The Wave Rider

People have quite a special connection with their vehicles. They care for it very much, loving them almost as their favourite toy car from childhood. I had found my connection too, at a rather young age. I remember vividly, my short, chubby legs pedalling the 'wave rider' in my home's lawn. The grass had been green, rustling joyfully in the wind. But my imagination was the only magic I needed to see it as the vast, blue expanse of an ocean, with the wind causing waves all around. I, a child of about 5 was the captain of my 'wave rider', which if I haven't told you yet, was my tricycle. Yes, that is what I named my ride! I kept sailing for hours on my make-believe ship, on a make-believe ocean of lawn grass. I sailed, imagining the waves rising and falling. Every breaking crest made my joy go spiralling out of bounds.

I have been in love since that young an age with the great territory of Poseidon, still unexplored by the humans. My first memories of seeing waves were not at a beach, but from a daily television advert. My mom has told me numerous times, recounting my childhood memories that how, as a kid I used to jump and clap with pompous energy at the sight of that ad. I don't quite remember what that commercial was about, but probably it was some sort of a travel ad.

As I grew up, my admiration and fascination for this great element of nature also grew. I never made many friends at school. Whether I took to my imaginations due to loneliness, or whether it was my own self who never ventured to make friends because I was captivated by water, I don't know. While my classmates gossiped about the latest song tracks, I never found myself in those conversations. The only tunes I'd listen to, on my blue headphones were that of the nature. The sound of waves cracking on the beach, sometimes gently and sometimes with the wrath of innumerable hammers, captivated my sense of sound. The various sounds of water would run in a loop on my playlist. I was content with my imaginations of the great seas and oceans. I'd keep imagining waters, of different kinds, all sorts of them. Azure. Green. Turquoise. Whites. Rapids. Ultramarines. Every different kind of hue from the blue-green family that an artist can't even distinguish.

Then came a day when my art teacher gave us a lesson in water colours. It wouldn't be a surprise for my reader to know that I drew the scene of a great vessel sailing through foamy, white sea water. As far as this account has come, the reader would now be convinced that I must have drawn a sudden masterpiece, as it happens in children's fantasy stories. But, it wasn't so. I did draw something that revealed my artistic abilities to my teacher, but it certainly was no masterpiece. As humbly as I remember, I ended up using up too much water on the paper and it shrivelled in patches after the colour dried.

That first painting of mine, which served as my tryst with the realm of art has long been lost. That was a time from my teenage years. Now, I'm a painter, quite a 'famous' one as people say. My solace doesn't lie in the fame, I rather suffice myself humbly with my colours, and the everlasting bond that I have with water. I practised a lot, painted my whole time out. That's who I am now, one with my brushes, one with my colours. Mama and papa never stopped me, they too had sensed the artist inside me.

All my childhood and teen years were spent in a landlocked urban landscape, far from the sands of a beach. The surprising thing is that I had never seen the ocean until the age of twenty. It is a most remarkable thing to myself, that I had shared such an obsession for water without having ever seen the sea till then. It makes me wonder, if I was born for the very reason to love water. The funny thing - my parents always kept urging me to drink more water. It would have been funnier if I told them that water 'is in my veins'. My family moved to a place beside the sea when I was twenty. By that time, I had been studying art as a proper student. I painted various genres, made numerous paintings on varied themes, but always found myself returning to the unmatched beauty of water. They say that elusive things are the most tantalising, and so have I found out. It seems as if I'm finding the shape of water in every artistic creation of mine, knowing little if such a 'shape' does really exist. The search always keeps me hooked.

My days have passed by, just like this. Thinking of art, creating it, and doing it all again. It doesn't bore me. If I were an immortal, I would like to be Uranus, who would spend his time painting every part of his kingdom. The fishes, the plants, the sand bed, the ships and their wrecks. All my life I have lived like this, as an artist, until yesterday.

I'm a man of fifty-one now. Yesterday, I took my keys and went for a drive up to the cliffs beside the sea. I set up my canvas before one of the edges of the cliffs. I picked my brush up, but didn't start to paint. There was a kind of calling in my head, almost a voice, luring me to go near to the edge. My feet stepped forward, slowly, ever so slowly. But my heart was beating all fast. Walked slowly, it beat faster. More slowly, even faster. The fall from the cliff was high enough to induce vertigo in the man of utmost valour, but it dared not stop my plod. The water was calling me like never before. I had the escalating urge to make a dive. But, I knew that taking a dive would be to die. Controlling my urge, I only ventured to lean my head off the cliff's ledge. Life had other plans for me, and I'm glad it had! My feet slipped from the ledge, as a part of it broke off, and I found myself plummeting down the cliff.

The falling part is quite hazy, I was bracing death by water, to let myself lose life and be one with the waves but the grim reaper never arrived. Instead, the next thing I felt was being cradled by the cool touch of many arms. "Oh no," I heard. "We cannot destroy something that has loved us so beautifully." I had not opened my eyes until the instant I heard this. When I did let my gaze fall upon my supposedly afterlife by now, I saw myself being rocked by water. Very gently, as a mother rocks her baby to let it fall asleep. The difference here was that I had just escaped permanent sleep by a whisker. The waves were carrying me, above the surface of the sea. Like magic! The foam was all around me. I could feel its light, bubbly touch. It finally felt for that window of time, that water did have a shape. Better still, it had a conscience! I was carried in the same manner, gliding over a thousand waves to the shore. My clothes were left desiccated, and there was not a drop of water on my body which could serve as a testimony to my recent adventure on the waves. I stood there on the shore, way too far from my point of fall in the high cliffs above. It certainly wasn't a dream, nor a hallucination. I had fallen, for true, and lived to tell this tale.

Standing there, I watched the sea again, but there was nothing unusual about it. The waters were normal. There were no signs that the water had just now carried me all the way on its waves to the shore. Indeed, the tide was receding, as if leaving a bitter-sweet goodbye, after this tryst with me. The words of the waves had been real. They had not destroyed their lover.

What now? I sit here, sipping coffee, recounting this tale. Though it makes for an awesome bedtime story for my daughter, I doubt if it would qualify for a greater meaning to anyone else. My wife smiled at me in the most affable manner that she always does, but I know, she doesn't believe in my tale. I'll not ask anyone to believe in it. My experience is unique to me and I'll cherish it, till the day my ashes are flown into the very water which had been my saviour. I hope it will welcome me then, with all love into Poseidon's court. I found my favourite childhood advert in an online archive, the same which had made me fall for water. Looks like the place it was filmed at, was the same cliffs, I fell from. For now, I've designed a T-shirt for myself and ordered it online. Tomorrow, I'll be roaming around my streets with a tee that reads - "I AM THE WAVE RIDER", and has a photo of my tricycle. I will always ride on the fact, in my own heart that I am, and will always be a "wave rider".