The Final Surrender

The Final Surrender

 

 

Far across the rush of the waves there comes in air the sound of Church bells declaring midnight. There is a sharp blue streak in the sky and I know that there is a storm brewing. It is wonderful to be part of this destruction and each time the first wind of a storm hits me I can feel that I am broken and the scattered parts of my inner shadows are all dancing around me. Like words, they are offering themselves. I can hear a distinct laughter and I slowly get rid of my shoe and walk with naked feet towards the sea. Each step makes me more excited and a strange blue pain is back. I know there is no color of pain but now I feel the pain must be in shades of blue. It is too tuned with the storm and I love every bit of it.  With every step, a peculiar series of sketches flash before my eyes. Like some old photograph, one after another. Some prominent, some faded and gone. In some I can see my father holding my tiny hand before I pull free of his grip and jump into the sea. Another, I can see my mother sitting quietly on the beach, looking at the sea until I come to t sit beside her she smiles. In another, I notice a woman calling me, her voice cannot be heard above the roar of the sea. The more she calls the further I walk.  When I turn back she is a silhouette, her face blurred in darkness, hair flying, and slowly the distance between my family and I increases before I am taken on by the waves.

I am about to say something when the storm hits the earth and everything in it becomes a rampage. It is the last moment to destruction and I am waiting for it but now there is no time and I jump into the sea. Words of Hemingway come to mind -- “He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences…” -- and now find how clean, how true, how deep - rooted those words are. I feel like crying; instead I shout and the waves come over and over me, the earth around me suddenly primitive.

 

Then, I break into laughter.

 

Subhadip Majumdar

 

Subhadip Majumdar is a writer and poet from India. He studied Creative Writing at the University of Iowa. He also edited a reputed Bengali poetry journal, wrote a short novel as Tumbleweed writer in Shakespeare and Company, Paris. He has two published books of poetry and stories published internationally. Subhadip is currently in the process of publishing his first novel.