The Ocean

The Ocean       http://www.ltgtr.in/2011/08/ocean.html

By Vakul Mohanty

Dangling from her fathers figure she walked to the center of the rickety old bridge. She climbed onto him and gazed at the ocean drenched in moon light. The beauty of the sight held her gaze, drawing it towards the endless mysteries of the ocean. Nestling in her fathers bosom she wondered what lay beyond the vast stretch of water, did the ocean truly merge with the havens, overflowing into the abode of the gods?

  She was to be married soon. With a cascaded blur of emotions she walked up to the very spot where years ago her dream had taken shape. She stared at the serene ocean, inviting her, calling her. Her journey was about to begin. Time had come for her to cross the ocean and see what destiny had in store for her.

   Life rarely flows the way you wish it . And her life never even hinted to become the fairy tale she had wished for. Her husband turned out to be a drunken degenerate. He came back late in the evening stinking like the sewer. Tortured by circumstances and hard work, he took out all his frustration on her. He pounded her to the ground. Her soft delicate form changed into a grotesque monstrosity. Her face was swollen from the abuse, her eyes sunk into purple patches, and her nose shattered- held together by a bloodied piece of cloth. She worked gingerly, unable to use her twisted hands. She silently tolerated the torture hoping, hoping for light in the darkness. But even hope was beyond her reach; she was barren and would never bear a child. Her husband married another woman, and her torture continued.

    Pain, pain was all she felt now. Her anger was drowned by her agony; she felt no happiness, no hate, just pain. She walked in along the sandy beach trying, hoping to sink her anguish in to depths of the ocean. But the ocean washed her steps away as if ashamed that she was even there. Her beautiful vision was no longer real; the ocean was no longer a refuge from reality. She had been abandoned to the reality of her life, to her pain.

   A storm raged, but it was nothing compared to the storm that raged within her. She was torn between the pain of her reality and the comfort of death. She was torn between pain and sin; between hell during life and hell after death. She walked to the same spot on the bridge and stared at the ocean- pitch black, its surface torn by the storm. Tortured and mulled….far from the serenity she had once seen. She drowned herself in her dreams, shunned reality. For reality meant only pain, and pain she wanted no more….!!