5
This water is so familiar to him. He has spent almost his entire life here in quest of happiness. He used to come here to ride the boat with his father.
He loved to think about those days, ‘my father taught me the skills to dig deep into the dangerous sea and take thousands of silvery lucks out of it’.
‘My father had the dream of building his own beautiful house in bricks and mortars, which he could not make into being. His dreams lost with him in the vast strangeness of the sea’.
The fisherman’s fishing boat ‘water nymph’ sped through the waves.
The foamy backwashes marked its going.
His hair were flying back. His sleeveless, button-less vest struggling to get out of the armholes.
Back in the days, there was barely anyone who was not moved by his bravadoes. He was like the perfect jockey for any wild horse. His magical third eye knew the nerves of the most elusive fishes. They no longer could hide themselves from his wakeful eyes. He was the real sea monster, he would sure take his due from the bottom of the sea.
He did not know how far his fishing cruiser had sailed. He never cared for those little things, that’s different.
His cruiser hitched to slow down here. The water here is greyish, full of marine creatures.
‘Yes, here it is. I can remember that heavy toll I bore home from here last year’, he was pleased to shout those words.
‘You can’t hide from me little devils’, he said, ‘I will take you back home. That will be the right place for so fidgety you’.
But the last year was the hardest time ever in his life. This one long year had changed his life – from a king of the fishermen to a commonplace beggar. Just able to bake two times chapattis and let the days rolling.
Things changed so miserably. The fishes that would be surrendering into his fishing net whenever he wanted, would now be scoffing at his skills. Where he had positioned his fishing boat, there had been plenty of them – the silvery fishes.
All through this toughest year, his voyages failed as the money fails in the casino. His possessions were sold one by one. His trawler was auctioned before his eyes and his homestead was attached by the money lenders.
Today as he walks through the market people laugh at him, at his sheer lack of fortune.
Those once learnt from him the mastery over the sea, are now trying to teach him the basics of fishing.
A roar of that kind could now give the jolt to his hut by the seaside. In that hut they three somehow spend a day, and spend a penny for living as thriftily as possible.
‘Even my wife do not trust me because of you. She thinks I am all done. Once king of this wilderness is now finished. Finished forever’, the fisherman disgruntled. His accusing eyes had the anger and gloom for this sea well admixed.
‘My father couldn’t have his dream come true. I am the worse though. He was lost in this water with all his glory. I was not lost in the water, but my glory was. It’s despicable’.
His boat is staying over the sea almost still. He marked his position, trying to remember the last time he was here. No. he can’t remember.
