Why did my Father leave the Sea town.
My spectacles were extremely foggy as we were descending from the temperate hills of Malappuram to its coast. The border between the distinct parts of the vast district were blurred like my vision was while crossing it on a cold November morning. The sound of the motorcycle we were riding and the legacy that the brand name had did invoke some feelings of fake glory in me. Riding the 75 kilometres from my room where I had been stuck for the past 9 months to the coasts of the endless sea was a crazy idea to my father as I quickly ‘borrowed’ some money and bid goodbye to him at 6 in the morning, and in the passage of minutes, a hundred and twenty of them, the hills were nowhere to be seen, the roads were flatter, and the sky clearer with a taste of salt in the air. The historic Malabar coast from one end in Calicut to the other in Ponnani has always intrigued me with its historicity, the blood boiling stories of my tribe successfully defending the imperialists from the Dutch to the English. It was this feeling that led me to Ponnani, the land of the Ulemas, the learned Muslim men, the land of the famous Shaikh Zainudhin Maqhdoom. I understand (maybe a lot others too) understand history as time passing through spaces, and I at times find myself in awe when I visit historical spaces, spaces where you are sure that men and women of history have stood and felt the air like I do when I’m there. I cherish these moments more than I can describe. It simultaneously gives me an immense feeling of purpose and insignificance on the vast canvas of time, I’m but a small brush stroke on an impressionist painting, purposeful yet insignificant. The intensity of the November breeze ejected me back from the Delorian of my mind to the moment. That peaceful moment under the whistle pines I felt immense sadness and diasporic feelings for the sea, my ancestors and the flat lands and salty air I could’ve grown up in. Then I felt myself being my father in his thick glasses, taking long strides in the evening through the sandy shores, with the weight of his father’s legacy and demise on him, unfilled stomach and half wit that might help him cross the sea of poverty and be safe on a hill top. Then I found in the reels of my memory my own self riding the scooter up hill back from one of the family errands, with thoughts on my mind that asked me to leave the country as soon as my Bachelors was over to find new, greener pastures and experiences in hope that they might somehow fill the holed bucket of curiosity in my heart, and then at that point among the endless points of time, I was my son, sitting on the riverbanks of chaliyar thinking why his father grew up.
