Finding My Way Out Of The Ocean

Finding My Way Out Of The Ocean
There is an ocean of grief lying at my feet. I want to walk out of the ocean, but my feet were bound in chains. I badly wish I could come out of the contemporary situation with at least a whiff of victory behind me if not with flying colours, but like all other situations in my life, this one is also fraught with a lot of problems. I shall have to bear with the problems for a long time; they may never ever end. I feel like a sailor dumped in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. He has been swimming for a long time, but the end is still not in sight.

The sailor is quite exhausted, but he doesn’t have an option but to move ahead in the direction of the tides. He can’t move against the tides because he is exhausted and tired. Moreover, most of the efforts he made to move against the dominant current have been negated by strong tides. The poor man knows he may never get to the coast at all; he may find himself at the bottom of the ocean, but he can’t do anything about it except swim with the tides till he can.

The truth is the ocean the sailor has fallen into doesn’t have a shore. There isn’t a beach where the sailor can land and relieve his exhaustion. He has to swim till his senses work, after which he will have to be taken on another sailor’s back, but the latter is also going to have to swim in the same ocean. It is to be quite like a relay-race where one runner hands the baton to another, and the race goes on till the baton reaches the finishing-point. There is to be no finishing-point this time, but the baton is still to be passed on.

The winner of the race is to be decided by the endurance and patience displayed by individual sailors. There are to be many sailors in the ocean, and each has a different degree of patience allotted to him. Everyone has a fair chance to win the race, although everyone’s chances are curtailed by a pre-decided fate. This is a system whereby winners have been decided a long time before the race was imitated.

There doesn’t seem to be a point in contesting a race where the winner has already been decided. The very fact that the decision isn’t known to the contestants is what makes the race all the more exiting for all contestants. This is what makes them do their very best to win the contest. Bringing out the best in everyone is the aim behind all competitions.

There is a tough competition among all sailors stranded at sea. Some of them deserve a special treatment because of an innate inability to swim across the ocean of grief. They are the ones who need a regular dose of joy and mirth to survive and swim across the ocean without getting hurt in any manner. They need to enliven their spirits, which are down in the dumps.

They are going to find regular does of mirth and joy in different formats. For this, they will have to swim across to one of the nearest ship in the ocean. A ship is a shop where there is an abundance of happiness and laughter. It is going to be quite tough to swim across to the ships for they are standing in the ocean at quite a distance from the drowning sailors. There are hundreds of ships standing in the ocean, and it is a tough ordeal for all sailors to decide which ship to head for. There is no way the sailors can tell which ship has a shop of happiness and which ship has one of sorrow.

The confusion has led to many sailors swimming over to a ship which has a shop selling sorrow when they were headed for one with a ship selling happiness. Practically, everyone is headed for ships which host shops selling happiness, but not everyone is able to reach these ships. They stand hidden behind a dense mist and fog which has been the order of the day in the ocean of grief for a long  time.

I haven’t been able to reach any ship for a long time despite the prolonged adventure I have had in the ocean. Like everyone, I was out to get to the ship with shop of happiness and laughter, but I haven’t been able to reach any of the two ships. It has been quite frustrating, but practically, I can’t do anything. In my desperation, I almost wish I got to the ship with the shop of gloom and depression, but I haven’t been able to reach anywhere.

It is quite frustrating because most of my contemporaries and peers are already at a ship. Even individuals who don’t fall into these categories are already enjoying themselves at a beach, basking in the sun and enjoying the surf. It really irks me. I often think if I adopted the wrong route to get to one of the ships.

The frustration has been growing in all forms in me because those already at the shore appear to be quite happy and satisfied, while I feel I have been deprived of happiness and satisfaction only because of my inability to reach out to a ship in time. There is very little I can possibly do to help myself out of the predicament I find myself in. I shall have to learn to adopt myself to the marine atmosphere in the ocean. This is the only relief I can hope of getting.

Quite a few of my dreams are now passing by without even touching me. This is quite like what I feel when Aligarh junction passes by while I’m on my way to Delhi by train, and I can do very little but watch it pass by. Aligarh was where my dreams lived once upon a time. I can’t do anything to capture my dreams in my hands, nothing. I’ll have to learn to adopt to the situations where my dreams slip out of my hand. This is going to happen quite a few times while I’m swimming through the ocean of grief.

I hope I find my way out of the ocean one day, and my dreams don’t slip out of my hands.