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On Painful Discoveries Made in Young Adulthood
I have seen and cannot unsee
I’m not sure how old I was when I traveled with my family to Kanyakumari, a city at the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent. Young enough, I suppose, that my adult-self has forgotten.
I was obsessed with the merging of the three oceans and made a point to stand with my little feet buried in wet sand, trying to determine whether I could really see the waves of all three oceans lapping at the shore.
The Arabian Sea; rough. I was hooked on swimming during my mid-childhood and wanted to try my hand at swimming in every body of water I came in contact with. According to my parents, the Arabian Sea was a hard no.
The Bay of Bengal; ravaged. I was told by family members that this ocean was unsafe for a different reason. It was polluted beyond the level that would be considered safe for swimming. Fair enough. My thathi had to boil the water that came into the house through the tap before it was safe to drink, too.
The Indian Ocean; an object of legend. In the Indian epic, Ramayana, even the chipmunks joined in building a bridge from India to modern-day Sri Lanka. When I was young, my comic books taught me that the chipmunks got their stripes as a part of this building project, lifted up and stroked by a Hindu deity who…
