Lokenath Roy gives us a vignette of Juhu Beach, Mumbai[1]
You wake up to the wet, slimy plywood stuck to your long back brushed hair on the deck. It is morning already. The faint disc of the comforting winter sun bristles by your narrow eyes. Aditya guns his hoarse voice towards the sparse crew of the boat.
Another day on the Arabian Sea.
Bone-thin legs scramble to the colour-faded slippers as they flaccidly make their way down the pier. You trod the lukewarm Juhu surface sands. The legs dip deep at certain spots. It is still morgue cold underneath.
The shadows of posh skyscrapers do little to mask the scaly smell of fresh fish sold on rows of marble slabs. The dhaba[2] owner honks his hacked voice at the trickle of daily commuters. Scratching the rashes on your forearm you drag a pockmarked plastic chair from across the narrow alley. The smoking omelet with half-cooked onion bounces down your throat. This is breakfast every day.
The plastics pile up at this end. The ocean stays buried under trash cans, cardboard, and polythene. Ponds of rotting sabzi[3] stay entangle in decaying fishing nets. The gnawing boat treads this wasteland. Sahil adjusts the balloon bag as it fills up at the front. Your eyes scrape the collections on the deck for valuables. The stink gets to your nostrils, even under the thick-lined dirty handkerchief. This is livelihood.
You’re fourteen. The letters of the English alphabet only graze your eyes on the benches of dhabas, amongst folded newspapers left behind by morning office goers. You try to read them. An article on trash-clearing boats at the Juhu beach grabs your attention. Not the writing, but rather the image, the image of your boat. You bend forward, looking narrow-eyed into the pixels over the paper, trying to find any speck on the deck that resembles you.
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[1] The persons mentioned are fictitious but typical of people he has noticed
[2] Street side eateries
[3] Cooked vegetables with spices
Lokenath Roy, a writer from Kolkata who explores themes of society, memory, and the human experience, has published in several literary journals and online magazines like The Cawnpore Magazine, The Monograph Magazine, The Aeos Magazine and the Borderless Journal.
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