8
The compass indicated the place ahead. The fisherman immediately remembered this place, it is where his father was reported to be missing. There is an eddy, not far from here.
A sudden jerk, his feet lost touch with the floor. The compass dropped out. His body thudded on the wooden floor and slipped to one side.
A sudden jerk, his feet lost touch with the floor. The compass dropped out. His body thudded on the wooden floor and slipped to one side.
While slipping his fingers forcefully grabbed a post and he avoided a straight plunge into the water.
The boat had tilted to its left, and the fisherman while still holding the post tight, looked out through the maze of water. It was bewildering.
He saw his fishing boat carried away in the current to the center of an eddy right in front.
He was overwhelmed by its very obvious presence. It was large, mesmerizing, and full of odds. It had the enormous power to attract anything towards it.
Waves of different directions were converging into it.
Waves of different directions were converging into it.
He realized this must have predestined his fate. This voyage is going to be his last voyage.
All of a sudden his little daughter peeped in his mind, then came his wife.
They two were looking at him. They seemed so dependent, so helpless and so innocent to him.
He wept and wept. He wept a lot. His tears made water more saline.
He implored, ‘forgive me my little fairy; forgive your daddy. Sweetheart, forgive me, forgive your husband. I couldn’t do anything for you….this life fell too short to be with you…but hence is another beautiful life….we will meet again…..we will meet for sure…we will….’
A giant wave in the shape of a snake’s hood stood upright in front of the boat.
The fisherman’s head fell behind to see that miraculous wall of water almost fifty feet high.
He knew very well that no escape was possible, every struggle was meaningless. This water wall was going to bury him within itself, forever.
The fisherman looked so defenceless, so helpless.
He welcomed his water burial with a huge cachinnation, ‘come on empress! Take me. Take me…come on….come on….now…..I am here….I am…I..’.
The fisherman could not distinguish between the sky and the sea. He saw a sphere of water where there sky was the sea and sea was the sky. Water was omnipresent. Hell was whole.
The water wall came down. The fishing boat yielded to it.
Everything lost in the eddy.
A mythical magnetic force worked. The fisherman was going forwards. He saw in his blasted eyes the big convergent center of endless black attracted him hard in to its open mouth.
Just before he entered, he saw his father.
He saw his father was bigger than the water wall, evenly miscible with it, yet so distinctly separate.
The fisherman was very pleased, more awed to see his father. He said, ‘dad! Is that you? I am so glad that you are here with me. I am no longer afraid of anything…nothing’
His father smiled softly.
‘I looked for you…how much I missed you, dad…at last, I found you…no pain anymore…dad…no pain…’ the fisherman stretched his hand to his dad who had been stretching his hand to his son.
His hand touched his father’s. His mind filled with a transcendental feeling of joy. It was indescribable.
The fisherman was beyond anything to remember this cataclysm. This ruinous sea meant nothing to him. He pleasantly let the sea take him into the big black well.
He was unable to take anything with him, even his mind.
The aura radiating from his father’s gigantic body together with hundreds of thunders, the rushing sea waves and the torrents of rain – all vanished in the black well.
***
