WHEN NOTHING IS SOMETHING

I have never been big on random conversations. In fact, I make more effort avoiding the possibility of idle chit-chat than I do when I am obliged to endure someone’s attempts at engaging me in some arbitrary quasi-conversational diversion that is more often than not akin to a persistent fly that keeps buzzing around ones head. In both instances I wait for the moment to kill the damn thing.

Instead I prefer to observe and can sit for hours watching people interact or just looking into the wondrous expanse of nature and thinking through whatever thoughts happen to be occupying my mind. There is usually an army of ideas that require various levels of contemplation and understanding and I am quite content to grapple with these as opposed to discussing sport or cars or the goings-on of dumb-ass celebrities and the one-dimensional story lines that constitute their lives and the soap operas or films that they appear in.

Thus I sit here on this elevated perch and observe. The hut in front of us is rented by an Israeli kite surfer who has been coming here for more than a decade and generally for between four and six months at a time. He offers kite surfing lessons to those who can afford it. Probably in his late thirties or maybe even his early forties by now; a super-cool type in his own estimation I am sure; short back and sides with a long pony-tailed top and designer mirror shades; with the obligatory Royal Enfield and a string of surfer chicks who are into that kind of cool. He doesn’t want to talk about the murderous Israeli State or Palestine or his time in the armed forces. He comes here to escape and yet after each season he returns to wherever he hails from and maybe he never reads the news or hears about the latest airstrike that regularly kills innocent children. Who knows?

In the hut alongside my perch is a German dude. Functionally blind and terminally anal to the point that he traipses along the beach with his Speedo stuck in his ass-crack trying to pick up any woman who happens to be sunbathing on her own. I overheard him chatting to one of the proprietors of this establishment the other day. He was insisting that he wants a three-egg omelette for breakfast, but made with just free-range egg whites. Normally this would cost 100 rupees, but the local free range eggs cost 100 rupees for half a dozen and they are so small that it would probably require six with yolks to make an equivalent omelette. The fuck-up was that he was not prepared to pay more than 100 rupees for this special request and it took most of the day and late into the night for him to understand that he was not going to get what he wanted at the price that he was willing to pay. And even with his bottle-bottom glasses, he just could not see.

Then there are those who travel from across the globe to spend their days surfing the world-wide web on the free wifi; or the elderly women with their face-lifts and boob-jobs, sipping quarts of beer or cocktails through a straw while harassing the young Nepali waiters for a bit of late night action; or the elderly men who parade up and down with g-string bikinis exposing their deflated glutes; or the young crowd who start the day with a beer and sit along the beach at sundown meditating with eyes half closed to be able to see who is watching their spiritual selves in action; or those who walk around in a cheap-hash induced coma with a dazed half-smile as they exchange a bit more of their parents’ dollars for their next high; or the grey-haired hippies who have been coming here forever with their faded and scuffed local garb and world-weary predisposition; and of course the Mumbai crowd who travel with their extended families and their nannies and butlers.

As for me, I have been spending the past few days trying not to be too irritated by the heat rash that reminds me of a childhood covered in calamine lotion. I awake each morning and make my own coffee which I enjoy while typing up these little missives. I swim, I shower, I powder and then I go next door for a fresh juice and an hour online to share my thoughts with those who care to follow the lighthearted contemplation and raging silences that are my preferred conversational companions.

And then we may take a walk to laze in the sun or the shade or to have a meal at one of our favourite haunts. Or we may very well decide to spend the day doing nothing because sometimes in a place like this, to do nothing is in fact something…