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 💗