Vagator. As he sat on one of the lonely rocks at Vagator beach, Shankar experienced the quiet he had been yearning to feel all his life. He carelessly dipped his feet to touch the frothy waves, and saw the moon in the distance. Did it look even more beautiful and melancholic tonight? That must be a nonsensical assumption.
Vagator is always deserted in the evenings. No one takes the pains of descending the rocky steps, to come to a beach which does not even have a cafeteria, let alone music. Such beaches are left to Destiny's care in North Goa. But Shankar was alone tonight. He would not have cared about being alone, but he additionally felt the pangs of loneliness tonight. This, on a crazy moonlit night was unbearable. In his mind echoed a composition by Isaac Albeniz, which Shankar assumed must have been an ode to such a night years before in some far away land, where the moon had been equally playful.
The waves kissed Shankar's cheeks, and he remembered the first time he had been kissed by Krishna. The first kiss is always the most unforgettable one. A string of incidents began to resurface before Shankar's eyes. - the times spent on phone calls in the terrace under the moonlight, the late night tea and romance at the lonely college cafeteria, the holding of hands and walking under the towering skyscrapers of Bangalore. Isaac Albeniz grew louder and more painful. The moon had risen a little more now, and it stared straight above the horizon, looming large.
Did the moon have a pockmark? Was it a tear drop, and just to make it visible, it was black? In any case, the moon, the inspiration behind innumerable poems and songs, was also blemished. So was love, and so was man.
It was Krishna's marriage today. Shankar had run off, avoiding the invitation, because he could not see Krishna get married, as no lover has ever been able to see. Krishna had told him only a week back. He was being forced to marry, since his family now needed a child, a next generation. Marrying Shankar was not possible. It was illegal. And moreover, the ultimate result would have been disastrous, since no progeny could have been begotten. That was the summum bonum of love. Progeny. To take the race forward.
Shankar had no idea of what Krishna was saying. What played before his eyes when the dangerous fangs of rationale were being raised by Krishna was the times they had spent in each other's arms. Shankar had cried on one such occasion, probably the only time he had cried after his mother had passed away when he was sixteen. And today Krishna, who he had loved all these years, who he thought had loved him all these years, spoke about the black and white end of love.
And thus Krishna would get married today. To Revathi. But what if they fell in love and still failed to beget a child? Would he divorce her then? How Shankar wished today that even a man could bear a child! Was not Ayyappan the offspring of two male gods in mythology?
The moon began to laugh steadily before his eyes. Ants hiding from the cold waves inside the rocks began to climb on his arms. He sat drinking his last bitter, and thought of the abuses his father had hurled on him, upon coming to know who Shankar was in love with. The same father, who had loved him with all his heart once, now called him a eunuch. Did father also then love Shankar because he was to carry his race forward? And what if the child so born was a eunuch?
And as he thought of such questions, he assumed that it was at this moment that Krishna was consummating his marriage to achieve the noblest of ends man has known. Was the moon mocking Shankar? Was the teardrop he had seen actually a surreptitious smile? Was the moon gay, or was it straight? Had it fallen in love? Had it been hurt? Did it not hopelessly circle around the earth, never being able to unite with it? Except in shadows perhaps, and even then it was called an eclipse, something to be looked down upon as ominous by everyone.
It must be past midnight, Shankar thought. As he climbed down the rock, he took a last swig of the beer and threw the bottle away. He looked at the moon and smiled back, because he could not cry. He smiled at the moon, and thought that perhaps, the moon was sympathetic to him. Despite being beautiful, it was lonely. Thinking, sinking, he walked on towards the sea.
"Then he stumbles as he's leaving, and he wonders if the reason,
Is the beer that's in his belly, or the tear that's in his eye."
- Kris Kristofferson, Casey's Last Ride.
