Requiem To The Sea

May 18
21:00

2004

Ambreen Ishrat

Ambreen Ishrat

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It's been so many moons away that I have come to sit with you, sea - my friend. Still many moons have passed, since the ... was ... upon you. It is yet a night so similar and yet differ

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It's been so many moons away that I have come to sit with you,Requiem To The Sea Articles sea - my friend. Still many moons have passed, since the destruction was unleashed upon you. It is yet a night so similar and yet different in so many ways. Tonight I have come to pay my homage to the imperious sea, or what remains of it. Can't help it if my homage sounds like a requiem. As I am here, by your side to shed my tears on your fate, and my own which is entwined with yours.

Today, I have come to say a silent prayer for my own future and that of yours.

I hear the damp saline ocean waves cry on and whisper to me. In that I hear the echo of my own fear, a wail for my own abandonment and those of my dreams. I recall the last time I was here, a partly cold December last year, when I walked the stretch of the Clifton beach. I took long strolls, turning back and forth retracing my own foot marks. The waves were carrying own their ballet, as the children on their winter break were playing and laughing. The breeze was pleasing to my face. I dipped my fingers in them and felt a silent and simple exhilaration grow inside me. But as dreams are lost upon water, the reverie is gone. It was then, and its gone now. Right now a dark stretch of water lays in front of my eyes, as if I am staring at an abyss, and it is looking back to me.

Too spent to take a stroll, I choose to sit on the dusty brick wall breathing in the sadness and silence around me. I look around, at the vast stretch of the deserted beach, this wasteland. Not far from where I sit, the lights of two popular eateries shine on. But over here, an impregnable gloom hangs on the atmosphere, which overwhelms the heart and senses. As the yellowed foam slide back, it reveals bared and scraped beach stretch, raked clean by tractors in their bravado salvation efforts. There is no seaweed, no broken sea shells and ironically no trash. Though a solitary white polethene bag puffed up with air, is dodging the waves and rolling onwards, as if it has a life of its own. But soon enough, the waves catch up it and it disappears in the unfathomable depths.

I look onwards, the dark and almost ghostly figure of the oil tanker is visible, whose dark shape I could only fathom from where I sit. I am a scavenger always on the drift, a tramp trying to outrun the bounds of civilization, stealing my way out of city that echoes the emptiness of monotony and routine. I am forever a melancholic creature, who finds excuse and objects for nostalgia all too often. For me, life is a perpetual yesterday. I remember you in your former glory. And so I remember you as you were before and can't help comparing it with your desolate state today. You were the venue for celebrations with friends and for the solitary walks. You were my recluse from the city life, and today you toss and turn all alone. The crowd is gone, so has the snake charmer, the camel wala or the photographer with his camera. Necessity has forced these people, who used to depend upon you for their livelihood to go elsewhere. The picnickers that used to throng at your side every evening and night are all gone now. They have abandoned you for some other dazzling joint, where city lights outlast the night and the party ever carries on. Did they ever care about you at all, I wonder. Yet there are a few faithful ones who still choose to come here: sparse joggers, some couples deeply engrossed in private conversations and in each others. And there are a few scavengers like me. The blanched moon beckons and the angry waves ebb and flow in their ancient rhythm. This ancient rhythm that has been here, since the beginning of creation, even before man was here. To every pattern and to every beginning, there is an end. And mankind, is always trying to orchestrate the end of his own beginning, trying to haste on the nemesis. Almost a century back, Matthew Arnold looked at the dark sea and contemplated upon the man's faith and his fate. How far have man progressed since then? So much intelligence and so much of advancement and yet there remains disdain, pompousness and a criminal neglect towards the environment that sustains him. So many months have passed since the oil spill tragedy has taken place, the effects on which still linger on. The toxic wastage lies in the bottom of the sea, hidden from our discerning eyes. It is still seeping in the unfathomable depths, poisoning the very core, the roots and essence. Water being our integral constituent, this toxic wastage is poisoning our souls as well.

The Karachi beach, as we have known it never had the crystalline clearness of the Bahamas, of Florida, Miami or Hawaii, The polluted and trash strewn coastline stretch used to speak volumes about our civic sense, but it still was something better than having nothing. It used to offer us the luxury of watching infinity. The Sea is what defines our status as a coastal city. It is and would always be a prominent element of our landscape and geography. As for karachittees social life and cultural milieu, the cooperate food chains, restaurants and food outlets would keep on opening, but the damage done to the sea would linger on. These cramped spaces are meant for a blessed few and speak volumes about our empty souls and excess desires, over brimming indulgences and depraved values. In spite of the hoodwinking claims made about the amount of damage being minimal, in the heart of our heart, we ought to know better that an irreparable damage has been done and the sea has been blemished. We ought to know now that the price is to be paid, by us and by our future generations. Scared I am to bring my children into this world, and to think about the kind of future they will have.

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