The Beach vs Rajiv D'Silva

By The Party of the Second Part

“So how often do you go to the beach?” 

I sigh inwardly. There are two things that are inevitable when friends or relatives of mine from out of state come visiting – one, that they will insist on dinner/lunch/drinks at the beach, and two, that they will ask this question.

I usually reply along the lines of “Whenever we can, which is at least twice a week. But we try not to visit the same beach all the time, there are so many in Goa and they’re all so different that we never get bored”, and watch with satisfaction as the friend/relative goes into introspection mode about his/her own careworn existence in Delhi/Mumbai/Dubai.

I lie, of course. I do not like the beach. The beach and I do not see eye to eye on most matters. It usually needs a team of wild horses, or friends and relatives, to drag me to the beach. I find that most beaches are either too hot, too muggy and sticky, too crowded or too, er, sandy. Give me a beach that’s not hot, muggy, sticky, crowded and sandy and that beach and I will be lifelong pals.

It is principally the sand that I object to. It covers you like an insidious virus, filling your shoes, clothes, pockets and even, um, those places where the sun never shines. So the beach and I have a cordial but strained relationship, like two neighbours who have cases in court against each other but whose son and daughter have gone and gotten married to each other, the accursed wretches. Or two warring countries in a lengthy but uneasy ceasefire. For, make no mistake here, there is one party that wants the ceasefire broken. I can see that every time I’m at the beach; its motives are to me an open book. When I’m at the beach, I keep a safe and respectable distance from its more dangerous parts. I’m usually at a shack or restaurant, and my policy of non-interference goes as far as to put my feet up on the table and leave the sand under it to its own devices. Live and let live is my motto. But not of the beach. I see its waves smirking at me, tempting me to make one wrong move. It blows sand in my face and around my ankles knowing full well that if I snap it can let me have it with all its fury.

But I am made of sterner stuff than that, and for years I went on without incident or casualty. Until, that is, my kids arrived. I love my two sons to bits, but sometimes I have to wonder whose side they’re on. My younger son’s third word, after ‘Mama’ and ‘Dada’ was ‘bish’, and my wife didn’t take too kindly to my suggestion that it might just be an alternative name for her. So, child being the father of man and all that, I have to wear a plastic smile as the whole jing-bang troops into the car, and when we’re there, rushes into the arms of the enemy without so much as a look over their shoulder to see their shattered father’s visage. Oh, the humanity.

And eventually, after I have done my best caged-tiger imitation some distance from the revelry, my son refuses to get out of the water. “Come and get him,” the waves seem to sneer. I look pleadingly at my wife. “Go and get him,” she orders. I know when I am licked. I rush headlong into the sand like Robert Redford and Paul Newman in the climactic scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid...

“So?”

I look up and see my cousin is waiting for an answer. I give her the usual spiel, and watch her negotiate the introspection mode. Presently she resurfaces.

“And how often do you go for a swim?”

Swim? Now don’t get me started on that.



First published in My Goa magazine, 2013