Kaup

I have always loved the sea. The rolling waves, the grainy sand, the cool breeze, the occasional fisherman hauling his highly odourous catch at the end of the day... I love it all. And since I reside in the interior(New Delhi), I haven't had much of a chance to visit, revisit and dwell on the splendour of the ocean.

Manipal, however offers promising oppurtunities. With Malpe and Kaup flanking the university town, the ocean is right at my doorstep.

Which is why last Saturday evening found the five of us(Udita, Neelav, Swapnil, Fernon and I) frolicking about in the salty waters at Kaup.

It was a most monotonous and spiritless day, with classes in the morning where our professors demonstrated the very latest methods of boring a class of eighty-odd students to a near-death condition with pinpoint accuracy. After class, as I was planning to catch up on a bit of long-overdue sleep, Udita calls and Operation Kaup begins. Five-thirty finds us at the Manipal bus-stand, boarding a bus to Mangalore(Fernon assures us that Kaup lies somewhere along the way).

The first time I went to Kaup was back in December, and I will never forget my first glimpse of the beach. All one can see is the vast, watery expanse, guarded by big black boulders sticking out of the sand. In the distance is a lighthouse which stands tall and proud, reaching out to touch the sky.

So down to Kaup we went. We had our fun, fooled and kidded around in the water, threw sand in each others faces(and hair), and had a good time. Soon it was dark.
Its surprising, how fast it grows dark on the beach. In a matter of minutes, the yellow sunshine faded to bright red and then to pitch black. With nightfall came lightning and the storm.And then the lighthouse powered on its twin beacons, two huge white rotating rays of light puncturing the darkness of the night. The scene was unreal, surrealistic; it did not belong to the real world, it was right out of a novel. It was quite something to see the huge waves coming at us, and then miraculously shrinking to the level of our knees as they reached the shore.

It was humbling, to look at the waves reach a crescendo, and then mellow down to a slow funeral march and finally die as they reached our knees; so much like life itself. I couldn't help but ponder on how vast the ocean is; how we are nothing more than mere traces, small drops in the big picture.

We couldn't have asked for a more perfect end to our little outing, turning it into quite an adventure. Due to the storm a power failure occured, with no prior warning at all. So we made our way back to the main road, in pitch blackness punctuated at regular intervals by lightning, which produced a great effect indeed. Back on the road, and we find no autos...which was a disaster, because it meant we had to trudge a kilometre on foot, with it raining cats, dogs, monkeys, pythons and the like. Thankfully, we met an auto coming towards us after ten minutes otherwise the whole lot of us would've been down with pneumonia.

The rest of the day was just like any other. We came back, had dinner, and went back... only to lie on our beds and have the images of today flash in front of our eyes...