Tourists, Madness, Coffee, and Stranger Things

Somewhere between tourists and madness, coffee and Stranger Things, I found myself coming back to the water.

It was sometime in the third week of October that we decided to take a trip to the seaside in the last week of December. My sister chirped on the phone, “It would be Christmas time and just perfect to unwind and let your hair down a little.” A funny thought popped into my head, but my husband doesn’t have any hair… it has been so for many years now. How does he let his long-disappeared hair down? Silly me. Of course, it is just a metaphor.

Anyway, heuristic problems aside, December rolled by, and before we knew it, we were lugging bags down the stairway, loading them into the car. I sat behind the wheel and readied myself for the long drive that lay ahead—1,000 km and counting. Did I not mention the bad roads, the holiday-season traffic, rough terrain, and everything that could go wrong? We were a motley crowd of people: one gent, one curious boy, a charmingly calm canine, and yours faithfully.

The drive was uneventful, barring the high-beam driving by oncoming cars—and there were one too many—especially monstrous SUVs with their auxiliary lights, off-market and neon-coloured buses with blinking lights all over, looking like gigantic shiny disco balls ready to collide into you and open a portal into the Upside Down. Life is definitely stranger than fiction! By the way, I am a huge fan of Stranger Things, so please excuse the references that keep popping up now and then to the cult series that I am fixated on.

1,000 km traversed, we rolled out our bags and into the riverside idyllic villa that we had rented for a week. Tucked away inside a quiet, peaceful little community of expats and tourists, it was far away from the madding crowd—the perfect setting to reflect and reset.

Oh, before I forget, the canine behaved wonderfully all along—no tantrums, no messes, nada. If only we humans were as empathetic as them…the world would be an infinitely better place. And that is a conversation for another day.

Mornings in the villa would be coffee by the side of the river on a stone seat, a book in hand. I finished Rosemary’s Baby, a horror cult classic, and Frederick Forsyth’s The Odessa File, a war thriller—two very different worlds, and I happily straddled the space between them.

The quietly flowing river, the ferry bellowing as it set off downstream, felt designed for calm and contemplative mornings (Stranger Things, of course). This was followed by breakfast, a short walk to the beach, and longer walks on miles and miles of sand that lay ahead by the water.

The gentle surf of the waves, the crashing of the water on the shore, and the calming sound of the sea were enough to shut out the world outside—and within.

What is it about water that makes it so magical, I always wonder. Even in the midst of gaily dressed tourists, beach vendors selling their wares, shacks and music wafting out, and friendly banter, you find yourself drawn to it, to immerse in its echoes.

A shade of blue and grey, reflecting the sky above and the surface underneath, soothed and healed in ways beyond the realms of everyday consciousness. As I walked along the edge with my cream-coloured Shih Tzu, I couldn’t help but feel the magnetic pull of the sea.

The child in me hoped to find a time capsule—a message in a bottle gently bobbing up and down the waves, delivered into my hands, a sea Swiggy.

Voilà, a revelation hit me gently, carried forth on the breeze coming in from the sea—that the very moment was life encapsulated in its myriad colours, shaped by the vicissitudes of experience and time.

I realised that we are the harshest critics of ourselves, holding us to standards that are not negotiable. Whilst it is lofty to chase perfection, to obsess over it is vexing—the constant outrunning of yourself, tiring. Imperfection is what makes life interesting. Unlike a matinee, which has a scripted ending, life is one with an ending that can be scripted midway—in the way you want it.

There are curveballs that we must dodge and slippery slopes that we must not fall off, but in doing that, let us not diminish ourselves or shrink to fit norms and expectations. It’s okay to be alone… there is a quiet power in solitude, an opportunity to reconnect with the forgotten and the long-banished to the icy north, parts of you. Reciprocity in a relationship is healthy; barreling down a one-way street is injurious to your mental health.

I kept coming back in the evenings to the water, for it drowned out the voice in me that is fearful and harsh. And so I let these moments be—imperfect, but oddly enough. I also promised myself to come back more often in the coming year, to the water, to find answers, comfort, or simply just be.

And ending this piece with a note of gratitude to my family, who made this holiday possible and one of the best ever. Thank you for the love and care shown to Coffee—my cute-as-a-button Shih Tzu, who identifies himself as a cat. For a man’s true nature is revealed in turns such as these.