and not like a burden. The sky ran through a gambit of Pantone blues, washed like denim, and hay bales puffed like popcorn in the lee of chateaux.

Maybe the heat would build, and the landscape would turn deep yellow and burnt khaki. Maybe it wouldn’t. We left Normandy with mornings that were still cool and foggy, sunlight illuminating cobwebs, birds floating on brisk breezes carrying the seeds of dandelions like whispers. It would be how we would remember those early days of French summer - the baby cows and their molasses, Suzi and her fields of young corn, the forests’ eternal romance with birdsong. And the sun, endlessly flirting with the June clouds, her lover.

staring at the sun | by train to Chennai

It is difficult to describe the immensity. The immensity of the people, schooled onto the station's platforms, grouping, seperating, like herring, jack, mackerel, tiny silvery fish in a sea of snarling steel tracks and urban sprawl. The potent feeling of fighting sleep, the ebbing train, Bollywood films, taxis. Chennai's expanse of beach, flooded in the morning's golden wash, ocean swirling back into soapy waves. The oceanside hawkers, empty until the weekend, the beach football players, the canoodling couples, the stray dogs making soft dens in warm sand. Sun pounding peeling paint and wicking metal, fading the beachside carousel into nostalgia. The ache of legs that had been going for too long in huge heat with no sleep. The heavy flame of the forest, mango trees, palms, the dappled shadow, the coconut vendors. Wrought iron fences and colonial haunts, a yearning for a different time, a city in soft decay. An afternoon passed in the rhythmic heat, with garlands of jasmine and cherry-bright saris while we dusted sand from our shoes. The incoming dusk, sky paling to sweet baby blue, pigeons in the rafters. Another train station, a familiar intensity, a stray dog shares a mat on the dusty platform floor with a passenger, two weary travellers brought together, united, for a second. The blurring lights through the train's window, another city dissolving into another blackness. 

That was a long time ago. Almost a year has passed since I sat in my bunk on the rocking train, watching sand cascade into miniature beaches as I emptied my shoes. Home now, it’s quiet, Europe continuously tussles with winter storms of all kinds. The long darkness and unmarked stretches of time leave too many opportunities for contemplation, thirst for other places, the memories of times and people far away. Thinking of the gentle whir of hotel AC, grandma stirring oats, metal spoon clanking against a steel bowl. The tiny trio of kittens with their warm bony bodies snuggled in my arms. Grandpa, looking over the fading ocean from the shade, but staring up at the sun. 

“The white petals will be darkened with sea water. They will float for a moment then sink. Rolling over the waves will shoulder me under. Everything falls in a tremendous shower, dissolving me”. -Virginia Wolf, The Waves

…

grandpa we miss you 💗